Spoken English

Lesson #256: ‘They Were All Wild To See Lyme’ (Austen’s ‘Persuasion’): Using ‘All’, ‘Both’, ‘Either’, ‘None’ Correctly

📘 ‘The young people were all wild to see Lyme … and to Lyme they were to go – Charles, Mary, Anne, Henrietta, Louisa, and Captain Wentworth.’ – Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818) … I was re-listening to the audiobook version of one of my favourite Austen novels – Persuasion – when this sentence inspired me […]

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Lesson #254: ‘I’ve learned a new and valuable lesson today’ – 7 Study Insights from ‘Anne Of Green Gables’

📗 “Marilla, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” “I’ll warrant you’ll make plenty in it,” said Marilla. “I never saw your beat for making mistakes, Anne.” “Yes, and well I know it,” admitted Anne mournfully. “But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about

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Lesson #252: ‘The best master in the world’: Considering different learning & teaching methods through Dickens’ ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’

📙 … For Mark had some practical knowledge of such matters, and Martin learned of him; whereas the other settlers who remained upon the putrid swamp (a mere handful, and those withered by disease), appeared to have wandered there with the idea that husbandry was the natural gift of all mankind. They helped each other

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Lesson #243: Observations on How Austen Reported Speech (Free Indirect Speech in ‘Emma’)

📗 “You had better explore to Donwell,” replied Mr. Knightley. “That may be done without horses. Come, and eat my strawberries. They are ripening fast … ” [Mrs Elton replied]: “It is to be a morning scheme, you know, Knightley; quite a simple thing. I shall wear a large bonnet, and bring one of my

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Lesson #241: ‘Each other’ vs ‘one another’ through George Eliot’s ‘Daniel Deronda’

📗 Our novel today is George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876), which tells the story of two characters on a quest to find out their meaning in life and their place in the community they live in. While each of them has personal questions and struggles to face, sometimes they are able to share those experiences

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Lesson #240 (Part 2): How to fix the most common punctuation mistake in English

📙 Grace’s disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at deficiencies in Winterborne’s menage, was so uniform and persistent that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies than he was aware of … ‘… It reminds me so pleasantly that everything here in dear old Hintock is just as it used

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Lesson #240 (Part 1): How to fix the most common punctuation mistake in English

As a proofreader and a tutor, the most common mistake I see on a daily basis is the misappropriation (placing in the wrong places) of apostrophes (‘) in English. Even native English speakers make this mistake from time to time! If you have been reading my Lessons for a while, you may remember that I

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Lesson #238: The differences between Sometimes vs Some Time, Anytime vs Any Time, Overtime vs Over Time

📘 ‘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

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Lesson #237 (Part 2): ‘To what extent?’ Adverbs that modify Adjectives

📘 ‘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

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Lesson #237 (Part 1): ‘To what extent?’ Adverbs that modify Adjectives

📘 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

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Lesson #236: Three Ways To Use ‘Been’, The Past Participle Of ‘To Be’

📙 “My dear Miss Catherine,” I began, too vividly impressed by her recent kindness to break into a scold, “where have you been riding out at this hour? And why should you try to deceive me by telling a tale? Where have you been? Speak!” – Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847) … You may remember

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Lesson #235 (Part 2): Being or Been? What you need to know about the present participle of ‘To Be’

📙 ‘“… 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

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