weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
To most readers, the name of Arthur Conan Doyle will forever be connected with the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, and his trusted friend Dr Watson. The celebrated writer of detective stories based his whole literary career on extolling the virtues of science, reason and logical thinking, which leaves many surprised to learn that …
[This post has been written with ESL/EFL students in mind, CEFR level B1 and above.] Correlative conjunctions are used to join words, phrases or clauses within a sentence. They always come in pairs, which is where learners sometimes make mistakes. In languages such as the South Slavic ones (which most of my students speak as …
[This post has been written with ESL/EFL students in mind, levels B2/C1. Please scroll down for the accompanying exercises and additional resources.] Each year, April 22 is marked as Earth Day. First introduced in 1970, it’s an international event aimed at raising awareness of environmental concerns. It originated in the eco-activism of the 1960s, a …
Whenever the subject of hobbies comes up, most of my students promptly say they don’t have any. Obviously, I don't believe that for a second, but I understand why such a response: it isn’t always easy to describe one’s hobby. And if the subject comes up unexpectedly in a speaking exercise, students might not even …
Continue reading "How to talk about hobbies and free time activities"
During many years of teaching English, one thing I’ve consistently used with my students have been graded readers (you can see the ones I'm currently using in the cover photo at the top). There are different types of those - some are designed for native speaker children - but the ones I’ll be discussing here …
Continue reading "Graded readers: what are they and how to use them"
A young woman is brutally attacked in her rural Indiana home and almost left for dead. Her memory is patchy, evidence inconclusive, yet in court she insists that it was her extremely jealous husband who did the deed; of that she is absolutely certain. On the basis of her testimony, he gets convicted and ends …
In this post we’ll get to learn a couple of key words connected with the major Christian holiday of Easter, as well as the days preceding it. Some of them have a really interesting origin, so we’ll also take a quick look at their etymology and cultural background. Chronologically, the first of these days is …
A few years ago two articles circulated among my friends and historical role-play buffs, both about a couple who chose to live like it was the late 1800s, full-time. The original article on Vox was written by Sarah A. Chrisman, one of the people involved, in which she explained why she and her husband chose …
In an earlier post, I wrote about the etymology of the English words for the days of the week. As we saw there, those words have their origin (for the most part) in the names of some of the main deities of the Germanic pantheon. In this post we’ll look at the names of the …
Continue reading "Modern English names for the months of the year – 100% Latin!"
In an earlier post, I’ve given a few tips on how you can use podcasts to improve your English listening skills (you can read it here; also available in Serbian here). This article is for those who have neither the time nor the patience to listen to hour-long programmes, but would like quick and more …
Continue reading "Listening tips: five-minute practice using news podcasts"
grammaticus 