Book Clubs
I will send out some handy tips and useful exercises for adults learning to navigate and use the English language each week. Please feel free to share this newsletter with friends and colleagues.
Book clubs have become quite popular in the United States in the past 20 years. Oprah’s Book Club is probably the most famous, but there is also Reese Witherspoon, Jimmy Fallon and Morning Show book club’s with Good Morning America and The Today Show. T
There are also several international online book clubs, which could be a great opportunity to practice English, and make new friends from around the world while reading about different cultures and stories. This article explores some different options if you are interested: 6 Book Clubs Global Citizens Can Join Around the World by Joe McCarthy. You can listen to the article as your read along to practice your listening skills as well.
LOOK!
Take the Poll
I’m thinking about hosting a weekly live session for subscribers of this newsletter. The only agenda would be to have an opportunity to speak with others in English. There wouldn’t be any exercises, although I would offer discussion topics to get the ball rolling. Please take the poll below to let me know if this interests you.
If there is enough interest, next week’s newsletter will contain a poll asking for your best days and times for Coffee Talk.
Listening Tip
Language Level – B2
Watch, listen and read along with this Ted Talk about how Book Clubs can Save the World.
Grammar Tip
Language Level – A2
Adjectives are quite powerful in the English language. They create a vivid picture for the reader, and masterful authors are adept at using them to create worlds we have never visited but can imagine what they are like because of how they are described and how those descriptions make us feel.
In other languages, an adjective is often an “afterthought,” such as “Por favor, siéntese en la mesa azul” in Spanish, which translates to “Please sit at the blue table in English.” The word “blue” comes before that table in English but after the table in Spanish.
So, as you expand your English vocabulary, pay special attention to adjectives and their synonyms because it will significantly increase your fluency.
Adjectives are words that describe nouns or pronouns. In other words, they describe people, places, or things.
They most often appear before the noun or pronoun (but not always).
Let’s Practice!
Part I – Identify all of the adjectives in each of the sentences below:
- Toby was an angry man yesterday.
- The presentation was masterful.
- The little dog had a very big bark.
- Jack was old.
- The delicious dessert melted in my mouth.
- The book club discussed the fascinating story.
- The brave boy climbed to the top of the mountain.
Part II – Now that you have identified the adjectives, find a synonym (a word that means the same thing) that you could use to replace the adjectives in the sentences.
Vocabulary Tip
Language Level – B2
We continue to add to our vocabulary words from the Oxford 3000.
A list of 3000 words someone should know if they are taking the CEFR (Common European Framework Reference) language tests.
- Industrial (adj)
- Infection (n)
- Inform (v)
- Initial (adj)
- Initially (adv)
- Initiative (n)
- Inner (adj)
- Insight (n)
- Insist (v)
- Inspire (v)
Practice this vocabulary with Quizlet.
Writing Tip
Language Level – B2
Practice writing by putting each of the vocabulary words listed above in its own sentence.
Reading Tip
Language Level – B2
In the United States in the 1700s there are records of colonial women meeting in towns and villages to discuss their own writing, or poetry of the day. In the 1800s, though, is when things really picked up steam. Women were excluded from colleges, universities, and pretty much all types of intellectual gatherings. However, just as there are today, back then there were many, many women who were passionate about learning and reading. It is human nature to want to share our experiences with others, especially when we come across something (like a book) that we find inspirational, thought-provoking, or transformative, and that aspect of human nature wasn’t (and isn’t!) exclusive to men. So, barred from the gatherings of male intellectuals and forbidden from pursuing schooling, these women started some intellectual gatherings of their own. They met in their living rooms, or in the back of bookshops, discussing books by candlelight.
Click on this link to finish reading this insightful blog about The Radical History of Book Clubs: Connecting Us through Literature by Lesley-Anne Longo.
Weekly Challenge
Language Level – C1
As this newsletter is about book clubs, I would like to share an excerpt from one of my favorite books by an American author.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought — frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon — for the intimate revelations of young me nor at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.
What do you think he meant with this statement, “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth.”
Do you agree or disagree? Why?
Questions?