Tag Archives: term of art

Colloquial (adj)

Posted on September 10, 2020 | Leave a comment

Last but not least on this rainy Thursday afternoon, here is a context clues worksheet on the adjective colloquial. This is one of those words (like most of the context clues worksheets I’ve published here lately, this popped up as the Word of the Day at Merriam-Webster a few days back) that tempts me, because it shows up in educated discourse all over the place, to develop a series of worksheets for its family, to wit, colloquialism, colloquy, colloquium and colloquist–all of which have a solid Latin lineage.

If you find typos in this document, 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.

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Term of Art: Object

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Object: The noun or pronoun that completes a prepositional phrase or the meaning of a transitive verb. (See also direct object, indirect object, and preposition.) Frost offered his audience a poetic performance they would likely never forget.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

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Term of Art: Elaboration

Posted on September 9, 2020 | Leave a comment

“The process of discussing or going over new information in order to form connections with familiar information, a process that helps memory and affects depth of processing. There is a great deal of evidence in support of the idea that the more details are processed and repeated, the more likely they are to be retrieved from long-term memory.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Term of Art: Number

Posted on September 8, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Number:  A feature of nouns, pronouns and a few verbs, referring to a singular or plural. A subject and its corresponding verb must be consistent in number; a pronoun should agree in number with its antecedent. A solo flute plays; two oboes join in.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

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Cultural Literacy: Ideology

Posted on September 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

For all the years I taught social studies classes, I used this Cultural Literacy worksheet on ideology, which is one of those overarching concepts that students can use to categorize capitalism, communism, or socialism–or any of the other ideologies we want students to recognize and understand. This is really a word students should know, and know how to use conceptually. This is one of the most basic terms of art in social studies–any social studies class.

If you find typos in this document, 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.

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Term of Art: Noun

Posted on September 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Noun: A word that names a person, place or thing or idea. Most nouns have a plural form and a possessive form. Carol; the park; the cup; democracy.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

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Term of Art: Cultural Literacy

Posted on September 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

“cultural literacy: Knowledge of the culture in which one lives–not only its vocabulary and idioms but also references to specific events, individuals, places, literature, myths, folk tales, advertising, and other ‘insider’ information that would be familiar to those who have lived in the culture but that would be unknown to those who have not lived in the culture. It is the unstated, taken-for-granted knowledge necessary for reading comprehension and effective schooling within a culture. The concept of cultural literacy was popularized by E.D. Hirsch Jr. in his best-selling book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Critics claimed that it was elitist for anyone to attempt to define what everyone should know, but Hirsch contended that the teaching of cultural literacy was egalitarian because it had the result of breaking down social barriers and disseminating elite knowledge to everyone. Further, describing what constitutes cultural literacy within a given culture is an empirical, descriptive procedure, not a prescriptive one. The cultural literacy needed in Brazil or France of Thailand, for example, would be distinctive to those who live in that country. See also Core Knowledge (CK) program.”

 Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Homonymic Clash

Posted on September 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

“homonymic clash: A clash between two homonyms, either of which could be used in similar contexts. A classic example is a posited clash in parts of southwest France between a word gat ‘cat’ derived from Latin cattus, and an identical form gat ‘cock,’ predicted by regular processes of sound change from Latin gallus. In fact, the second was replaced by other forms that changed or extended their meaning: faisan, historically ‘pheasant,’ vicaire ‘curate,’ and others. The explanation, proposed by Gillieron, is that these replacements avoided the misunderstandings that the clash would often have caused.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Historical Term: Black and Tans

Posted on September 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Black and Tans: Special additional recruits of the Royal Irish Constabulary, first introduced in 1920, whose popular name—that of a common breed of Irish hounds—was derived from their uniform of dark green, almost black, caps, and khaki tunics and trousers. Between March 1920 and January 1922 the Black and Tans were responsible for excessively severe reprisals against terrorist activity in suppressing Irish nationalist unrest and combating the Irish Republican Army. Their destruction of Balbriggan, near Dublin, and the killing of two Irishmen in September 1920, followed three months later by the firing of the library and county hall in Cork were acts of criminal irresponsibility which served to fuel republican resentment at British rule. The actions of the Black and Tans have been endlessly recounted and embroidered in poetry and song from Dublin to Boston; one legend has it that they were recruited from among protestant prisoners in Scottish gaols.”

Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.

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Term of Art: Nonrestrictive Modifier

Posted on September 1, 2020 | Leave a comment

“Nonrestrictive Modifier: A phrase or clause that does not limit or restrict the essential meaning of the element it modifies. My youngest niece, who lives in Ann Arbor, is a magazine editor.”

Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.

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