An
Elementary Grammar
English - Secondary
English | Poetry | American Literature and Poetry | Myths and Legends | Media Studies | Libraries | Teaching English | Shakespeare | Activities to support the teaching of English | War Poets | British and Irish Authors and Poets | Books and Reading | Science Fiction | European Literature | Women in Literature | Reviews | Potitical and Social Issues | Contemporary Literature | World-Wide Communications | A Guide to Stories on the Internet | Classics | Drama and Theatre | Young Writer's
This is a no-frills guide to the raw basics of English grammar.
This site investigates the real Elizabethan voice, and offers pronunciation drills as well as insights into vocabulary, grammar and forms of address in the Elizabethan era.
Free resources for English teaching
GCSE Answers - English Department
The site is dedicated to the origins of new words and phrases such as ‘coach potato’ and ‘culture vulture’.
Within this site can be found a really useful rhyming dictionary.
This site provides a basic introduction to Old and Middle English through a piece of text from the Bible. This is backed up with details of the grammar, spelling, pronunciation and punctuation of both forms of the language.
Activities such as the Home for Abused Apostrophes and Words at Work will come in handy for Key Stage Three pupils.
Research
and Writing: Why the Step-by-Step Approach?
Key Stage Four pupils beginning their first critical essays would do well to start at this site, which explains a methodical approach to essay writing in a light hearted way.
Key Stage 3 pupils can enjoy learning about language with this site, which explores the origins of everyday figures of speech.
Ladyfingers
and Nun’s Tummies
The site exploring the origins of our language, Nun’s Tummies delves
into the history of our
terminology for foods, describing itself as a ‘linguistic banquet’.
Word
Wizard - Coining It
A site for those who are ‘narked by neologisms’, Coining It offers
a newly coined word or phrase every day, as well as archives of new words
previously featured.
Cliché
Finder
Enter a word or phrase and the cliché finder will search its databank
and return clichés containing it.
On-Line
Dictionary of Symbolism
A
Word A Day
Every day, a new word and its definition will be sent to you by e-mail. By
creating a rota, children can take it in turns to check the e-mail and then
deliver the word of the day to the class.
Elements
of Style
The book, of which this website is an online version, 'aims to give in brief
space the principal
requirements of plain English style'.
Quotez
Quotez is a quotations database site which includes over 13,500 quotations
indexed by the author's name and subject.
Plain
English Campaign
This site seeks to stamp out any excess, legalese or bureaucratic jargon
that has crept into the vernacular.
Familiar
Quotations by John Bartlett 1820-1905
This is an electronic version of the 1901 edition of John Bartlett's 'Familiar
Quotations'. A
good general reference tool for A-level and degree students.
Luminarium
With a title page of three stunning old-master paintings, illustrating the
medieval, Renaissance and seventeenth century periods, this site provides
high quality images and informative text, linked to good reference sources.
Grammar
and Style Notes
This site offers a useful alphabetical coverage of grammar, style and English
usage.
Poetry
Daily
New, modern poetry is the subject of this attractive website and a fresh
poem is displayed daily along with a small feature on its author.
Thematic
Poetry
A simple, multi-page site with poetry written by children.
The
Semantic Rhyming Dictionary
For those Key Stage 3 pupils who insist their poems have to rhyme, the Semantic Rhyming Dictionary provides a search engine for rhyming words.
New
Poets Press
The site offers links, writing and publishing tips, as well as competitions
and requests for submissions.
Glossary
of Poetic Terms
A must for any aspiring writer, this site provides an exhaustive list of
poetic terms as well as a wealth of poetic quotations from famous poets.
Poetry
and Medicine
An extensive collection of poems by Victorian poet W. E. Henley relating
to experiences of illness and hospital.
Sonnet
Central
An excellent introduction to the sonnet form built around a superbly-indexed
vast collection of texts by nearly 200 different poets.
Kidzeen
This is an online magazine with poems and stories written by and for children.
IndiaWorld
Poetry
IndiaWorld Poetry combines creative contributions from readers with essays
and
articles on established Indian poets, in English and in translation.
Russ
Filman’s Caribbean Literature
Useful for teachers approaching poetry from other cultures, this site provides
biographical and career information on writers from the Caribbean countries.
American Literature and Poetry
Huck
Finn Trivia Quiz
Key Stage Three pupils using ‘Huckleberry Finn’ as a pre-twentieth
century text will find a fun on-line quiz at the child friendly Bonus.com
site.
The
Pearl
A Cyber-Guide which offers Key Stage 4 pupils a selection of on and off line
activities to guide their reading of John Steinbeck’s novel.
Mark
Twain
This Mark Twain home page offers the full range of information on the American
author,
NativeTech:
Native American Poetry and Stories
NativeTech publishes beautifully illustrated stories and poems, and welcomes
submissions from writers of all cultures.
