Posts By: Daily Preps

Pronouns are troublesome in our WRITING, READING, and TEST TAKING. This blog is a three-part series!  This week I focus on TWO types of pronoun problems within reading and test taking. The subsequent blogs focus on pesky pronouns within student writing: vague demonstrative pronouns and overuse of the relative pronoun “that.”  Reminder: Pronouns are little… Read more »

PROOFREAD YOUR WRITING FOUR TIMES First Read:  Review essay organization and content development Second – Fourth Read: Proof GRAMMAR: Second:  Look closely at every THIS and IT within your essay (see below) Third: Check use of which and that  (discussed in the 3rd class) Fourth:  Focus on punctuation and subject/verb/pronoun agreement  (discussed in 1st and… Read more »

One of the skills I focused on this month is how to pick “juicy” quotes to include within an expository essay and how to analyze these quotes. At the bottom of this blog is a handout titled, Text Talker. Some students have a difficult time not only finding supporting evidence but also organizing, analyzing, and… Read more »

Often, I like to use Skill Building Sundays to teach a concept or skill that I do not have time to teach within our limited class time… This past month we have focused on punctuation – conjunction, semi-colon, colon, comma – but we have not focused on the Em Dash.  (Note the previous sentence; this… Read more »

Recently, I received an email chain, containing the humorous homonyms below.  This email reminded me how the SAT rarely tests homonyms, but it often tests polysemy – the capacity of one word to have more than one meaning.  For example, here is a recent PSAT question:   One of the most exhausting of these certifications is… Read more »