This page keeps you up-to-date with recent additions to Clay Lane. Keep track of new posts, and discover posts you may have missed. Read brief extracts from novels, plays and poems, and passages from history that are often uncannily modern. Tackle exercises in grammar, vocabulary and creative composition similar to those NL Clay gave to pupils aged 12-13 in the 1930s. Listen to short pieces of tuneful classical music, and watch scenes from classic films.
Make as many words as you can by adding vowels (AEIOU) to these consonants.
mtr (7+4)
amateur. mature. meteor. meter. metre. metro. motor.
mater. meatier. metier. mitre.
Pick any group of three words, and see if you can still remember them in an hour, and still remember them tomorrow. For a further challenge, try using all of your three words together in a single sentence.
The words in this puzzle are taken randomly from a list of 927 common words. You can change e.g. cat → cats, go → went, quick → quickly.
1 College. Rock. Serve.
2 Role. Second. Station.
3 His. Note. Start.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
Post Box : Help Available
1 ★ For Today
On his visits to Durham Gaol, prison reformer John Howard found conditions that were all too familiar.
★ For January 20 ns • The Death of John Howard (1790)
2
Silas Marner has to harden his heart and teach little Eppie a lesson she will remember.
Posted Today
3
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Othello, Op. 79: II. Children’s Intermezzo
Media not showing? Let me know!
3m 45s
Posted Today
Post Box : Help Available
4
Compose sentences to illustrate the meaning of these words.
Suppose someone asked you what one of these words meant. What sentences could you compose to make the meaning clear?
IFoist. IIHamper (verb). IIINudge. IVSpurn. VWheedle.
Tip: Try writing sentences that also include a word of opposite meaning, or one that is similar in meaning but creates a helpful contrast.
It’s one thing to ask him to put your friend up for the night, quite another to foist your friend onto him without warning.
Posted Today
Post Box : Help Available
5
Dostoevsky had to break it to Moscow’s students that ordinary Russians found their brand of politics patronising.
Posted Yesterday
6
Suggest words in which the letter ‘o’ is pronounced as it is in ‘comely’.
See of you can think of at least TEN words in which the letter ‘o’ is pronounced as it is in ‘comely’.
IBrother. IICoven(ant). IIIDone. IVDozen. VLove. VIMoney. VIINone. VIIISome. IXStomach. XWorry.
Based on School Certificate English Practice (1933) by NL Clay.
Posted January 18
Post Box : Help Available
7
Make as many words as you can from just nine letters. Can you beat our score?
Posted January 17