The English Department of St Columba's College, Whitechurch, Dublin 16, Ireland. Pupils' writing, news, poems, drama, essays, podcasts, book recommendations, language, edtech ... and more. Since 2006.
A great man, and great friend both of this Department and our school, left us recently. Professor T.P. Dolan of the English Department of University College Dublin, more commonly known as 'Terry', visited us for over 35 years until recent times. His funeral was earlier today in Kingscourt, County Cavan, where he was buried alongside his mother, and we were represented by the current and former Heads of English. In his homily, the priest appositely quoted Goldsmith: "And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew." Terry's particular talent was a humorous lightness of touch, in discussing language and literature, that belied the deep scholarship on which that knowledge rested. This talent became known nationally-recognised due to his weekly slot on the Sean Moncrieff show on Newstalk FM, in which he explained the etymology of a bewildering range of words. This was also his party piece for so many Literary Society meetings here over the years: no pupil could catch him out (though at times he stretched things: he would look you in the eye and insist after some rather unlikely explanation "It's true", while a twinkle in his eye suggested otherwise). Regular subjects for his talks included American English, Geoffrey Chaucer (see below) and of course Hiberno-English: his masterpiece is his book A Dictionary of Hiberno-English, regularly updated, the definitive collection of English as it is used all over Ireland. He also particularly enjoyed talking about 'bad' language, his Queen's College Oxford voice articulating the origins of the 'f' word to startled pupils. The photograph at the top of this post shows him lecturing in the Lower Argyle on a Saturday evening.
Terry's Hiberno-English website can still be accessed via the Web Archive here. In February 2008 Terry suffered a shock stroke that confined him to Tallaght Hospital for a long time. Visiting him there was to witness again his ease with everyone, particularly the nurses and doctors who looked after him, and his fellow patients. In these distressing circumstances, he never faltered from his inner core: kindness and cheerfulness. Almost a year later he returned to the Sean Moncrieff Show to public delight, and in February 2010 he gave an interview to Marian Finucane on surviving his stroke. Indeed, he became a prominent advocate of stroke awareness. He was in great form when I interviewed him for a podcast on his beloved Geoffrey Chaucer. So here's a 30-minute treat from ten years ago (also at the bottom of this post). He was also a stalwart of our annual Transition Year English evenings in May as a guest speaker, always commenting on pupils' work with great sensitivity. He never patronised 16 year-olds but found the best in what they wrote. His imprimatur always gave such pleasure to them. Terry Dolan was a wonderful man. May he rest in peace. JMG
To embed quotations and use them effectively in your revision, consider the Swiss Army Knife technique: choose a quotation which can be used flexibly in many ways, for several characters, for different themes. Firstly, make sure you know the quotation (use flashcards, ask a friend to test you). Then write it down and think about it: let your ideas spring out of it like a SAK. Below is an example from Lady Macbeth. Later, ask that friend to test you on the notes you wrote.
(mindmap: drag it around to see it all, and use the - and + buttons for sizing)
The latest edition of 'The Submarine', the pupil-edited and -written magazine, has now been published in school (in paper form) and below in flippable form via Issuu (use the arrows to navigate, and click again for a close look). In this edition, there are pieces by Avi Johnston (On Journalism), Vivian Tuite (A College Diary, on her first days at the school), Sveva Ciofani (The Earthquake in Italy that No-one Talks About), Sinead Cleary (Ted Bundy), Poppy Gleeson (The Jump), Calvin She (on sharks), Noah Leach (Analog), Thando Khumalo (Mortality), Wolfgang Romanowski (on the visit by Emma Brown of Barnardo's), and art work by Edna Johnston, Avi Johnston, Estelle Yu, Denis Cully, Thea Walsh and Camila Garcia Herrera.
Gresham College has a phenomenal high-class series of videos on all sorts of subjects. Over the last year or so, Sir Jonathan Bate, one of the world's greatest authorities on Shakespeare, has lectured on the playwright, and currently six of these lectures are available online.
For instance, above is Bate on 'Shakespeare's London and Ancient Rome'. Gresham's also provide a PDF transcript of these lectures, and the presentations. Wonderful.
