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 6.
crts
Spinner
Make a sentence that uses ALL THREE of these words:
Gather. Extent. Over.
These words are served randomly.
You can change e.g. go → went,
or quick → quickly.
VE Day is Victory in Europe Day, the commemoration of Germany’s surrender at the end of the Second World War. It is kept to this day (though with less and less pomp as each year goes by) on May 8th. The passage below collects a few of the more significant dates in the months that led up to the unconditional surrender signed at Berlin on that day (more or less) in 1945.
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.
Join each group of ideas together to form a single sentence, in as many different ways as you can. You may change any words you like so long as the overall meaning remains the same. See if you can work in one or more of the words suggested.
1 Alf wanted to stay at the crime scene. He wanted to go home with the news. He could not decide what to do.
Between. Happen. Tear.
2 I sat for forty-five minutes. I could see the Ladies’ Room door. I never saw her come out.
Tell. Visible. Watch.
Sentences based on the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers. Developed from an exercise in Exercises 12-13 (1933) by NL Clay.
The first traffic lights in the world began operation outside the Houses of Parliament on December 9th, 1868. The previous evening, readers of the Express learnt about the ingenious if somewhat ungainly new technology, and looked forward to a time when all busy junctions would be made safe by traffic lights.
Express in other words:
1 It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions in misery.
2 Every man is like the company he is wont to keep.
In 1917-18, Arthur Ransome (who would later write Swallows and Amazons) was in St Petersburg, then named Petrograd, reporting on the Communist revolution for the Daily News. One of his tales tickled fellow journalist Alfred Gardiner, who nonetheless drew from it a serious lesson about liberty, a word bandied about as carelessly then as it is today.
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