Welcome to Clay Lane
Straightforward English
“The course should train pupils to observe, learn more of the world they live in, think clearly, use the imagination and to speak clearly.”
NL Clay, Think and Speak (1929)
Clay Lane is a traditional British education, of the kind seen in English schools before the educational changes of the 1960s. It is inspired by textbooks written by NL Clay, Senior English Master at Ecclesfield Grammar School in Yorkshire, and used across the country from the late 1920s.
Read short passages from literature and history, many of them chosen to provide a commentary on modern events and opinions. Or try your hand at puzzles in grammar and vocabulary like those Clay set for pupils aged 12-16. How would you have got on in the fourth form?
This site is for people who appreciate our heritage of strong, plain-spoken English from Shakespeare and the King James Bible to Austen, Dickens and Kipling, who take pride in the courage and vision of our country’s heroes both small and great, and who enjoy playing with words, sentences and ideas.
Get started with The Clay Lane Blog
In Quotations: What We Stand For
Thomas Huxley on The Object of a Liberal Education
NL Clay on Straightforward English
Materials for the study of good, correct, straightforward English.
Traditional, pre-Sixties methods and content.
Read interesting passages from history and literature.
Practise writing your own English sentences.
Ask for help if you need it.
“If ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are to be more than catchwords, clear communication must be the rule, and not the exception. Do we want a society in which placid masses take their orders from bosses? The alternative to government by force is government by persuasion. The latter must mean that the governed can talk back to the governors.”
NL Clay, Straightforward English (1949)
Post Box : Get In Touch
New and archive material, updated frequently. Passages for reading, brainteasers for solving, and music for listening.
Latest • January 20
Latest • January 20
Latest • January 20
Post Box : Just ask for help
Opposites Find in Think and Speak
Suggest words or phrases that seem opposite in meaning to each of the words below. We have suggested some possible answers; see if you can find any others.
Show Useful Words (A-Z order)
Command. Distant. Far off. Govern. Irreverent. Lady. Lead. Lord it over. Obscure. Post. Rule. Shout. Surface. Yell.
Variations: 1.instead of opposites, suggest words of similar meaning (synonyms). 2.use a word and its opposite in the same sentence. 3.suggest any 5 opposites formed by adding dis-.