English Writing

Lesson #119: Teatime Literary Reflections (and the Power of Good Storytelling) (Part 2)

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As promised, here are some observations on the passage from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, as referenced in the previous post: 🖋️ Gaskell’s approach here is more conversational than the style of other classic novels. This is because the story is told by one of the characters in the book.  🖋️ Gaskell uses the word ‘very’ several times […]

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Lesson #119: Teatime Literary Reflections (and the Power of Good Storytelling) (Part 1)

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Teatime! A light dinner eaten in the late afternoon or evening that is still popular in Britain and Ireland.  I’m at home alone this evening, so I decided to serve my tea and scone on my Grandmother’s china, an heirloom passed down through the years. However, teatime is traditionally a time for the family (and

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Lesson #118: Using Pronouns Correctly to Prevent Repetition in Your Writing (Part 2)

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Subject pronouns and possessive adjectives – those were just some of the pronouns we began to consider in my last post! 📒 We also looked at a paragraph from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters; in which she used them artfully to describe a tense moment in the novel. As promised, here are my tips on how

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Lesson #118: Using Pronouns Correctly to Prevent Repetition in Your Writing (Part 1)

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Do you find it difficult, particularly when writing, to determine when to use English pronouns or the identified subject they are referring to? (Perhaps you can more easily indicate WHO you are talking about through your voice, simply by your body language or an obvious context).  As I have mentioned before, writing English is quite

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Lesson #114: Mini-lesson Monday (Part 2): Charles Dickens and How Vocabulary ‘Groups’ Create a Strong Atmosphere in Your Writing

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Mini-lesson Monday, Part 2: 2) While having the definitions of difficult vocabulary does help us to understand the passage, the most important thing when reading this paragraph from the opening pages of Bleak House ( as seen in the previous post) is to focus on the repetitive word ‘FOG’ particularly in the context of London’s setting, establishes

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Lesson #114: Mini-lesson Monday (Part 1): Charles Dickens and How Vocabulary ‘Groups’ Create a Strong Atmosphere in Your Writing

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Another Monday, another mini-lesson (in 2 posts; this is part 1): My inspiration today comes from Charles Dickens, one of the most popular authors in the English language. Bleak House (1853) is a favourite of mine, a long, two-volume novel that interweaves two narrative voices in an intriguing story. I will quote from its opening pages:

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Lesson #113: Searching for the Best Words to Describe the Small Things in Life

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This morning, we picked some flowers from our garden to brighten the kitchen. I think one of them is a carnation, the other a dianthus, but I am open to correction! It brought to mind a passage in one of my favourite books, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1854): ‘… the sun-flower, shining fair,      Ray

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Lesson #112: Can Handwriting Actually Help You with Your English?

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Recently, I listened to a thought-provoking podcast featuring Italian educator Lucrezia Oddone, where she discussed the importance of HANDWRITING texts that you would like to memorise. She says that when you write a text by hand, you are fully present and paying attention to every word you write. Compared to typing alone, handwriting is a

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Lesson #110: Being Focused and Intentional about Reading to Improve Ourselves

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INTERMEDIATE LEVEL Before the global pandemic, I had very different plans for Autumn 2020. As a matter of fact, this evening, I had planned to meet my fellow students and had had a special dinner that celebrated the beginning of a new academic year. (Have you noticed the past perfect tense in those sentences?) Being

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Lesson #109: Steps for Enriching Your Writing with the Right Vocabulary

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INTERMEDIATE LEVEL Seeing this rose in my garden reminds me of the process of learning and improving our competence in any language. We learn one language word by word, step by step, layer by layer, just like these rose petals overlay each other. Another point of similarity: as these petals are relatively small, the slow

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Lesson #107: Creating Drama with Description: A Look at Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (Part 2)

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ADVANCED LEVEL For this post, I will focus on the second half of the long sentence found in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 9: 📘 ‘…and towards one of these hills did Marianne and Margaret one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to

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Lesson #107: Creating Drama with Description: A Look at Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (Part 1)

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ADVANCED LEVEL When you live in the countryside, you have a tendency to pay attention to the weather. Your mood and plans for the day can be affected by it. Today, my morning walk was put on hold (suspended) because of the sporadic (sudden, unpredictable) showers. A passage in Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense

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