I havenโt blogged much about the history of the English language, but the arrival of summer is just begging for a quick introduction to something called Middle English. It's a form of English spoken in the Middle Ages, between the 11th and the 16th century. During that period, Old English underwent massive changes that eventually …
Arthur Conan Doyle, a spiritualist
To most readers, the name of Arthur Conan Doyle will forever be connected with the worldโs 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 …
Correlative conjunctions in English
[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 …
Prepositional phrases with ‘time’
Mark arrived on time. Or was it in time? At time??? The use of prepositions in English can be quite confusing to native speakers of other languages. Prepositional phrases can be even trickier because they seem to have a special logic of their own; one needs to learn them one at a time, understanding the …
