Kathleen and Bill Adams - Memories of Old Friends

About 55 years ago when we were engaged to be married, Ruth came down from Scotland to Coventry for a holiday, and I was concerned to demonstrate to her that Warwickshire had much to offer to the visitor and prospective resident. Having, as I thought, exhausted the possibilities of Coventry, Kenilworth, Warwick etc., I asked her if there was anywhere else she would like to visit. I ought not to have been surprised, knowing that she had an English degree and was an English teacher, when she expressed a wish to discover more about George Eliot. So we took the Midland Red bus (no car in those days!) to Nuneaton and made for the local library to seek information about Marian Evans. The response of the librarian took us aback. Oh, we\u27ve nothing here. You\u27ll have to go to Coventry. So back we traveled and continued our search where we had started - not an auspicious start to our literary partnership! A few years later, now firmly established in a teaching career in Coventry, Ruth had discovered the existence of a group called the George Eliot Fellowship, and we decided to attend one of its meetings that we had seen advertised. So once again we made the pilgrimage to Nuneaton, this time with greater success as we did indeed find the venue and sat through the meeting. Before it began however our attention was drawn to a couple who seemed to be in charge: a somewhat forbidding lady who reminded me of the words of Joyce Grenfell in one of her inimitable songs - \u27stately as a galleon\u27 - and a short, red-faced man with a mane of white hair, a red face, an aquiline nose and a cheerful demeanour. We were to discover that they were Kathleen and Bill Adams, the Secretary and Chairman of the Fellowship and its guiding spirits for over forty years

Participation in Third Level Education: Issues for Non-Native Speakers of English

In 2008, as part of a SIF (Strategic Innovation Funding) project on Widening Participation in Third Level Education, under the DRHEA (Dublin Regional Higher Education Alliance), the Institute of Technology in Blanchardstown received funding to investigate issues relating to English language literacy levels and access to and achievement at third level education. The overall aim of the project was to evaluate the issues, develop effective interventions and provide guidelines for best practice with a view to increasing the participation of diverse groups in third level education. Non-native speakers of English were identified as a primary group whose participation and success in third level education was considered contingent on acquiring appropriate English language skills

Wreath-Laying in The George Eliot Memorial Garden Nuneaton

I am deeply grateful for the honour of being invited to lay a wreath in memory of George Eliot, and to lay it in a place that meant so much to her.... Nuneaton. Before the heavens opened, I pictured us all gathered outside surrounded by green grass, trees and flowers, and able to imagine the spirit of George Eliot not in her study surrounded by books but out-of-doors, enjoying the fresh air. Some imagination is needed to visualize a little girl gathering flowers in the sunshine, or running towards a Round Pool after her older brother, or leaping with delight as she caught her silver perch in the Coventry Canal. But in spite of our enclosure within four walls, can we still reflect on \u27George Eliot in the Open Air\u27? I have just returned from a holiday in the Alps which began with a flight from Heathrow to Geneva. As the plane landed in Geneva, I thought of Marian Evans travelling to Switzerland with the Brays after the death of her father. They left England on 11 June 1849, and journeyed by way of Paris, Avignon, Nice, Genoa, Milan, Como, Lake Maggiore and Chamounix, arriving at Geneva in the third week of July. Cross says she stayed first at a pension, the Campagne Plongeon, which he described as \u27a gleaming white house\u27 with a meadow in front, sloping down to blue water and with \u27an avenue of remarkably fine chestnut-trees, whence there is a magnificent view of the Jura mountains on the opposite side of the lake\u27. Marian Evans missed her friends in Warwickshire, grieved for her father and grew so thin that she wondered how much of her would be left by the following April: \u27I shall be length without breadth\u27, she wrote. Nevertheless, in spite of physical and emotional frailty, she wrote in excitement to her Coventry friends: \u27I am becoming passionately attached to the mountains, the lake .... If you saw the Jura today! The snow reveals its forests, ravines, and precipices, and it stands in relief against a pure blue sky. The snow is on the mountains only now, and one is tempted to walk all day ... \u27 \u27Tempted to walk all day .... \u27 The picture of Marian Evans out -of-doors with the wind in her hair is a picture we more readily associate with Emily Bronte than George Eliot, but her love of the open air is apparent not only in Switzerland but also in the Scilly Isles where we find her striding out in 1857 and delighting in what she describes as \u27a sense of freedom in those unenclosed grounds\u27. It is not difficult to link this feeling of liberation with the success of her first fiction and the joy of her loving relationship with Lewes. The weather was often wet and nearly always windy, but the energy of love infused her delight in the shapes and colours of the rocks, her feeling of exhilaration when the wind was at its height and she could see \u27the white foam prancing round the reefs and rising in fountain-like curves above the screen of rocks\u27. Together, they looked up at fountains of foam towards a sky alive with larks. She wrote: \u27I never enjoyed the lark before as I enjoyed it at Scilly\u27

