Advanced English Language

Lesson #232 (Part 2): Homographs in ‘Bleak House’: English words that are spelled the same but are not related

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 […]

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Lesson #232 (Part 1): Homographs in ‘Bleak House’: English words that are spelled the same but are not related

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

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Lesson #229: Reading for Appreciation: ‘A Psalm of Life’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As you may remember, every second Saturday we take the time to look at a poem from English or American literature. This week I am sharing with you a poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (whose poem, ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’, we looked at in Lesson #187). 🖋️ As I thought about this poem

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Lesson #227 (Part 2): ‘We are going’ cf. ‘We will go’: 2 constructions of the future tense

We continue our Lesson on the differences (and similarities) between the expressions ‘be going to [verb]’ cf. ‘will [verb]’ to talk about the future in English. (If you missed it, we looked primarily at ‘be going to …’ in Part 1 of our Lesson) … 📝 ‘WILL [+ VERB]’ (SIMPLE FUTURE) In Part 1 of

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Lesson #227 (Part 1): ‘We are going’ cf. ‘We will go’: 2 constructions of the future tense

📗 “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

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Lesson #224: Reflecting on Emily Bronte’s Poem ‘Plead for Me’ (including new vocabulary list)

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

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Mini-Lesson Monday, Lesson #222 (Part 2): ‘At Home, In Days Gone By’ – 9 prepositions that express time

📙 ‘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

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Mini-Lesson Monday, Lesson #222 (Part 1): ‘At Home, In Days Gone By’ – 9 prepositions that express time

📙 ‘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

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Lesson #218: Learning From A Letter – Charlotte Bronte’s words to her Aunt

Since yesterday (April 21st) was the 205th anniversary of Charlotte Bronte’s birth, I thought it would be nice to have a look at some of the personal letters that she wrote during her lifetime. 📚 Most people remember her for her classic Jane Eyre (1847) or even Villette (1853), both of which considered what life

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Mini-Lesson Monday, Lesson #217 (Part 2): ‘I want an appropriate simile’: Popular Similes English Speakers Use

📗 “I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.” “It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do— for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and

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Mini-Lesson Monday, Lesson #217 (Part 1): ‘I want an appropriate simile’: Popular Similes English Speakers Use

📗 Thorpe told her it would be in vain to go after the Tilneys; they were turning the corner into Brock Street, when he had overtaken them, and were at home by this time. “Then I will go after them,” said Catherine; “wherever they are I will go after them. It does not signify talking.

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