Overview

Lesson Procedure

65-75 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15-20 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure5-10 minutes

1. Warm-Up10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "The principal said the bank pays interest on your principal. What does each 'principal' mean, and what does 'interest' mean? How many other meanings of 'interest' can you name?"

   Students write their answers alone for two minutes, then compare. Record the meanings of interest on the board (curiosity, a share or stake, a hobby, money paid for a loan). Ask which clue decided each meaning. Explain that college-level reading in any subject turns everyday words into technical terms, and that this lesson practices choosing the right strategy for each word, including checking standard usage.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Three questions and a check. Teach students to ask, in whatever order the word invites:

   • What does the context allow? The meaning of the sentence, the paragraph and the whole text, and the word's position and function (part a).
   • What does the form tell me? The family, the prefix that changes the meaning and the suffix that changes the part of speech (part b).
   • What do the references settle? Pronunciation, precise meaning, part of speech, etymology and standard usage (part c).
   • Check: put the meaning back into the sentence and confirm it in a dictionary (part d).

   Read the excerpt from John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University aloud. Newman's famous description of a gentleman, from a lecture series first published in 1852, is dense with familiar words in unfamiliar senses. Students mark every word they would have to guess at.

   Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them. The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast;—all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets every thing for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candour, consideration, indulgence: he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits. [...]

   • Context: the meaning of the passage

     Newman's gentleman "is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd." What does distant mean?

     Result: The sentence lists kinds of people in a room: the bashful, the distant, the absurd. Each is a personality, so distant cannot mean far away; it means reserved or unfriendly in manner. The whole passage, about behavior in company, confirms the sense.

   • Context: a word's position and function

     "He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice." Which meaning of bear fits?

     Result: Bear is a verb after "to," and its object is malice, a feeling. A person cannot carry or give birth to a feeling, so the sense is "to hold or harbor": the gentleman does not hold a grudge. The position rules out the noun (the animal) at once.

   • Patterns of word change: the official example

     Complete with conceive, conception or conceivable: (1) It is ____ that the vote will be close. (2) Few voters could ____ of a tie. (3) Her ____ of fairness shaped the debate. Then explain Newman's "misconceive their adversary."

     Result: (1) conceivable, an adjective after "is"; (2) conceive, a verb after "could"; (3) conception, a noun after "her." Misconceive adds the prefix mis-, "wrongly": blundering arguers form a wrong idea of their opponent. The suffix sets the part of speech; the prefix changes the meaning.

   • Consulting a reference: pronunciation and part of speech

     Newman quotes the maxim "that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend." How is conduct pronounced here?

     Result: A dictionary gives two entries: the verb con-DUCT and the noun CON-duct. Here conduct is a verb ("we should ... conduct ourselves"), so it is stressed on the second syllable. The dictionary settles what the spelling cannot: stress shows the part of speech.

   • Verifying a first guess

     "He ... is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him." A student's first guess: scrupulous means sneaky, since it sounds like unscrupulous.

     Result: Check in context: the sentence sits among virtues (no slander, no gossip, interpreting "every thing for the best"), so a vice does not fit. Check in a dictionary: scrupulous means careful to do what is right, very exact. Verified meaning: he is careful and fair before he attributes a motive to anyone. The guess was reversed, because unscrupulous is the negative form.

   Use Diagram 2 with the third example, and Diagram 1 before Guided Practice. Stress that the fifth example shows a dangerous kind of word: a student who feels sure of a meaning never reaches for a strategy.

3. Guided Practice15-20 minutes

   Introduce the Fowler brothers' The King's English (first published in 1906), a usage guide whose section "Malaprops" collects words confused with look-alikes, each with a real example from a newspaper or a novel and a ruling. In the entries below, the word in parentheses after an example is the word the Fowlers say the writer meant. Model one entry aloud: read the example, the correction and the ruling, and name the pattern (same root, different ending, different meaning).

   Before classifying, we define a malaprop as a word used in the belief that it has the meaning really belonging to another word that resembles it in some particular.

   1. Words containing the same stem, but necessarily, or at least indisputably, distinguished by termination or prefix.

   [...]

   The working of the staff at the agent’s disposal was to a great extent voluntary, and, therefore, required all the influence of judicial management in order to avoid inevitable difficulties.—Times. (judicious)

   A not uncommon blunder.

   By all means let us have bright, hearty, and very reverend services.—Daily Telegraph. (reverent)

   Not uncommon.

   He chuckled at his own perspicuity.—CORELLI.

