Internet session Thursday morning 26 September

Every once in a while I like to show groups how the internet can be used to integrate more English into your everyday life, plus just plain interesting stuff, as I find.

Below are some of my favorites that I have also listed or mentioned in other posts.

In the end, one of our group brought a page of his interest (I love it when class participants do that), including copies for reading. It was Louis C.K.’s explanation of why he hates smartphones. Continue reading

Guess the Classic (5)

In this next passage, we leave Europe and go to the other side of the Atlantic. This author is considered a very special one in many respects. The so-called New World has now been settled for some time, but American literature, what we consider ‘genuine’ American, is still fairly new. James Fenimoore Cooper has generally been acknowledged with being the first to have written novels exclusively set in an American landscape, depicting the early settlement experience of mostly European settlers, taking a critical view on their often disrespectful and brutal treatment of nature and the original inhabitants of the continent.

The following, though, is not from one of Cooper’s novels.

This well-known American author was one of the earliest American writers of short stories, and one of the first in the US who tried to make a living through writing. He is largely considered the inventor of the detective story, but is probably better known for his gothic fantasies.

Continue reading

Some Remarks on ‘Correctness’

This morning we discussed my verb structure circle system (see under pages) in one of my classes. It was, again, as I found, a very interesting discussion. There seems to be one point of misunderstanding, though, when I question the validity of right or wrong claims: my position is not ‘anything goes’ and ‘rules don’t matter’. Continue reading