Congratulations to the winners of the English Prizes this year: Catherine Butt (Senior) and Marcus O'Connor (Junior). Distinctions for good entries also went to VI - Helen Crampton, Laetitia Schoenburg and Isabelle Townshend. V - Shannon Dent. IV - Eile Ni Chianain and Sinead Cleary. III - Iona Chavasse, Avi Johnston and Donald Thomson. II - Emily McCarth. I - Lorne Walsh. There are three other prizes awarded by the Department in the coming months: Junior and Senior Poetry, and Shakespeare.
The annual selection of books published in either hardback or paperback for the first time this year.
(Here is our annual round-up of Books of the Year lists).
Book of the Year David Park: Travelling in a Strange Land. Short, absorbing, deeply moving. Park flies under the radar in terms of Irish fiction. This is outstanding.
Fiction: Melatu Uche Okorie:This Hostel Life. Three short stories that have a big impact. A new angle on Irish life. Let's hope she's writing a novel.
Sara Baume:A Line Made by Walking. A dreamy, dreaming voice in the countryside.
William Trevor:Last Stories. Published posthumously: what a standard for a man in his 80s.
Kamila Shamsie:Home Fire. It handles a lot, and handles it brilliantly.
Tim Winton:The Shepherd's Hut. Author of last year's Book of the Year, The Boy Behind the Curtain. Does anyone match him for a sense of place?
Non-Fiction: Maryanne Wolf: Reader, Come Home: the reading brain in a digital world. A deep meditation.
Emilie Pine: Notes to Self. The best book of essays this year. How to write about yourself with brutal and moving honesty. Fintan O'Toole: Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain. The definitive analysis of the horror show we're living through.
Mary Beard: Women and Power. What a strong voice. Richard Ford: Between Them. On his parents. You never stop being a child at any time of your life. Michelle McNamara: I'll be Gone in the Dark. True-crime chiller, with a dramatic post-publication development.
Here
we go again: our 9th annual popular post of books of the year as they
feature in the press (excluding papers and articles with pay-walls, such
as the London Times and Sunday Times and most of the Financial Times)
and on some blogs. This is a selective list of what we judge the
highest-quality lists: if you want almost everything that moves, check
out Largehearted Boy. The list will be updated pretty well daily up to Christmas. Previous lists are here: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.
The annual Irish Times choices by
writers demonstrate how strong a year it has been. Emilie Pine's
powerful collection of essays, Notes to Self, features, with Pine
herself going for Natalia Ginzburg's The Little Virtues. Paschal
Donogue, Minister for Finance, is a rare real reader among modern
politicians, and chooses Ian Kershaw's Roller-Coaster, the latest in
Kershaw's overview of European history. Joseph O'Connor points out one
of our own choices, the brief collection of stories This Hostel Life by Melatu Uche Okorie, a new voice looking at Ireland from an entirely new angle. Elsewhere, Anna Carey has the standout children's titles of the year, including the excellent Louise O'Neill's The Surface Breaks, a re-imagining of The Little Mermaid. Elsewhere, Malachy Clarkin looks at the best sports books of the year: Peter Crouch turns out to produce the greatest laughs.
The Irish Independent has 50 top children's books from Sarah Webb, with good Irish representation. Its critics also name their best books of the year, top pick in fiction being Emer Martin's The Cruelty Men, which is 'stunningly ambitious and achingly tragic.' Michael Connelly, always reliable, appears twice in the thriller section. Another critics' selection mentions Tim Dee's Landfill, 'nature writing for the Trump era' from the excellent Toller Press, and in fiction John Boyne's amusing novel about literary ambition, A Ladder to the Sky.
The Guardian's selections are always interesting. This year, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's First Minister, highly recommends Anna Burns's Booker-winner, Milkman, In another selection, Justine Jordan kicks off with the always readable Jonathan Coe's Brexit novel, Middle England. The Best Children's Books for All Ages points out that one in every three paper books sold this year in the UK has been for children, and Fiona Noble writes that 'In troubled times, books have the power to help children and young people make sense of the world, and a look at 2018’s award winners reveals just how writers and illustrators are responding to our challenging times'.
The Guardian's Sunday sister, The Observer, also has a good list: their critics choose selections from genres such as Graphic, Poetry, Fiction and Society. In Art, Laura Cumming, author of the excellent The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velasquez, mentions two books on Bruegel, including Winter Scenes, which looks wonderful.
