Tag Archives: English language

Diane Ackerman’s “100 Names for Love” – language lessons rebuild a man’s life

Posted on September 22, 2011 by

The work of naturalist and poet Diane Ackerman has more than once touched on areas of interest to language teachers. In An Alchemy of Mind she uses her own personal memories, from working in her rose garden to bird-watching in … Continue reading →

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The Undley Bracteate – The First Recorded Sentence In English.

Posted on September 13, 2011 by

The Undley Bracteate, an Anglo-Saxon gold medallion the size of a 10p piece, was discovered at Undley in Suffolk in 1982. The Anglo-Saxons were a functionally illiterate group and wrote nothing down; they never saw the benefits of using their … Continue reading →

Posted in Anglo-Saxon, Old English, The Henry Brothers | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

ELT traveller’s tales – R. B. McKerrow in Japan, 1898

Cambridge scholar R. B. McKerrow told a funny story from the time he spent teaching English in Tokyo from 1897 to 1900, where he also learnt Japanese, wrote a textbook on English phonology (in Japanese), and had his own printing … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on August 21, 2011 by | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

How to write a school play – an example from the late 1500s

Posted on August 14, 2011 by

In the Times Literary Supplement of July 1st Shakespeare Institute lecturer Martin Wiggins reports that the Elizabethan Club of Yale University has recently acquired the manuscript of Oedipus – a play for schoolchildren written in the late 16th century (the … Continue reading →

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