Reading Classic Literature

Lesson #177: Appreciating a Medieval English Poem: William Langland’s ‘Piers Plowman’

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Every single language that is spoken today has undergone (gone through) many changes over the years, over centuries. This is also true of English, which could be described as having several phases or historical stages of development: đŸȘ” c. 500-1150 AD: Old English  This is made of the dialects of Anglo-Saxon tribes, with a very few words […]

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Mini-Lesson Monday: Lesson #176 (Part 2): ‘All the Mole’s lively language …’: Distinguishing Between Formal and Informal Registers in English

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In the last part of this lesson (see here), we covered the distinctive traits of the formal and informal registers in the English language. I recommend that you check this Part 1 first before reading this, since what we are going to addressed here builds on what was covered before! Through the help of Kenneth

Mini-Lesson Monday: Lesson #176 (Part 2): ‘All the Mole’s lively language …’: Distinguishing Between Formal and Informal Registers in English Read More »

Mini-Lesson Monday: Lesson #176 (Part 1): ‘All the Mole’s lively language …’: Distinguishing Between Formal and Informal Registers in English

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Another childhood favourite (I seem to be sharing a lot of these lately!) is today’s classic, The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame, a Scottish writer at the turn of the twentieth century. His children’s classic is a story about four animals with human characteristics and personalities (a kind of writing called anthropomorphism, when an animal or

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Lesson #175: Browning’s ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ and the Magic of Prefixes

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The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood  As if they were changed into blocks of wood,  Unable to move a step, or cry  To the children merrily skipping by —  Could only follow with the eye  That joyous crowd at the Piper’s back.   – Robert Browning, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ (1842) …  Once

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Lesson #174: Enriching Your Vocabulary With Synonyms: Reading from Radcliffe’s ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’

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📚 If you are an intermediate or advanced level English language student, you have almost certainly been told that you should read more in English if you want to improve your command of the language. One of the reasons this rings true is that reading (especially literature) exposes us to new or choice words that

Lesson #174: Enriching Your Vocabulary With Synonyms: Reading from Radcliffe’s ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ Read More »

Lesson #173: The Passive Voice in Gaskell’s ‘Cousin Phillis’

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📗 Early as it was, every one had breakfasted, and my basin of bread and milk was put on the oven-top to await my coming down. Every one was gone about their work. The first to come into the house-place was Phillis with a basket of eggs. Faithful to my resolution, I asked – ‘What are those?’ She looked at me

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Lesson #171: Words and Phrases that Indicate Time Sequences, through Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’

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đŸïž Robinson Crusoe (1719) has been widely acknowledged as the first novel ever written in English. Many of us, whether or not we grew up in an English-speaking culture, are long familiar with the storyline of Robinson Crusoe – an Englishman who gets shipwrecked (the ship is sunk by a storm at sea) and ends up

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Mini-Lesson Monday: Lesson #170 (Part 2): Virginia Woolf’s ‘Moments of Being’ – Modal Verbs to Express Regrets for the Past and Hopes for the Future

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In this second part of our lesson on modal verb forms ‘should/should have’, ‘could/could have’, and ‘would/would have’ to express past regrets or desires for the future, we will be focusing mainly on the differences between ‘could/could have’ and ‘would/would have’. 👉 If you would like to review our analysis of ‘should/should have’, you can find

Mini-Lesson Monday: Lesson #170 (Part 2): Virginia Woolf’s ‘Moments of Being’ – Modal Verbs to Express Regrets for the Past and Hopes for the Future Read More »

Mini-Lesson Monday: Lesson #170 (Part 1): Virginia Woolf’s ‘Moments of Being’ – Modal Verbs to Express Regrets for the Past and Hopes for the Future

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📜 Here I come to one of the memoir writer’s difficulties– one of the reasons why, though I read so many, so many are failures. They leave out the person to whom things happened. The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being. So they say: “This is what happened”; but

Mini-Lesson Monday: Lesson #170 (Part 1): Virginia Woolf’s ‘Moments of Being’ – Modal Verbs to Express Regrets for the Past and Hopes for the Future Read More »

Lesson #169: ‘For Auld Lang Syne’: An Appreciation of Robert Burns’ Famous Song

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Another poet for another Saturday post! As we are drawing close to Robert Burns’ Day, a celebration of Scotland’s poet around January 25th, the time is right to take a look at some of his most famous lines. đŸŽó §ó ąó łó Łó Žó ż And our family thimbles (small caps to protect the thumb from being pricked by a needle while

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Lesson #168: 3 Important Irregular Verb Forms in Dickens’ ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’

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Many English language students struggle with memorising the many different verb forms we have in our language. It can be difficult, especially when they are studied out of context.  So in today’s lesson, I hope to share 3 essential verb forms that are not only commonly used on a daily basis by native English speakers, but

Lesson #168: 3 Important Irregular Verb Forms in Dickens’ ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’ Read More »

Lesson #167: Portrayals of Scotland in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic ‘Kidnapped’ (Reading Comprehension Exercise)

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📗 ‘O!’ says I, willing to give him a little lesson, ‘I have no fear of the justice of my country.’ ‘As if this was your country!’ said he. ‘Or as if ye would be tried here, in a country of Stewarts!’ ‘It’s all Scotland,’ said I. – Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped (1886) … We are approaching

Lesson #167: Portrayals of Scotland in Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic ‘Kidnapped’ (Reading Comprehension Exercise) Read More »