📘 ‘Lady Carbury, having finished her third letter, threw herself back in her chair, and for a moment or two closed her eyes, as though about to rest. But she soon remembered that the activity of her life did not admit of such rest. She therefore seized her pen and began scribbling further notes.’ – […]
Lesson #213: On Anthony Trollope (and 3 Easily Mistaken Verb Forms) Read More »
📜 Where true Love burns Desire is Love’s pure flame; It is the reflex of our earthly frame, That takes its meaning from the nobler part, And but translates the language of the heart. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge This very short but thoughtful poem is our text for today’s poetry-based Lesson (you may have noticed
Lesson #204: Considering Coleridge’s poem ‘Desire’ from 3 different perspectives Read More »
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 »
If you have ever read books set in Victorian Britain, you may have noticed that women were generally discouraged from reading any books that might cause them to become intellectual. While novels, magazines, and some plays were considered acceptable for them to read, they were discouraged from reading works of science, philosophy, theology, or the
Perhaps the English grammar tense that learners (and even native speakers) struggle most with is the SUBJUNCTIVE. ✍️ It has various forms that can be used in different situations, as long as those expressions refer to either a demand, a wish, a suggestion or a hypothetical situation (a situation that could happen but hasn’t yet happened). ✍️
Lesson #122: Different Usages of the Subjunctive in George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’ Read More »
Subject pronouns and possessive adjectives – those were just some of the pronouns we began to consider in my last post! 📒 We also looked at a paragraph from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters; in which she used them artfully to describe a tense moment in the novel. As promised, here are my tips on how
Lesson #118: Using Pronouns Correctly to Prevent Repetition in Your Writing (Part 2) Read More »
Do you find it difficult, particularly when writing, to determine when to use English pronouns or the identified subject they are referring to? (Perhaps you can more easily indicate WHO you are talking about through your voice, simply by your body language or an obvious context). As I have mentioned before, writing English is quite
Lesson #118: Using Pronouns Correctly to Prevent Repetition in Your Writing (Part 1) Read More »