weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
One of the writing tasks I like to give to my students—new ones in particular—is to write about their favourite films or TV series. It’s a nice way to get to know them better, find out what sort of things they are interested in, and perhaps find some commonalities. It’s a very versatile and vocabulary-rich …
At the very beginning of spring, in this post I’d like to share with you a poem by Thomas Nashe, a prominent English poet and playwright of the Elizabethan era. Titled ‘Spring, the sweet spring’ after its first and final lines, the poem celebrates the loveliness and joyful nature of the season. It actually comes …
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Dear friends and followers of the Grammaticus blog, I am happy to share with you the second title in the series of ebooks primarily designed for English language learners. After the successful launch of Hugh Walpole’s short story The Snow, this time you can enjoy a lovely piece of 19th century writing by the inimitable …
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Annette Wynne was an early 20th century American writer of children’s poems. Her debut collection ‘For Days and Days: A Year-Round Treasury of Child Verse’ came out in 1919, followed by ‘Treasure Things’ in 1922. The short poem featured in this post is called ‘To an Old Tree’. It’s a lovely ode to the stoic …
In this post I will present the latest addition to my Latin library, which is a single-volume edition of the 1962 Diurnale Romanum breviary. The post can be read as an addendum to ‘Learn Latin using contemporary resources’ or as a sample review related to ‘Let’s talk about books and literature’ article found elsewhere on …
Edward Thomas was a British poet, nature writer and literary critic. Born in London in 1878, he was educated at Oxford, and first started his writing career as a book reviewer and prose writer; he turned to poetry much later in life, greatly encouraged by one of his closest friends, the famous American poet Robert …
Please email me for further information. To reach the post office, walk farther down the street. Further, farther… What’s the difference? Is it just two different spellings of the same word? The answer is yes—and no. Please read on for some explanation. Both ‘further’ and ‘farther’ are irregular comparative forms of the same adjective (and …
Charles Turner Dazey was an American writer and playwright born in Lima, Illinois, in 1855. He wrote a number of successful plays, also leaving a mark in the early film history as a writer of numerous of silent films. He died in Quincy in 1938; sadly, his works quickly became forgotten. Charles T. Dazey I …
Randomly picked off a library book shelf the other day, Truman Capote's last work, Answered Prayers (posthumously published in 1986), was a first for me. Although I've been intrigued for a long time, I kept avoiding Capote, confident that I'd dislike his writing as much as I dislike what I'd known were his usual themes: …
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The Weekend Listener is an eclectic list of noteworthy podcasts and radio recordings, old and new, curated for your listening pleasure. For more listening tips please search the website for previous instalments. LANGUAGE How language influences identity and culture Kirk Gallardo is a linguist and the Education Interpretation Manager at the Anchorage Museum. In this …
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