đł I am sharing a poem with you today from my 110-year-old volume of John Greenleaf Whittier’s poems (published in 1894 and this edition dating from 1911)! Anyone who knows me knows of my love of books, and especially any old copies I can find. What makes the acquisition (the fact of owning or getting) […]
Lesson #193: ‘A Song of Harvest’: Some Observations on Whittier’s Poem Read More »
âWhoâ, âhowâ, âwhichâ, âwhyâ, âwhenâ, âwhereâ â these are often called question words or interrogative pronouns. But they are also relative pronouns. These two different functions sometimes lead to common mistakes, especially in relation to where they are placed in a sentenceâs word order. In this Lesson we will look at the functions of both
Lesson #192: Inversions of Word Order When Using Interrogative and Relative Pronouns Read More »
If you have ever heard someone mention âLilliputâ or âBrobdingnagâ, you have heard a reference to one very early English classic, Jonathan Swiftâs Gulliverâs Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World (1726). đ It is a fantasy story of a surgeon and captain called Lemuel Gulliver who is shipwrecked on islands of tiny people
Today’s Lesson draws on one of Sir Walter Scott’s most beloved works, the medieval romance Ivanhoe (1819). Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish novelist who both lived concurrently (at the same time) with Jane Austen, and also admired her writing (especially Pride and Prejudice, which we enjoyed yesterday). In his own right, Scott was one
Lesson #186: Advanced Reading Comprehension from Scott’s ‘Ivanhoe’ Read More »
đ “But it is not merely this affair,” she continued, “on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what
When I choose a novel to read, I tend to like books that have social morality or human motivation as some of their themes or topics. Anthony Trollope’s book, The Warden (1855), is one such book. It is the first of his collection of a series of novels he wrote called the ‘Chronicles of Barsetshire’. Anthony Trollope
đ ‘He and his family had been weary when they arrived the night before, and they had observed but little of the place; so that he now beheld it as a new thing.’ – Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) … Although the principle of this lesson is a simple one, namely: âïž RULE: A singular
Lesson #179: Agreement Between Subject and Verb Form – 7 Rules to Avoid Common Mistakes Read More »
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: đȘ c. 500-1150 AD: Old English This is made of the dialects of Anglo-Saxon tribes, with a very few words
Lesson #177: Appreciating a Medieval English Poem: William Langland’s ‘Piers Plowman’ Read More »
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
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
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 â Could only follow with the eye That joyous crowd at the Piper’s back.  – Robert Browning, ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ (1842) … Once
Lesson #175: Browning’s ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ and the Magic of Prefixes Read More »
đ 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