English language learning tips

Lesson #204: Considering Coleridge’s poem ‘Desire’ from 3 different perspectives

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📜 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 […]

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Mini-Lesson Monday, Lesson #200 (Part 2): Different Ways of Seeing: Wordsworth’s ‘The Daffodils’

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đŸŒŒI wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils 
 – William Wordsworth, ‘The Daffodils’ (1807) đŸŒŒ This is Part 2 of our Lesson on ‘Different Ways of Seeing’: having read Wordsworth’s poem in Part 1, we

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Mini-Lesson Monday, Lesson #200 (Part 1): Different Ways of Seeing: Wordsworth’s ‘The Daffodils’

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đŸ”ïž The first of March – also known as ‘St David’s Day’, Wales’ national day, when the Welsh like to wear small daffodils (or leeks) as a national symbol. That, together with our own daffodils, crocuses, and snowdrops has brought to mind one of the most famous poems in the English language, William Wordsworth’s ‘The

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Lesson #197: Alice’s Adventures With Homographs and Homophones (Words That Are Spelled Or Sound The Same)

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📗 “Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) One of the most famous children’s books in the word is certainly Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), which has been translated into at least 174 since it was first published over

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Lesson #196: ‘As If’ vs ‘As Though’ through Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’

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📙 ‘As though a rose should shut And be a bud again.’ – Thomas Hardy, Far From The Madding Crowd (1874) đŸ„€ … If you have been around native English speakers enjoying a casual conversation, you are likely to have heard them use the word ‘like’ often when making a comparison of some kind. ✒

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Mini-Lesson Monday, Lesson #194 (Part 2): ‘Must’, ‘Have To/Have Got To, ‘Should’, And ‘Ought To’: Modal Verb Forms That Express Obligation

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📗 ‘I probably never should have loved him, and if I loved him first, and then made the discovery, I fear I should have thought it my duty not to have married him.’ – Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall We will continue our Lesson on ‘modal verb forms that express obligation’ here. We

Mini-Lesson Monday, Lesson #194 (Part 2): ‘Must’, ‘Have To/Have Got To, ‘Should’, And ‘Ought To’: Modal Verb Forms That Express Obligation Read More »

Mini-Lesson Monday, Lesson #194 (Part 1): ‘Must’, ‘Have To/Have Got To, ‘Should’, And ‘Ought To’: Modal Verb Forms That Express Obligation

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📗 ‘You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.’ – Anne BrontĂ«, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Since modal verbs (also known as auxiliary or helping verbs) are so important in English, we are going to look at four forms that are sometimes problematic for English learners of all levels. These are

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Lesson #193: ‘A Song of Harvest’: Some Observations on Whittier’s Poem

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🌳 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)

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Lesson #191: Describing Contrast with Transition Words ‘Although’, ‘Though’, and ‘Even Though’

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If you have ever heard someone mention ‘Lilliput’ or ‘Brobdingnag’, you have heard a reference to one very early English classic, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World (1726). 📗 It is a fantasy story of a surgeon and captain called Lemuel Gulliver who is shipwrecked on islands of tiny people

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Lesson #190: Understanding the Difference between ‘Beside’ vs ‘Besides’

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📙 “And one day, I remember, I met Miss Matty in the lane that leads to Combehurst; she was walking on the footpath, which, you know, is raised a good way above the road, and a gentleman rode beside her, and was talking to her, and she was looking down at some primroses she had

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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 #145: A Lesson In ‘Stitch-By-Stitch’ Perseverance, From Anne Bronte’s ‘Agnes Grey’

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There’s a popular idiom in English: ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ In other words, the best way to tackle a large task is to take small, consistent steps to complete it day by day. đŸ§” It so happens that these days I am trying to complete a small cross-stitch design for a friend. It is

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