Weekly Vocab - test on 11/06

Indefatigable, rankling, adversity, benevolent, bestow, afflicted, disconsolate, penury, reverential, sublime, fervently, chimerical (a chimera), tertiary, impediments, relinquishing, palpable, grappling, enticement, irksome, minutiae, intricacies, ardour, transitory

Blog h/w post: Maurice Sendak

Read the article from the London newspaper, The Guardian (click on "Maurice Sendak" link) and post a comment about the importance of diction. What does Sendak have to say about using just the right word...?

Frankenstein Vocabulary - test on 10/30/09

Most importantly, you must know the myth of Prometheus.

celebrity, (as in the abstract noun!)
reminiscences,
immortalize,
ostensible,
eponymous,
alienation
averse,
appendage,
fostered,
galvanism, (know who Galvani was)
component,
odious,
quench,
transient
celestial,
conjecture,
niche,
assailed,
endeavor,
ardent,

The weekly words (you know you love them!)

These are all about poetry:

apostrophe (not the punctuation mark)
lyric poetry
meter
stanza
quatrain
sestet
sestina
tercet
ode
ballad
villanelle
Shakespearean sonnet
Petrarchan sonnet
Spenserian sonnet
verbal irony
cacophony
free verse
blank verse

"This I Believe" Commentary

Please post a comment or question about any of the TIB essays that struck you as particularly poignant, powerful, or important.
Tell why it interested you, and then run with it--blog away about the project as a whole!

Yummy Grammar! Week of 10/12/09

As you will see from this week's list, we are taking a moment to remember grammar. Ah yes, how I love the uproariously funny misplaced epithets--not to mention hysterically funny malapropisms!

Transitive verb,
intransitive verb,
malapropism
indefinite pronouns,
possessive pronouns,
reflexive pronouns,
objective pronouns,
subjective (nominative) pronouns,
modifier,
gerund,
participle,
predicate,
predicate adjective,
predicate nominative,
declarative (indicative) sentence,
imperative sentence,
exclamatory sentence,
interrogative sentence,
subject verb agreement
transferred epithets

Wolsey Essay Homework post - due 10/8/09 by 3pm

Please read, critique, and score the student sample essay to the Wolsey prompt. You must say why you gave it the score you did.

Week of 10/5/09 Vocabulary

assonance
caesura
conceit
connotation
denotation
dissonance
elegy
eulogy
enjambment
in medias res
prose
soliloquy
monologue
hubris
denouement
assonance
colloquialism
diction
detail
imagery
syntax
tone
paradox

For this week's test I will only ask you for a definition and a clear example of each term. Many of these words have been studied in class, so you should be familiar with some of them already. I will assign a mid week h/w exercise to help you to prepare for the test.