📗 “We will go—you and I alone, Caroline—to that wood …” “We are going to see Miss Shirley Keeldar.” – Charlotte Bronte, Shirley (1849) … 🔎 In what ways is the future tense in these two sentences different? This is a question that baffles many students – understandably, since the differences are very subtle! This […]
Have you ever been reading aloud and come across a word you don’t know how to pronounce? 🤔 I can imagine that this happens to a good many students who are studying English. English pronunciation can be difficult to predict, partly because English words are derived from (they come from) many other languages with different
Lesson #226: Two simple rules to help pronounce words beginning with ‘c’ Read More »
Welcome to Part 2 of this Lesson, where we have been looking at expressions of place and movement in English (mostly adverbs which English speakers use on a daily basis). … 📝 #15 DOWN THE [PATH, ROAD, WALK, STREET, ETC] 📘 ‘[Fanny] was again roused from disagreeable musings by sudden footsteps: somebody was coming at
For a couple of years now, I have been re-reading Mansfield Park (one of my favourite novels) on my birthday. I am fond of this book for many reasons, one being that it emphasises the importance of making space in our lives for quietness, thoughtfulness, and real gratitude. 🌼 A walk in the woods with
If you have been reading these Lesson posts for some time, you may remember how much I like Emily Bronte’s poetry. She was a poet I discovered only in the last few years, and I wonder how I could have been reading literature for so long and yet not have read her poetry before! I
📗 “I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!” “That’s the effect of living backwards,” the Queen said kindly: “it always makes one a little giddy at first—” “Living backwards!” Alice repeated in great astonishment. “I never heard of such a thing!” – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871) … Have you ever read
Lesson #223: Avoiding confusion in your writing: 3 Punctuation Tips Read More »
📙 ‘There was all the more time for me to hear old-world stories from Miss Pole, while she sat knitting, and I making my father’s shirts.’ – Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (1853) … ✏️ (If you missed the first part of this Lesson on prepositions of time, you can find it here). ✏️ … 📝 #5
📙 ‘Miss Matty and I quietly decided that we would have a previous engagement at home: it was the evening on which Miss Matty usually made candle-lighters of all the notes and letters of the week; for on Mondays her accounts were always made straight— not a penny owing from the week before; so, by
💮 Spring is such a beautiful season! A few evenings ago, as I was walking in the garden, I saw the sunlight touching these blueberry flowers and had to stop to appreciate the beauty of the moment. I took a photograph of them of course, but nothing compares with the experience of seeing flowers like
Lesson #221: How and When To Use Paragraph Breaks in Writing Read More »
📘 I really do not know whether I felt that I did this for Estella’s sake, or whether I was glad to transfer to the man in whose preservation I was so much concerned some rays of the romantic interest that had so long surrounded me. Perhaps the latter possibility may be the nearer to
📘 No; I should not have minded that, if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little
‘Annabel Lee’ (1849) It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. .. I was a child and she was a
Lesson #219: ‘Annabel Lee’: Edgar Allan Poe’s Melodious and Melodramatic Poem Read More »