📙 ‘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 […]
📙 ‘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
🥀 ‘Does it not make you think of Cowper? “Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.”‘ – Fanny Price in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park Austen fans will be interested to know that William Cowper (1731-1800) was her favourite poet, as well as her contemporary. Cowper (pronounced COO-per) was known not only for his
Lesson #199: Observing changes in English words over time, through Cowper’s ‘The Rose’ Read More »
🍁 Since autumn (or fall, as it is known in Canada and the USA) is my favourite season of the year, I have included several poems and literary passages in recent lessons on this topic. 🍂 I have yet another poem in autumn to share, one by the Welsh poet R. S. Thomas (1913-2000) called ‘A
In the previous post, we defined gerunds and participles in English grammar and discussed the differences between them. We also read two passages from Hard Times (1854) by Charles Dickens in order to find out which ones contain gerunds or participles. Do you have confidence in your ability to identify gerunds from present participles when
For many students, one tricky point in English grammar is understanding the distinction between gerunds and participles. How do you find them? Are they understandable? If not, that’s fine! I will offer a brief explanation and a couple of illustrations from Charles Dickens’ classic, Hard Times. Firstly, a participle is a word that derives from a verb and can end with
Mini-lesson Monday (Part 2): ✨This passage by Frances Hodgson Burnett is noteworthy for how simply yet effectively it describes ACTIVITY: (both physical movement and internal thoughts). It does this in two ways: ✒️ Firstly, by using SHORT SENTENCES that express some kind of tension and transformation. ✒️ Secondly, by including A SINGLE ADVERB in the whole
Mini-lesson Monday (Part 1): I still have some childhood favourites on my bookshelf – books that I read and dreamt about so often as a young girl. One of those was Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess (1905), which I am looking forward to sharing with you today (at least a small part of it)! Today I’d
As mentioned in the previous post, where I quoted from Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), here is a short list of vocabulary to help with understanding the same passage. 🍃A quick question: how did you find the text? Was it challenging in terms of vocabulary? Did you understand most of it? ✨Did you enjoy his
In my previous post, I offered a few pointers to help English students get started with classic literature. Can I recommend some good classics to start with? Of course! When I conducted a bookshelf search, I immediately came across Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), one of Thomas Hardy’s early works and a good choice for most
Lesson #117: Starting to Read English Classics? (Part 1) Read More »
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL Sharing a short poem that I memorised in my childhood: O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. – William Blake, ‘The Sick Rose’ (1794) Have you
Lesson #108: Why Reading Classic Poetry is Important: Blake’s ‘The Sick Rose’ Read More »
INTERMEDIATE LEVEL I was going through some of my handwritten notes on the origin of the English proverb, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ ✍️ This is a common saying that stresses the importance of eating fruit regularly, especially apples. It seems that the saying originated from Pembrokeshire, a region known for its
Lesson #103: ‘An apple a day …’ An English Idiom and its Origin Read More »