📘 I really do not know whether I felt that I did this for Estella’s sake, or whether I was glad to transfer to the man in whose preservation I was so much concerned some rays of the romantic interest that had so long surrounded me. Perhaps the latter possibility may be the nearer to […]
📘 No; I should not have minded that, if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little
We are outlining the usages and differences between the conjunctions ‘if’ and ‘when’ in today’s Lesson, with the help of Anna Sewell’s influential Black Beauty. Not only did Sewell espouse (promoted) animal welfare through it, but the public’s response to it helped to introduce new anti-cruelty legislation in Britain and the U.S.A. – as such,
📗 ‘When it was hot we used to stand by the pond in the shade of the trees, and when it was cold we had a nice warm shed near the grove.’ – Anna Sewell, Black Beauty (1877) … ‘If’ and ‘when’ are two small conjunctions describing time that are often confusing for English language
📜 I am sharing a poem today that I particularly like: ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). Yeats’ poem rings a chord in these days when we cannot readily travel but can only dream of places of tranquil beauty. In English, we often speak of such places as ‘oases’
Lesson #157: An Oasis to Dream About: Yeats’ ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ Read More »
🪔 “Yesterday was a quiet day, spent in teaching, sewing, and writing in my little room, which is very cosy, with a light and fire …”– Louisa May Alcott, Good Wives (1869) Here we continue our lesson by reviewing seven sets of key verb tenses and time words that often go together. In Part 1 of this lesson, we reviewed
🪔 “I’m the man of the family now papa is away, and I shall provide the slippers, for he told me to take special care of mother while he was gone.” – Louisa May Alcott, Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy (1868) As yet another month comes to an end, I have been thinking about
🍁 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
‘And unrecorded left through many an Age, Worthy t’ have not remain’d so long unsung …’ – John Milton, ‘Paradise Regained’ (1671) These lines come from a poem – ‘Paradise Regained’ – which I first read as a teenager and whose opening section I copied into the notebook featured in the photograph above. … You may have seen in an English lesson
Lesson #146: Do We Ever Use Double Negatives In English? Read More »
In the first part of this lesson (see previous post), we talked about small changes you can introduce in your writing that make a huge difference in how others read and understand it. After all your effort writing something, the last thing you want is for someone to skim or even ignore all you had
I am dedicating today’s lesson to three important points that I often find missing in work that I proofread. These three points might seem obvious or too minute to make a difference, but trust me, they will help to clarify your writing greatly. Clear writing is always the first step towards great writing. … 📝
📘 ‘Why do you say “poor Rosamond”?’ said Mrs Plymdale, a round-eyed sharp little woman, like a tame falcon. – George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871) As observed in our last lesson post (Part 1 of this lesson, ‘American vs British Quotation Mark Punctuation’), there are 4 main rules on how to punctuate quotations in English. Today we will