The Times Literary Supplement is of course a key place to go. Their annual list
has a lot of high-quality recommendations. The great Lydia Davis goes
for two books by Natalia Ginzburg, while Roy Foster recommends Colm
TóibÃn's new book Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know, about the fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce.
The New York Times100 Notable Books is always a formidable list (some great covers this year, too). Rachel Cusk is a 'Marmite' writer; her Kudos appears here, and the very different Macbeth (the thriller-writer Jo Nesbo's version).
We've previously recommended the superb site Five Books: a simple idea, executed with depth and it has a series of Best Books of 2018, including for instance Best Non-Fiction by Fiammetta Rocco (with Ben McIntyre's highly-praised book about Oleg Gordievsky, The Spy and the Traitor), Nigel Warburton's Best Philosophy Books, and Charles Foster on Best Nature Books.
From Australia, in the Sydney Morning Heraldlocal writers make their choices, including the great Tim Winton (author of one of our own Books of the Year: more shortly) going for a 'deadset masterpiece', The Overstory by Richard Powers (this is echoed elsewhere by Robert Macfarlane).
The Spectator's lists (both of best and overrated books) are always good: the first starts with Deborah Eisenberg's 'oustanding' short story collection Your Duck is My Duck, and the second includes one of our own books of the year, William Trevor's Last Stories (an extraordinarily high standard right to the end).
The Spectator in the USA has lots of interesting choices, many from the past. Keiron Pim, who is writing Joseph Roth's biography, is of course reading Roth a lot, including The Radetsky March.
The New Yorker's Best Books of 2018 by Kate Waldman includes that Marmite-writer Rachel Cusk's novel Kudos. Dan Chiasson looks at poetry books during 2018.
The New York Times Book Review has the 10 Best Books of 2018, which include Tara Westover's very successful memoirEducated, which reveals 'an irrepressible thirst to learn'.
The New York Times itself has Best Art Books and Best Poetry Books: Like by A.E. Stallings has been mentioned in several places this year.
National Public Radio from America has over 300 books from
their staff, which you can filter by the usual categories, as well as
'Rather Long' (including Michelle Obama's well-received Becoming), and 'Rather Short' (Kate Walbert's His Favorites looks powerful).
iNews has 10 Best Books, including the ubiquitous Normal People by Sally Rooney and Tara Westover's much-noticed Educated.
That great institution, the New York Public Library, has three selections: children, teens and adults.
The Washington Post's Michael Dirda's recommendations are here.
BBC Arts have 2018's 'biggest books' (not in physical size) with 'the perfect for...' sections, including Sarah-Jayne Blakemore's excellent Inventing Ourselves: the Secret Life of the Teenage Brain (the perfect book for parents, presumably).
Vulture's Best Books of 2018 by Christian Lorentzen is a good choice. Keith Gessen's A Terrible Country sounds interesting, and very much of the moment ('like a zombie parody of the Cold War).
Bustle is a newcomer to this round-up. Here, 14 Young Adult authors recommend their favourite YA books of 2018.
Another newcomer: the Church Times has readers' choices of books of the year. Anything Neil McGregor chooses is bound to be interesting: he goes for The Seabird's Cry by Adam Nicolson, 'as exhilarating and poignant a read as watching the birds in flight.'
iNews has its best books of the year, including Sally Rooney, William Trevor, and Tara Westover. A different name is Zadie Smith, with her new collection of essays, Feel Free.
Prospect Magazine rounds up the best books in politics. An excellent writer, Sarah Churchwell (who has previously written onThe Great Gatsby and America, has a new book out: Behold, America is 'indispensable'.
Times Live from South Africa mentions Tim Winton's great The Shepherd's Hut (so evocative of the landscape of Western Australia) and Michael Ondaatje's Warlight, which many had expected to be getting major prizes.
One of the best online magazines, Slate, has 10 Best Books of 2018 from Laura Miller, including the latest novel from Alan Hollinghurst, The Sparsholt Affair, and Tana French's latest well-received The Witch Elm.
Prospect Magazine has a list of 'ideas' books of the year (starting with Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now, a wordier version of Hans Rosling's Factfulness?), and one for history, including Gandhi, Churchill and de Gaulle), as well as economics.
Electric Lit's 15 Best Non-Fiction Books include Deborah Levy's 'memoir in essays', The Cost of Living.
Flavorwire'sBest of 2018 by Sarah Selzer identifies a 'mini-trend', 'books about women’s anger (both at their personal lot and at sexism at large)'.
