A Little Princess is a 1905 classic by British author Frances Hodgson Burnett, who also wrote the famous Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) and The Secret Garden (1911). I found my old copy of it recently, and while reminiscing (remembering with pleasure) how much it meant to me as a child, I saw how Hodgson Burnett’s […]
One of the nicest aspects of preparing these Lessons is that I am always on the look-out for inspiration. In the last few days, I noticed how beautiful the laburnum’s flowers in our garden looked – the laburnum being a tree with drooping branches and yellow blossoms (flowers) that flower in May and June every
📘 ‘Altogether it was a perfect night, such a night as you sometimes get in Southern Africa, and it threw a garment of peace over everybody as the moon threw a garment of silver over everything.’ – H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines (1885) … For many of you, reading adventure stories was an important
📘 ‘He had been most warmly attached to her, and had never seen a woman since whom he thought her equal; but, except from some natural sensation of curiosity, he had no desire of meeting her again. Her power with him was gone for ever.’ – Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818) … Welcome back to our
Lesson #237 (Part 2): ‘To what extent?’ Adverbs that modify Adjectives Read More »
📘 She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing: indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it … No second attachment, the only thoroughly natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste, in the
Lesson #237 (Part 1): ‘To what extent?’ Adverbs that modify Adjectives Read More »
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