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.
How many words can you make just by adding vowels to these consonants? See if you can get 5.
wt
Make a sentence that uses ALL THREE of these words:
Metal. Balance. Song.
These words are served randomly.
You can change e.g. go → went,
or quick → quickly.
Use each noun below in two sentences, first as the subject, and then as the object of a verb. For example, rain → ‘The rain hasn’t stopped all day’ [subject]; ‘I shook the rain from my umbrella’ [object].
IBattle. IIEar. IIIFairway. IVJudge. VLevel. VIVideo.
Use the following as adverbial clauses in your own sentences. For example: Before he leaves → ‘I must speak to him [before he leaves]’.
An adverbial clause does the work of an adverb such as ‘immediately’ or ‘urgently’. Unlike these words, however, a clause has a subject and a verb in it, as a sentence does. So ‘immediately’ is an adverb, ‘as soon as possible’ is an adverbial phrase (no verb), but ‘as soon as I can’ is an adverbial clause.
IBefore he leaves. IIWhenever you like. IIIBetter than I do. IVBecause I’m late for a meeting. VSince you’re here. VIIf you see her. VIIUnless it’s raining.
The following sentences could be used with one or more of the adverbial clauses above.
Make sure he’s got his passport. Tell her where I am. Come and visit us. You can help with the washing-up. You know her. I can’t talk for long. We’ll have lunch in the garden.
For reading aloud. These lines come from the comic poem Huggins and Duggins: A Pastoral after Pope by Thomas Hood (1799-1845). Huggins and Duggins are trading verses in praise of each one’s own best girl.
When Peggy’s dog her arms imprison,
I often wish my lot was hisn;
How often I should stand and turn,
To get a pat from hands like hern.
Note: The dialect words his’n (=his) and her’n (=hers) go back to Middle English hisen and hiren. The OED’s earliest evidence for his’n is from around 1425, in the Laud Troy-book, a poem about the Siege of Troy, by an unknown author.
Report this snatch of conversation between Mr Wickham and his sister-in-law Elizabeth Bennet, without using direct speech.
“I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble, my dear sister:” said he, as he joined her.
“You certainly do,” she replied with a smile; “but it does not follow that the interruption must be unwelcome.”
From Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen.