Title – Writing and Grammar Unit – Lesson 2

By – John Foley

Primary Subject – Language Arts

Grade Level – 9-12

Introduction



Lesson 1:   Writing by Ear



Lesson 2:   Nouns

(below)


Lesson 3:   Active and Passive Verbs



Lesson 4:   Modify in Moderation



Lesson 5:   Coordinating Conjunctions



Lesson 6:   Simple Sentences



Lesson 7:   Compound and Complex Sentences



Lesson 8:   Periods and Commas



Lesson 9:   Logic and Questions



Lesson 10: Interjections and Exclamation Points



Study Guide



Writing and Grammar Test

A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing or idea. Read the following paragraph and underline all the nouns. Then, count all the words in the paragraph, and all the nouns. Divide the number of nouns by the total number of words. This yields a percentage. What does the percentage of nouns in this paragraph – typical in length, but exquisite in form – tell you about nouns?


A solitary ant, afield, cannot be considered to have much of anything on his mind; indeed, with only a few neurons strung together by fibers, he can’t be imagined to have a mind at all, much less a thought. He is more like a ganglion on legs. Four ants together, or ten, encircling a dead moth on the path, begin to look more like an idea. They fumble and shove, gradually moving the food toward the Hill, but as though by blind chance. It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.


–Lewis Thomas

Total words____________

Total nouns____________

Nouns/Total___________%

Comment on the percentage – what does it mean? Also, why is this excerpt from

Lives of the Cell

considered excellent writing?

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John Foley

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