   If the writer had a little more perspicuity he would have known that the Church Congress would do nothing of the kind.—Daily Telegraph.

   Perspicuity is clearness or transparency: insight is perspicacity. -uity of style, -acity of mind. Very common.

   [...]

   2. Words like the previous set, except that the differentiation may possibly be disputed.

   [...]

   The apposite display of the diamonds usually stopped the tears that began to flow hereabouts; and she would remain in a complaisant state until....—DICKENS. (complacent)

   Our Correspondent adds that he is fully persuaded that Rozhdestvensky has nothing more to expect from the complacency of the French authorities.—Times. (complaisance)

   Complaisant is over polite, flattering, subservient, &c. Complacent means contented, satisfied.

   In the spring of that year the privilege was withdrawn from the four associated booksellers, and the continuance of the work strictly prohibited.—MORLEY.

   Continuation is the noun of continue, go on with: continuance of continue, remain. With continuance the meaning would be that the already published volumes (of Diderot’s Encyclopaedia) were to be destroyed; but the meaning intended is that the promised volumes were not to be gone on with—which requires continuation. Again, the next two extracts, from one page, show Mr. Morley wrongly substituting continuity, which only means continuousness, for continuance.

   [...]

   The inconsistency and evasion of the attitude of the Government.—Spectator.

   Evasiveness the quality: evasion a particular act.

   [...]

   4. Words having properly no connexion with each other at all, but confused owing to superficial resemblance.

   [...]

   In the present self-deprecatory mood in which the English people find themselves.—Spectator. (self-depreciatory)

   Depreciate, undervalue: deprecate, pray against. A bad but very common blunder.

   ‘An irreparable colleague,’ Mr. Gladstone notes in his diary.—MORLEY. (irreplaceable)

   No dead colleague is reparable—though his loss may or may not be so—this side the Day of Judgement.

   Surely he was better employed in plying the trades of tinker and smith than in having resource to vice, in running after milkmaids, for example.—BORROW. (recourse)

   You may indeed have recourse to a resource, but not vice versa. You may also resort to, which makes the confusion easier.

   [...]

   Pairs complete the organizer for four of the pairs. For each, they state the Fowlers' distinction, look the words up in a current dictionary with usage notes, and decide whether the distinction is still standard usage today, has changed, or is disputed. Ask pairs to name which kind of reference settled each question.

   Then and now: checking a 1906 usage ruling

   Pair in the Fowler entries	The Fowlers' distinction	What a current dictionary says	Still standard, changed or disputed?
   judicial / judicious
   perspicuity / perspicacity
   continuation / continuance
   irreparable / irreplaceable

4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Students read the passage below, written for this page, which explains how a bond works. Many of its terms are everyday words used in a financial sense. Each student chooses five terms, records the everyday meaning and the financial meaning, names the clue in the passage that signals the financial meaning, and checks one term in a financial glossary or a dictionary. Some quiz questions use this passage.

   1When a government or a company needs to borrow money, it can sell bonds. A bond is a loan in which the buyer becomes the lender. The borrower usually promises two things: to pay interest, a set percentage of the loan, at regular intervals, and to repay the principal, the amount originally borrowed, on a fixed date. On that date the bond matures, or comes due.

   2The United States Treasury borrows this way on a very large scale. Its securities, the general name for investments that can be bought and sold, are grouped by how long they last. Treasury bills mature in a year or less, Treasury notes in two to ten years, and Treasury bonds in twenty or thirty years. In everyday speech a bill asks for payment and a note is a short message, but here both words name a kind of debt.

   3Older bonds were printed on paper with small detachable coupons, one for each interest payment. The owner clipped a coupon and presented it to collect the money, and the interest rate a bond pays is still called its coupon rate.

   4Bonds can be sold before they mature, and their prices change from day to day. The yield of a bond is the return a buyer earns at the price paid. When a bond's price rises, its yield falls, because the buyer pays more for the same interest payments.

5. Closure5-10 minutes

   Exit ticket: (1) Name the word from today whose first guess you had to reverse, and what caught the mistake. (2) Name one question a usage guide can answer that a thesaurus cannot.

   Teacher note on the texts: Newman's portrait of a gentleman (1852) uses "he" and "men" for all people and describes an ideal of his class and time; students can discuss what the ideal leaves out. The Fowlers' entries (first published 1906; quoted here from a 1924 printing of the second edition) quote named writers and newspapers as examples of blunders and use the word "ignorant" elsewhere in the section; their spelling is British (connexion, favourable), and some of their rulings no longer describe current usage. Both texts are quoted exactly as published.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Newman writes that the gentleman "is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him." What does unembarrassed mean here?

