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Articles about Language arts
When you hear the words academic vocabulary, you might think of words that live only in academic journals — awkward words such as insomuch, heretofore, or conversely. These words would never roll off your tongue and you would never expect to encounter them on prime time television or on the magazine rack as you wait in line at the supermarket.
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High/low, yes/no, black/white. There's something reassuring about opposites. A lot of vocabulary teaching is done using pairs of opposites, and with good reason: learners really feel they have a handle on a concept if they grasp its antithesis. There are, however, some other concept families that are best learned using three terms — triples — that provide a middle ground which in turn enhances all three concepts.
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Here at Vocabulary.com we're in the process of building a library of ready-made lists based on literature commonly taught in English and ELA classrooms. Please use them! And check out these tips for getting more out of them when you do.
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When Snoopy takes out his typewriter and begins to compose a novel atop his doghouse, he always begins with "It was a dark and stormy night..." This phrase — originally appearing in a schmaltzy 19th century British novel — has come to symbolize all that can go wrong with melodramatic writing, especially the clumsy attempts of a writer trying to evoke a dramatic setting within the first sentence of a work of literature.
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List of the Week: Toni Morrison Vocabulary
Learn words from "Sula" or "The Bluest Eye"
We've just added five new interactive lists of vocabulary from Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
List of the Week: Jonathan Safran Foer
List of the Week: Jonathan Safran Foer
At Vocabulary.com, we take the concept of word mastery seriously. Here's why.
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