Welcome to Flight 011 (November 2024)! A learning package full of English material is ready to download. Don’t forget Flight 010 is still available for a month.
This month I will share my Essay Cheat Sheet that my students use to write their literature essays as the perk of the month for my paid subscribers. I expect to have it ready in one or two weeks.
You can download the complete Flight 011 here (zip-file in Dropbox):
Flight 011
Study Guide 015: the working memory
Study Guide 016: prior knowledge
4 OWL assignments
Advanced Grammar 006: inversion
Idioms 006: history
Phrasal Verb 006: PUT
Word Formation 006: ADVENTURE
Listening 013 - 5-minutes On “The hipster making wallets cool again”
Listening 016 - 5-minutes On “Snitching in Russia”
Speaking - Cooperation 006: artificial intelligence
Speaking - Individual Long Turn 006: hobbies
Speaking - Pronunciation 006: /s/ & /z/
Speaking - Presentations 06: preparing a presentation
Essay Writing 03: introductions
Reading
I have almost finished rereading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. Although the examples get a bit outdated, this book is still a important read in these days of AI. Carr explains the pitfalls of getting information from the Net rather than a book. It is a dive into the workings of the mind, how we remember, and how malleable our brains are. Heavily supported by research, it is an important read in this AI age.
Another great book this month was The Notebook, A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. It is wonderful book about anything connected to notebooks. 400 pages is not enough to cover everything, but the book gives an interesting bird's eye view. Sketchbooks, zibaldonis, commonplace books, travel journals, table-books diaries, bullet journals and much, much more are discussed. Allen talks about Darwin and Newton, but also about obscure people having either a largely unknown but certain impact on note-taking or just have an interesting story to share. It will definitely make you consider using notebooks (more). There is an interesting interview below).
I also read Writing to Learn by William Zinsser. I loved Zinsser's book On Writing Well; I am lukewarm about Writing to Learn. Yes, it does have the great idea of writing as a means to understand your own thinking, forcing you to put into words what you are trying to understand.
The main part of this book however, is a lot of show and not a lot of tell. Examples are rarely explored in detail or explained why they work. It felt like a museum with many pieces to explore but too small labels to better understand the their workings.
Video
Ben Reads Good hasn’t uploaded his Monthly Book News yet (you will probably find it here soon). So, for this flight I give you the interview with Roland Allen about his book The Notebook.
Novel of the Month
The Novel of the Month is Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Cold Mountain was one of my reading surprises a couple of years back and I advise it to many of my students.
Cold Mountain tells the story of Inman, a Confederate soldier who deserts the army during the Civil War to make his way back home to Ada, the woman he loves. The novel explores Inman’s arduous and treacherous journey across war-torn landscapes, encountering various hardships, dangers, and colorful characters along the way. It portrays the physical and emotional challenges he faces as he strives to reunite with Ada amidst the chaos and devastation of the war.
Author: Charles Frazier
Year of publication: 1997
Pages: 449
Plot Complexity: moderate
Language Complexity: moderate
Ideas Complexity: moderate
You can find more novel ideas at www.rookreading.com.
Poem of the Month
A short one this month, but powerful. To discover something real, you have to confront the actual thing as it is. There should be no substitute, no lifeline. Overcome your fears, jump into it, and you’ll find there’s beauty too, and you might recognise something of yourself too. Whatever the unknown might be.
To know the Dark
Wendell Berry (1970)
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.