189 Listenings New-Old
Reading is an effective way to improve one's understanding of the English language. However, listening is a more challenging skill that requires dedicated practice and development. The Britlish Library offers a variety of activities that focus on the speech features of native English speakers, such as elision, simplification, intonation, stress, and rhythm. These activities aim to help students understand and effectively listen to spoken English, including the nuances and variations that may occur in conversation. By working through these activities, learners can improve their listening skills and gain a deeper understanding of the English language.
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The Windhover
Widely anthologised, The Windhover, by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1884-1889), though dedicated To Christ our Lord, is a rapturous love poem to life itself. Hopkins struggled to balance his vocation as a Catholic Jesuit servant of God and his poetical yearnings. Because of this, and his experimental use of new metrical forms, and his religious faith, his poetry was largely unrecognised when he died aged 44. It was not until 1918 that his poems were first published. This poem remains one his best known and will help you with your pronunciation, your vocabulary, and your maste...
The Tyger
Written sometime between 1790 and 1792, Blake's The Tyger is one of the most famous of English poems much loved by children and adults alike. The poem asks questions about what sort of creator would come up with something as fearful as a tiger. This lesson will teach you the poem, some background details about the poet, the vocabulary in the poem, and the IPA symbols used to represent the pronunciation of the poem. There is much debate today about the pronunciation of the words eye and symmetry and whether in Blake's time they rhymed or not.
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
This nonsense poem, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, by Edward Lear, is much loved by children and adults alike because of its rhythm and nonsensical story. It was written for the three-year-old daughter of a friend and published in 1871 in the book Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets. Enjoy the poem and learn some new vocabulary while improving your pronunciation skills.
The Soldier
Perhaps one of the most famous World War I poems, The Soldier, by Rupert Brooke is known at least in part by most British people as it is often used on military memorials. The poem is one of a series of 5 sonnets that Brooke wrote on themes from the war published as 1914. This evocative and poignant poem romanticises the war rather than focussing on the grim realities. At the time Brooke wrote the poem, in the early years of the war, bodies of the dead were buried near where they fell and there are vast graveyards of British soldiers in foreign fields. Usi...
Futility
Futility is one of the most famous poems by one of the most famous poets of World War I, Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918. This poem tells us of an incident where a group of soldiers try to revive an unconscious soldier by dragging him into the sun on a snowy day, but their efforts are in vain because the soldier is already dead. I use this poem in this lesson to help you with your pronunciation, your vocabulary, your understanding of the British English IPA chart symbols, and to introduce you to this most beautiful of poems. Poems are a great way to enrich many aspects of your English a...
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