There's about a dozen poets that I've always felt a special affinity to. Some well-known names are among them, such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Walt Whitman and Robert Frost, but there are also those whose works seem to have fallen out of favour with the reading public and who are no longer household names. One …
English vocabulary lesson: Tea
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 Iโm going to present some key vocabulary that you can use. MAKING …
Portmanteau words in English
A portmanteau (click here for pronunciation) is an old-fashioned type of luggageโa 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 …
‘Life’ by Charlotte Brontรซ
Life is a delightfully optimistic poem. In stanza 1, the poet counters the prevailing opinion of the wise men (the โsagesโ), positing that life is not as gloomy and difficult as itโs often claimed. If and when there is hardship, itโs there only to enable something better to come out of it.ย