No better place than Nature for Best Science Books (and shows) of the yea, such as Dermot Turing's account of the background behind his uncle's code-breaking, X, Y & Z: the Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken.
CBC has best Canadian non-fiction, including Tima Kurdi's The Boy on the Beach, based on one of the most distressing photographs of recent times, as well as best Canadian fiction, including the internationally-successful Washington Black by Esi Edugyan, as well as plenty of individual recommendations.
The English and Media Centre has a great list of Christmas reading recommendations (from all years, and all the way back to Middlemarch). Perfidious Albion, the 'Brexit-novel' by Sam Byers, is one (hard to match reality, of course).
The Big Issue's selection by Jane Graham of best children's books includes The Dam by the 'giant' of children's writing, David Almond.
GQ Magazine has 17 Best Books of 2018, with Assymetry by Lisa Harding featuring, which it does in many lists: Harding herself recommends Deviation by Luce d'Eramo, 'a novelistic treatment of her life experiences with Fascists and Nazis.'
National Review's 2018: A Year in Reading includes When by Daniel Pink, who is always worth reading.
The Seattle Times selection by arts writers includes books from previous years, but from this year comes Lauren Groff's short story selection, Florida (not all set in that state).
Verso Books' authors choose their favourites here. Teresa Thornhill goes all the way back to Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves.
The LitHubUltimate Best Books of 2018 list aggregates American recommendations, with Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation) and Tommy Orange (There, There) reaching 19 lists each.
The Atlantic's readers' choices are here, with A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles appearing twice.
The latest edition of the pupil magazine, The Submarine, has just been published, and you can read it above via Issuu (click on the arrows to go through the pages, click again for a closer view, and click the icon bottom right for full-screen). Tania Stokes, Avi Johnston and Edna Johnston put it together.
This Quizlet combines all five previous quotation sets to provide 98 quotations for learning practice. In each case it is important that you also think about the use of each quotation in providing evidence on comments about characters, themes and ideas.
The first of five sets of Quizlet flashcards on Macbeth to embed knowledge of quotations. College pupils can also see these on Firefly. Some basic principles of quotations -
Quotations are the knowledge-base and evidence-base for all answering.
Quotations are used to back up a point.
Options: organise by scene / character / theme. Many quotations will have multiple uses.
‘Tag’ quotations with a system. Make connections.
Re-reading quotations (and notes) is a bad learning strategy.
Use flashcards / Quizlet / a questioning partner.
Write down what you know. What gaps?
Go back again and again over spaced time: embed them so you can retrieve automatically.
Little and often. Keep going, especially while you’ve finished the play.
Last year the first Book Week, to promote reading by everyone at St Columba's, was a great success, and this year's equivalent starts on Monday 24th. Mr Jameson introduced the elements of it in a Chapel talk on Wednesday.
These include:
The Library will be open every day at break and at lunch-time as well as the usual hours.
There will be competitions in the Library (including staff ‘shelfies’) plus a new bespoke Book Week book token available from Ms Kent-Sutton.
Book speed-dating will take place for First, Second, Third and Fourth Forms in the BSR.
Drop Everything And Read will take place on Friday. All pupils bring a reading book to every class.
There will be an author visit fromRichie Conroy on Wednesday 26th from 11.00 to 12.20 in the BSR. There is a sign-up list pinned to the noticeboard in the Library.
The new National Library of Ireland exhibition Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again at the Bank of Ireland Cultural Centre in the centre of Dublin is superb, and the perfect outing for those who have studied Heaney. Below is a series of tweets about the exhibition, with photographs taken on the day it opened.
A tremendous resource for English teachers interested in some summer Continuing Professional Development is An English Teachers' Bibli-blogography from Team English in the UK. Here you can find a huge list of excellent writing about English. Links are grouped in categories such as Planning, Assessment Systems, Feedback, Cognition and Memory, Revision, Multiple Choice Questions, Spelling, Punctuation, Grammar, Vocabulary, Reading for Pleasure (Kenny Pieper should be added), Reading, Rhetoric, Description, Narrative, Analytical Writing, Context, Drama, Poetry, Shakespeare, Speaking and Listening, and literary elements of exams.
It's difficult to make any selection, given the quality of writing and advice, but here is a starter of three posts well-worth your attention:
