📙 ‘“… Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again …”’ – Cathy Earnshaw in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) In this second Part of our Lesson […]
📙 ‘Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. “Wuthering” being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather.’ – Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847) Have you ever been confused about the differences between ‘being’ and ‘been’ in English? 🤔 ✍️ Both of these
To see her is a Picture – To hear her is a Tune – To know her an Intemperance As innocent as June – To know her not – Affliction – To own her for a Friend A warmth as near as if the Sun Were shining in your Hand. – Emily Dickinson, The Complete
📗 ‘It was in this scene of strife and bloodshed that the incidents we shall attempt to relate occurred, during the third year of the war which England and France last waged for the possession of a country that neither was destined to retain.’ – James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative
Welcome to Part 2 of our Lesson on homographs! In Part 1 we already looked at what homographs mean (quick reminder: they are words that are spelled the same but have different meanings and often different pronunciations). We also covered some key homographs in the English language, starting with those word pairs that share the
How familiar are you with homographs? 🤔 You might not recognise at first what a homograph means, but you have probably been using them (or at least noticing them) without even realising it! Homographs are basically words that are spelled the same but have different meanings. ✍️ Sometimes these word pairs are related because they
Earlier this week we delved into (dived into) the ‘nuts and bolts‘ (an expression that means ‘everything relating to’) of direct and indirect speech. But of course, it takes time and space to cover such a large topic, and I noticed that some students had questions about the difference in tenses used in retelling indirect
Lesson #231: How two different tenses can be used together correctly in reported speech Read More »
This Lesson post builds on what was covered in Part 1, so if you missed it why not quickly review our basic outline of ✏️ 1) what direct and indirect speeches are, ✏️ 2) the main differences between them, and ✏️ 3) how to correctly use the verbs ‘to say’ and ‘to tell’ in those
For the last couple of years, I have been reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch throughout May and June. It has 8 books (or sections) and so I read one book per week, finishing one of the longest books in just 8 weeks! 📆 It is a marvellous work, and has in fact been described as ‘one
As you may remember, every second Saturday we take the time to look at a poem from English or American literature. This week I am sharing with you a poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (whose poem, ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’, we looked at in Lesson #187). 🖋️ As I thought about this poem
Lesson #229: Reading for Appreciation: ‘A Psalm of Life’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Read More »
I recently rediscovered a book on our shelves that my mother bought when we were children, and which I had been intending to read many times – only beginning now at last! 🗝️ 📗 This book, Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies (1863), is about a chimney-sweep, that is, a little child who used to sweep
We continue our Lesson on the differences (and similarities) between the expressions ‘be going to [verb]’ cf. ‘will [verb]’ to talk about the future in English. (If you missed it, we looked primarily at ‘be going to …’ in Part 1 of our Lesson) … 📝 ‘WILL [+ VERB]’ (SIMPLE FUTURE) In Part 1 of