Review of Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob

Silas Mamer, The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob have formed a triple alliance ever since they were first published together at George Eliot\u27s request in the Cabinet Edition of 1878. That the fellowship is far from uneasy is proved by Peter Mudford in his intelligent introduction to the Everyman Paperback edition where he shows that the three narratives are united by the common theme of alienation and exile. Mudford then examines each story in turn, discussing Brother Jacob after Silas Mamer because of features common to both, and then turning to The Lifted Veil which he calls \u27the odd-ball of the three, lacking that affirmative power of sympathy which was the hallmark of George Eliot\u27s humanist vision\u27. Signs of discomfiture with The Lifted Veil do not prevent him from making valid comments in an introduction which, though brief, is thoughtful and incisive

George Eliot- BBC2 Night School

It is said that Napoleon interviewed his prisoners at three o\u27clock in the morning when their powers of resistance were at their lowest ebb. My video recorder saved me from testing his theory between the unearthly hours of 2.00 and 4.00 a.m. on Thursday 10th March when BBC2\u27s Night School presented its resource material on the life, work and times of George Eliot. If I had had to stay awake, however, then I think that Professor Rosemary Ashton and her able colleagues would have overcome my powers of resistance with Napoleonic skill. The material was attractively varied, and concentration was helped by its division into ten sections, the first four mainly biographical and the last six mainly critical. Interestingly, Gabriel Woolf began the story of George Eliot\u27s life with her death and burial in unconsecrated ground. Her questioning of orthodox doctrine, her tolerance and deep moral concerns made the setting for the first part of the programme peculiarly appropriate, filmed as it was in the cool serenity of a place she knew - Rosslyn Hill Unitarian Church. Against glimpses of stained glass, Gabriel Woolf reminded us of George Eliot\u27s trails formations from evangelical country girl to radical blue-stocking to Successful novelist. His introduction prepared us for an exploration· of her life and background by Rosemary Ashton whose rapid but always lucid narrative was skillfully interspersed with the voices of Gabriel Woolf and Margaret Wolfit. Different voices made for variety: so did different settings and the use of paintings, photographs, and brief clips from an early and occasionally over-coloured film on the life of George Eliot. Three aspects of her life were explored by the three speakers: the \u27Industrial Context\u27 of the London that Marian Evans first encountered; \u27George Eliot the Woman\u27 which presented the various relationships she made; and a section entitled \u27Gossip\u27 which concentrated on her unconventionality, on the \u27salt and spice\u27 in her nature refreshingly recalled by William Hale White. Her experiences with Chapman, Herbert Spencer and Lewes must have intensified her penetrating insight into complex relationships between men and women. In an all-too-brief appearance, Professor Gillian Beer discussed why Marian Lewes called herself \u27George Eliot\u27, one reason for the \u27veil\u27 being of course her liaison with George Henry Lewes. The adjustments of society to her unconventional life, her own adjustment to convention in her marriage to John Cross, and her reinstatement in 1980 when she was given her rightful place in Westminster Abbey brought the story of her life to a close. I have only minor quibbles: why the suddenly displaced picture of the Memorial stone? surely an incorrect portrait of John Cross was shown, and surely 142 Strand was demolished recently and not at the end of the nineteenth century

Are CALL Packages Disregarding the Research on Dealing with Authentic Materials?

Since the advent of the communicative method, authentic materials have been seen as an important source of input for second language acquisition. However they have been noticeably absent from CALL packages. This paper looks at the implications of the research on reading, and explores which areas of work on authentic materials can be successfully done using CALL, and areas which are best left to a classroom, groupwork or semi-autonomous environment. A model of an integrated approach proposes ways of maximising the potential of each, providing new challenges for the teacher and student alike

Emily Dickinson a forerunner of imagism

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 194