J.
D. Salinger: ‘Bananafish’
It contains valuable information, including a set of bibliographies, a mailing
list and a guide to tributes and rumours concerning Salinger.
To
Kill a Mockingbird
Useful study of Harper Lee’s novel with activities and links covering
the themes and characters in the novel.
The
Robert Frost Web Site
This useful introductory resource contains online texts of nearly fifty of
Frost’s poems along with a biography.
The
F. Scott Fitzgerald Centenary Homepage
Visually enlivened by a great many pictures of items drawn from the Fitzgerald
Collection, it also includes a comprehensive and well-organised bibliography.
What
the Thunder Said: T. S. Eliot
A good-looking site, this is devoted to a timeline of Eliot's life and complete
bibliography of his works, many of which are links to the texts on other
servers.
The
Vonnegut Web
This extremely well presented site covers American author Kurt Vonnegut's
personal and professional life, education and works.
The
House of Usher - Edgar Allen Poe
A light-hearted site suitable for younger pupils working with Poe’s
‘Fall of the House of Usher’ or his poetry.
The
Life and Work of Herman Melville
Sylvia
Plath
Provides clear academic information on Plath's life and works.
Raymond
Carver
This excellent resource features an exhaustively comprehensive biography
(plus chronology), a list of published works with details of the stories.
Legends
From King Arthur and Robin Hood, through 'Pirates and Privateers' and
'Swashbucklers & Fops' to Shakespeare and William Morris.
The
Moonlit Road
This site explores a range of spooky ghost stories and myths from the back
roads of America.
Although this site is aimed at advertising professionals, it will prove useful for students and teachers of media studies.
Presented like an electronic journal, the site offers reviews of media publications and has feature articles every month.
'Crayon' is a valuable opportunity for pupils to create their own online newspaper. It is a free service encouraging pupils to search the Net for news links to include in a paper created by the pupils and updated regularly.
Adbusters
Culture Jammers Headquarters
GCSE students working on advertising for their media studies will find a delightfully modern site here, which aims to parody the methods of modern advertising.
The
Readiness Is All - The Filming of Hamlet
Kenneth Branagh's four-hour, unabridged film version of 'Hamlet' is dissected
here on this BBC website.
Yahoo:
Top stories - summaries
The Yahoo / Reuters news service offers daily news stories as well as an
archive of older articles.
Highwired.Net
Teachers of Key Stage 4 covering non-fiction writing will find Highwired.Net
an easy way into producing student newspapers for the Web.
Excellent resource for developing library and literacy skills with printable activity pages.
Here you can search a number of online dictionaries including specialisms, e.g. computer terms and other technical talk.
An attempt to begin to find, select, organise, describe and evaluate the information on the internet.
This is an American on-line dictionary and thesaurus and is a fabulous resource for children and teachers.
his easily-navigable site provides biographical information on mathematicians in either alphabetical or chronological order. It is a good resource for cross-curricular links between maths, history and English. It can be downloaded for classroom use.
Norman
Crawford’s Literacy Page
This user-friendly site also draws upon and explains the primary National Literacy Strategy.
An excellent resource for teachers and pupils in Years 10 and 11. Guides on texts such as ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘Macbeth’.
This site contains free English lessons based on Reuters news articles that are ready to print and use.
Spelling
LessonsAn ideal accompaniment to Literacy Hour work, Spelling Lessons
provides a thorough database of rules and exceptions to rules in English
spelling.
Outta
Ray's Head : Tried and Tested Lesson Plans
A compilation of English language and literature related lesson plans, submitted by practising teachers.
Excellent animation combined with a variety of different approaches for different age groups makes this one of the best educational sites around. Games, puzzles and quizzes for ages 3 to 13+ are backed up with worksheets, software and ideas for teachers.
Houghton
Mifflin Spelling and Vocabulary
This educational publisher offers a site of engaging word games and exercises designed to provide Key Stage 3 pupils with strategies for dealing with complex spellings.
Resolving
Children's Reading Difficulties
The resources at this site will resolve all non-specific reading difficulties quickly, effectively and at about 20p per pupil. Of particular interest is the extensive User Database. The User Reports page lists all schools world-wide that use this resource and which can be contacted for unbiased opinion.
This is an online club for students and teachers of English as a Foreign Language or English as a Second Language.
Reading/Language
Arts: Web-Linked Lesson Plans
This site is aimed at teachers of Key Stage 3 who are using the internet in lessons.
This site provides a useful index to the various online literary resources maintained by the BBC.
NALD gathers, sorts, stores and makes available information on literacy programming, resources, services, contacts, events, awards, funding sources, and resources that can be used in the classroom.
