“Buzzword (noun): A vogue term with a catchy or seemingly impressive cachet, especially one form the jargon of technology, business, or government.
‘The phrase is everywhere…it is, in part, modish nonsense following a direct linguistic line from such buzzwords as ‘buzzword,’ ‘synergy,’ and ‘stonewall.’” Sam Vaughn, The New York Times
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Jamb Figure: Sculptured figure attached to the jamb (the vertical part) of a medieval church portal. Also called a called a column figure.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“task-oriented learning: A learning approach in which students are expected to complete specific assigned jobs, or tasks, to gain mastery. Advocates of task-oriented instruction laud it because it is experiential and hands-on, as opposed to instruction that relies on books and lectures.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Custom for Habit. Communities have customs; individuals, habit—commonly bad ones.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead.”
Norman Cousins “Freedom as Teacher” (1981)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
“You’re obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled, and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That’s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
“John Rawls: (1921-2002) U.S. philosopher. Born in Baltimore, he taught at Cornell (1962-79) and later Harvard (from 1979). He has written primarily on ethics and political philosophy. In his Theory of Justice (1971), he offered an alternative to utilitarianism that led to very different conclusions about justice. He asserted that if people had to choose principles of justice from behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ that restricted what they could know about their own position in society, they would not seek to maximize overall utility but would instead both protect their liberty and safeguard themselves against the worst possible outcome, They would thus sanction only the kinds of inequalities (e.g. in wealth) that are to the benefit of the worst off (e.g. because the inequalities are necessary for incentives that benefit all).”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here is a reading on pragmatism and its attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. I don’t imagine there will be a lot of demand for these documents; I wrote them for one student about 15 years ago. Preparing them for this post was the first time I’ve looked at them since then.
It’s probably worth mentioning that pragmatism is form of philosophy born in the United States. Its parents, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), and John Dewey (1859-1952), are given first-class treatment in Louis Menand’s book on them and their philosophy, The Metaphysical Club (2001).
Aside: last summer, I spent some time interviewing for jobs in Albany, New York and environs, known as the Capital District or the Capital Region; I saw signs directing me to the village of Menands, seven miles north of Albany. As someone interested in place names and their origins, I assumed that the town was named for Louis Menand’s family. As it turns out, Louis Menand’s great-grandfather, also named Louis Menand, and himself an important 19th-century horticulturist, first arrived in the Village in 1842. So yes, once again, an old American family’s name becomes a place name, as so many have–think of the Astors: If you happen to live in New York City, their name is all over the place.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“spelling: Word in the English language can be difficult to learn to spell because of many irregular spelling patterns. For example, do, due, and dew are all pronounced exactly the same way but differ in meaning. While English has 44 sounds, it has only 26 letters.
The letter-sound correspondence is essential for reading, as is the sound-letter correspondence for correct spelling. A difficulty in these relationships results in language disabilities.
Spelling a word id fare more difficult than reading a word for several reasons. First, passive (receptive) skills such as reading tend to be easier than active, expressive skills such as spelling. In addition, there are not contextual or structural cues to help with spelling as there are for reading. While spelling can be difficult for average learners, in is particularly difficult for individuals with a weakness in decoding.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Kylix (Cylix): A wide, shallow Greek drinking cup with two handles set horizontally and with or without a slender stem. The inside of the bowl was a field for vase painting.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
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