Lernertagebuch von Friederike

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

He was in his early fifties, between jobs, his wife dead ten years. When he saw the position advertised in the Wellington paper it struck him as highly romantic, and he was immediately attracted to it.

LIGHTHOUSEKEEPER. Stephen Island. References. Inquire T.H.Penn,Maritime Authority              

He took it . Sold his furniture, paid the last of the rent, filled two duffel bags with socks and sweaters and his bird watcher's guide, and hired a cart. Just as he was leaving, a neigbor approached him with something in her arms: pointed ears, yellow eyes. Take it, she said. For company. He slipped the kitten into the breast of his pea coat, waved, and started off down the road.

Stephens Island is an eruption of sparsely wooded rock seventeen miles northwest of Wellington. It is uninhabited. At night the constellations wheel over its quarter-mile radius like mythical beasts.

The man was to be relieved for two weeks every six months. He planted a garden, read, fished, smoked by the sea. The cat grew to adolescence. One afternoon it came to him with a peculiar bird clenched in its teeth. The man took the bird away, puzzled over it, and finally sent it to the national museum at Wellington for identification. Three weeks later, a reply came. He had discovered a new species: the Stephen Island wren.

In the interim the cat had brought him fourteen more specimens of the odd little buff and white bird. The man never saw one of the birds alive. After a while the cat stopped bringing them.

ource: T. C. Boyle: Descent of Man. Stories. Penguin Books 1987

no breech of copyright laws intended, published here for mere educational purpose

No Fear Shakespeare

... to be taken literally! In my eyes, this website is an excellent method to reduce student's fears of reading the works of William Shakespeare. Of course, it's also important for learners to dig into the world of Shakespeare's language. But reading for example MacBeth or The Merchant of Venice for the first time can easily cause frustration and disappointment. The students lose their interest in the books and as a consequence, they often read a German version of the classic rather than the English one. Isn't it better and doesn't it make more sense then to give students the possibility to use this website: Shakespeare's language side-by-side with a facing-page translation into modern English.

Musical English lesson

This website contributes a free range of worksheets and working ideas to teachers of English. I think that basically, working with music and songs in English lessons is a real chance to involve the pupils. Furthermore, music is a motiviating aspect for them. This website contains worksheets on contemporary artists (e.g. Black-eyed Peas, Robbie Williams, Eminem, Pink) and on "older" ones as well (e.g. Frank Sinatra, Beatles, Queen). Nevertheless, one should be careful not to reduce the motivating factor of the songs by working too much on their grammatical features!