   ANot feeling ashamed or self-conscious BNot hindered or held back CNot in debt to anyone DNot noticed by other people

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   "The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast." What does jar mean in this sentence?

   AA glass container with a wide mouth BA door left slightly open, as in "ajar" CA sudden shock or disturbance DA quarrel that lasts for many years

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   "He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort." What does retort mean here?

   AA glass vessel with a long neck, used in a laboratory BA formal written defense submitted to a court CA report sent back to a superior DA quick, sharp reply to an attack

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Blundering arguers, Newman says, "leave the question more involved than they find it." What does involved mean?

   ATangled or complicated BTaking part in an activity CEmotionally attached to someone DIncluded as a necessary part

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Newman says less educated minds "misconceive their adversary." What does the prefix in misconceive contribute?

   AIt makes the verb into a noun BIt adds the meaning "wrongly" CIt adds the meaning "not at all" DIt turns the verb into its past tense

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Choose the form that completes the sentence: A late storm could ____ delay the ferry until noon.

   Aconceive Bconceivable Cconceivably Dconception

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Choose the form that completes the sentence: Interrupting the judge to correct her was ____ of the young lawyer.

   Apresume Bpresumption Cpresumably Dpresumptuous

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to the Fowlers' entry, which sentence uses perspicuity and perspicacity as they distinguish them?

   AThe judge admired the perspicuity of the brief and the perspicacity of the lawyer who wrote it. BThe judge admired the perspicacity of the brief and the perspicuity of the lawyer who wrote it. CThe judge admired the perspicuity of the lawyer, who saw what everyone had missed. DThe judge used perspicuity and perspicacity as two words for the same thing.

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   The Fowlers call self-deprecatory for self-depreciatory "A bad but very common blunder." What do current dictionaries say about deprecate meaning "belittle," as in self-deprecating humor?

   AThey still reject it as a malaprop in every kind of writing. BThey list it only as a British usage. CThey list it as a standard sense of the word. DThey list it as slang that should be avoided in speech.

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    The Fowlers write: "You may indeed have recourse to a resource, but not vice versa." Which sentence follows their rule?

    AWhen the talks failed, the union had resource to a strike. BWhen the talks failed, the union had recourse to a strike. CThe union's main recourse was a fund of member dues. DThe union had resource to its lawyers and recourse to its fund.

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    By the Fowlers' definition, "a word used in the belief that it has the meaning really belonging to another word that resembles it," which sentence contains a malaprop?

    AThe witness tried to illicit sympathy from the jury. BThe senator's evasiveness frustrated every reporter. CThe historian gave a judicious account of the war. DThe critic praised the perspicuity of the essay.

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    The Fowlers write, "Evasiveness the quality: evasion a particular act." Which pair of sentences follows the distinction?

    AHis evasiveness was one clear lie. / Her evasion is a habit. BThe minister's evasion was his whole character. / Her evasiveness was one excuse. CBoth words name a single act, so they are interchangeable. DThe minister's evasiveness annoyed the press. / Her answer was an obvious evasion.

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 1 of the bond passage, what does principal mean?

    AThe amount borrowed BThe head of a school CThe most important item DThe main character in a play

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 1 of the bond passage, what does it mean that a bond matures?

    AIt grows more valuable with age, like wine BIt reaches the date on which it comes due CIt becomes more sensible and responsible DIt is sold for the first time to a buyer

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Newman's gentleman "has too much good sense to be affronted at insults." How is insults pronounced in this sentence, how do you know, and how would you confirm it? Give a sentence in which the word is pronounced differently.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Using the Fowlers' entry, explain the difference between complaisant and complacent. Then decide whether this sentence uses standard usage today, and name a reference you would check: After three easy wins, the team grew complacent.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    The Fowlers write that "Continuation is the noun of continue, go on with: continuance of continue, remain." Write one sentence for each word that follows this distinction, and explain how the ending signals the meaning.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Paragraph 3 of the bond passage explains why a bond's interest rate is called its coupon rate. Explain the history it gives, and name one other meaning of coupon in everyday life.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Newman's gentleman is "too indolent to bear malice." A thesaurus lists lazy, idle, slothful and easygoing for indolent. Which fits Newman's sentence best, and how would you verify the choice?

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    "He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries" (Newman). A student guesses that injuries means physical wounds. Verify or revise the guess, showing each step.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to L.11-12.4: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.