Clay Lane is inspired by educational materials created NL Clay, and used in English schools and homes from the 1920s to the 1960s. The Blog is a newsletter of recent additions and some selections from our archive, including brainteasers in grammar and vocabulary, and brief passages from history and literature.
You are welcome to ask for my help with any of the materials on Clay Lane. Drop me a line via email to: nicholas@claylane.uk.
Add Vowels
How many words can you make just by adding vowels to these consonants? See if you can get at least 7.
td
Spinner
Make a sentence that uses ALL THREE of these words:
Now. Band. Potential.
These words are served randomly.
You can change e.g. go → went,
or quick → quickly.
In December 1670, Thomas Blood, believed on all sides to be a dangerous republican revolutionary, tried to hang the Duke of Ormond like a common criminal on the gallows at Tyburn. His plan went awry, but once again Blood, his son-in-law Thomas Hunt and the rest of the gang eluded the authorities. Five months later, the Irishman was back in the capital, this time with a plan to steal the Crown Jewels.
The British Empire held out against the Nazis almost alone for two years. The arrival of the Americans in 1942 was a blessed relief, but it was the Russians (also somewhat late to the party) who bore the brunt of the Nazis’ hatred, and whose sacrifices and determination finally broke the vast German military machine.
Assess the punctuation of this sentence, according to the author’s own principles.
“I have some satisfaction in reflecting, that, in the course of editing the Greek text of the New Testament, I believe I have destroyed more than a thousand commas, which prevented the text being properly understood.”
In this sonnet, John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s, compares himself to a town occupied by an enemy and now under siege by its true King. The inhabitants want to let him in to liberate them, but their own leading men are too weak or corrupt; so the people send out a desperate message: use all force necessary.
Describe the view from one of the following, as you recall it or as you see it in your mind’s eye.
IAeroplane. IIBridge. IIICliff. IVHill. VTower.
Based on an exercise in School Certificate English Practice (1933) by NL Clay.
Speak these words out aloud:
Don’t do that again!
See if you can express the following four moods. How does your intonation change? What physical gestures do you feel compelled to use?
IAnger. IIFear. IIIDeprecation. IVExpostulation.
What pictures come into your mind? Try to describe them.
Note: Deprecation expresses ‘I’d rather you didn’t’. An expostulation is an exclamation of protest, a frustrated outburst.
Expanded from an exercise in A Year’s Course in Speech Training (1938) by Anne H. McAllister.