weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
This vocabulary post is primarily intended for English language learners at B1 level (pre-intermediate). Do you like drinking tea? What's your favourite blend? Do you put any sugar or milk in it? To help you talk about tea in English, in this post I’m going to present some key vocabulary that you can use. MAKING …
A portmanteau (click here for pronunciation) is an old-fashioned type of luggage—a large travelling bag typically made of leather, opening into two equal parts. Thanks to the writer Lewis Caroll, the term has come to refer to a curious feature of language, where elements of two or more words are combined to create a new …
Originally published in 1846, Life is a three-stanza poem by the eldest of the famous Brontë sisters, Charlotte. It appeared in their first, self-published, collection of works which—unpromisingly—sold only two copies. However, only a year later Charlotte managed to get her novel Jane Eyre published, and the rest is history, as they say. Charlotte Brontë …
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 …
Continue reading "‘Spring, the sweet spring’ by Thomas Nashe"
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) was a Canadian author nowadays best known for her novel Anne of Green Gables. Even those who haven’t read the book about the charming red-haired orphan girl must have watched the very successful 1985 TV series by the same title or the more recent Netflix adaptation Anne with an E. Lucy …
Continue reading "“The Forest Path” by Lucy Maud Montgomery"
Nikolaus Lenau was the nom de plume of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau, a poet who is now considered one the most important voices of Late-Romantic literature in German. A portrait of Lenau by Matevž Langus Born in Csatád in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Lenauheim in the Banat region of western Romania) in 1802, …
[This post has been written with ESL/EFL students in mind, CEFR level B2 and above.] Do you like reading books? What kind of books do you like best? Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction? In this post we’ll go over the vocabulary that you can use to discuss books, from the words for different genres …
If you like dark and gloomy crime TV with a touch of supernatural and mythological, don’t miss the French series Black Spot on Netflix. When I first started watching Black Spot (orig. Zone blanche), I assumed it would be a typical crime story set in a small place in the middle of nowhere (just the …
Continue reading "Searching for Cernunnos in Villefranche: a review of ‘Black Spot’"
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