In a class for speakers of English as a foreign language, Neal Whitman found himself teaching odd five-verb forms like "will have been being seen" and "would have been being seen." How did we end up with such unusual verb pile-ups?  Continue reading...

The suffix -ify means "to make," and you will commonly find it forming the ending of some tricky transitive verbs (e.g., petrify: to make into stone; rectify: to make right). Using this week's worksheet, teachers can have students look up some -ify verbs in the Visual Thesaurus, learn their definitions, and then write original sentence for each verb by using a sentence frame as their guide.  Continue reading...

If "grammar is the skunk at the garden party of the language arts," how can teachers confront the skunk when it comes to explaining how verbs work?  Continue reading...

I recently witnessed one of those lightbulb illuminating moments when someone suddenly "got it." What this language learner "got" was the difference between adjectives and nouns prefixed with un-, and verbs prefixed with un-. The adjective/noun becomes negative, but the verb typically has its action reversed: unusual vs. unwrap, for example.  Continue reading...

The truth is no one really knows when the great bard was born, but Shakespeare's fans celebrate his life and work this week: his observed birthday of April 23rd is also, ironically, the date of his death. Join us in paying homage to Shakespeare this week by using the Visual Thesaurus to get to the heart of some of his more famous puns.  Continue reading...

How can categorizing words from Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games help introduce students to the major themes of the novel?  Continue reading...