english-teacher

1. Who is Avi Shiffmann? How did he get to be so popular? Read more HERE. YOUR TASK: Imagine you’ve interviewed Avi. Write an article reporting your interview: WRITING TIPS.

2. Click on the pic below to access Avi’s website.

3. Prepare for the listening exam. Watch and listen to the story. Then write a brief account of it in French. 

4. Click below to revise your grammar!

YOUR TASK: choose  any two or three documents (texts, visuals, videos, audios…) and build up your student portfolio. You can combine pieces related to either or both of the works we are studying this year (i.e. Oscar Wilde’s play and George Orwell’s novella 🙂 

1. Click on the pic below. Why did T.S. Elliot refuse to publish Animal Farm? Read more HERE. 

2. Do you find this graphic novel to be faithful to Orwell’s original?

3. Listen to this punk version of Old Major’s song. Analyse the original HERE.

4. What was Roger Waters’ source of inspiration for this album?

5. Listen to the audio book until the end of chapter two. List the main events of the story and answer this QUESTION. Read it in print HERE.

1. A few terms to remember: find out about fable and allegory. Find out more HERE.

2. Learn more about the novella’s historical background.

3. Who was George Orwell? What was his motivation for writing?

4. More on the historical and political context.

5. Listen to the audio book version of the story. Read the story in print HERE.

1. Can you create a ‘character map,’ showing all the people in the play and their relationships?

2. Watch the end of the story. How are the ‘lovers’ able to marry in the end? Read the script HERE. 

3. Can you draw a narrative arc for the play? Click on the image for help.

1. Some very useful advice to sound as if you were born with the language!

2. Be careful though not to mimic these native speakers’ common mistakes!

3. Listening to the news is a very good way to improve your English. Read more HERE.

4. Watching movies can be great help too.

5. The speaker identifies 4 ‘secrets’. What are they? What is your secret? Find HERE a few tips on how to a better communicator.

1. What is poetic meter? How does it work? What is the secret of the power of iambic pentameter? Take the test HERE.

2. What is the rhythm we always carry with us in our lives?

3. Hip Hop or Shakespeare?

4. Akala, the rapper. Analyse a few lines from this piece HERE.

5. YOUR TASK. Are you ready to write your own verses or rap in iambic pentameter? Revise the basics. Find more help HERE.

1.What gave Dickens such powerful influence over his contemporaries? Oscar Wilde’s criticism of “Dickens’s over sentimentalism” did not prevent him from taking his inspiration from his predecessor. What did Wilde borrow from Dickens? Here’s your TASK.

2. Through farce and satire, Oscar Wilde, too, was sending up the high society of his time to expose its intrinsic hypocrisy.

3. Like Cecily, Queen Victoria “Wrote in [her] journal”. Read more on Victorian diary writing HERE.

1. What were women’s roles in 1950s’ America? Read more HERE.

2. Analyse and discuss this 1961 ad. How are gender roles portrayed? Click on the pic for some help.

3. What makes the scene important in the story? Read more HERE.   

1. Watch the first 7:30 into the video and pick out details about about the five characters present or mentioned. Check your answers with the help of THE SCRIPT and fill in a table.

2. What are some of the themes and motifs at work in the scene?

3. Mrs. Lane explains the acronym SOAPSTone, a tool for analyzing literature.

1. This classic dystopian novel explores a future in which possession of books is a crime.

2. How to  preserve independent thought in a society where mass media has monopoly on information? Take the QUIZ

3. Here is an in-depth summary and analysis of the plot of Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451. Study an excerpt HERE.