A
Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection
This excellently comprehensive site for English students contains over 300 introductory essays, ranging in length from a short paragraph to a number of pages, on various writers, movements and issues relevant to detective fiction written before 1960.
The
Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
Mr.
William Shakespeare and the Internet
This excellent site supplements its outstanding annotated guide to online Shakespeare resources with an extremely detailed guide to the playwright’s life.
Surfing
with the Bard: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Guide
A searchable database of the complete texts of Shakespeare's plays and poems. Searches may be made for either a single word or an image or phrase.
A superb site enabling parents, teachers and children to explore Shakespeare.
It details the connection between the Elizabethan playwright and nineteenth-century artists, showing paintings in response to plays such as ‘Macbeth’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘The Tempest’. .
This is a theatre group that focus on performing Shakespeare to children and who produce material to help children to perform Shakespeare themselves.
This valuable introductory study guide to Shakespeare's works (plus a few other Jacobean plays), includes suggested questions and essay titles etc.
King
Lear - Love, Tyranny and Madness
Richard Eyre's successful rendition of this Shakespeare play was filmed by the BBC and this website is about that production.
The site covers 'The Merchant of Venice', 'The Tempest', 'Measure for Measure' and 'Twelfth Night'; providing information on the plays etc.
The maker of this site has delved deep into some of the lesser studied plays and has come up with some stinging insults.
A
Short Course on Shakespeare's Hamlet
There are some excellent critical and contextual materials, including online texts of some of the play's influences.
An attractive site that provides a visually stimulating, interactive online text of 'Macbeth'.
The overall aim of this site is to create a special event on Shakespeare's birthday every year, celebrating his work and exploiting the unique communication potential of the Internet to bring his wonderful plays alive.
Activities to support the teaching of English
The
Write Site
A multimedia language arts curriculum that makes the process of telling a
story fun.
Worldly
Wise Word Games
Get kids puzzling over words at this site which features dozens of word games
of the sort enjoyed by Lewis Carroll. .
KS 3 pupils will find it a fun and attractive reference point about new releases, as well as a resource on old favourites, such as the profiles of ‘The Sheep-Pig’ author Dick King-Smith.
Hundreds of cryptic and quick crosswords, wordsearches and other puzzles
The many activities cover a variety of curriculum areas including maths and English, presented in a fun and challenging way.
A language game that improves literacy skills by asking children to guess at the meanings of unusual words.
Presented with fun cartoons, Spellaroo is a motivating way to help Key Stage 3 pupils with their spelling.
Wild
World of Words Challenges
A colourful site that allows Key Stage 3 pupils to enjoy themselves whilst learning key spelling rules.
You will find puzzles and games galore to please and tease your mind at this site.
Creates word searches and puzzles.
This site offers an entertaining variation on vocabulary games. Pupils can choose between two games which ask them to match the correct definition to increasingly difficult words.
Biography
of Siegfried Sassoon
Desgined as an accompaniment to the Gravesiana journall, this site aims to establish Graves as one of the great literary figures.
The
Rest is Silence: Lost Poets of the Great War
Focusing not only on the more famous war poets (Brooke, Sassoon, Owen), but also some of the less well-known.
A thorough site providing a biography, analysis of Owen’s work and a variety of texts.
This site categorises a large bank of information on the First World War by country, art, literature, film, music and poetry.
The
Poetry of Siegfried Sassoon
The
Robert Graves Society Information Centre
A helpful site for teachers of WW1 literature. Online is a lesson plan and project for students studying the war poets.
British and Irish Authors and Poets
Part of a mammoth Victorian site, this useful resource relates Dickens to his period superbly.
The
Rochester Dickens Fellowship
An invaluable aid to GCSE students studying Dickens and adaptations of his work, this BBC site goes behind the scenes of a popular TV production.
G.K.
Chesterton
Providing almost everything the beginner wishing to study Chesterton’s
work might require.
Scottish
Writers on the Internet
Includes an index of Scottish writers past and present, a list of Scottish classics authors (including a short biography) and a Directory of Contemporary Scottish writers
Scottish
Writers: Fiction, Poetry, Drama
A massive database of Scottish writers, from modern day to the sixteenth century, this site is a valuable reference point for any student of Scottish literature.
This site, which a biography, chronology, and articles covering the influence of World War Two on Lively’s work.
A useful introductory companion to Hardy studies.
This site, maintained by the Thomas Hardy Association in America, includes reviews of and links to more than eighty websites related to the novelist and poet, Thomas Hardy.
This is an impressionistic anthology which aims to provide ‘an atmospheric view’ of the language of eighteenth-century sensibility.
Includes a plethora of information on the national bard including his life story, lyrics to his most well-known songs and a selection of the best of his poetry.
This site is suitable only as a brief introduction to the poet's work, containing texts of nine poems (with accompanying audio versions) and a bibliography of Heaney's work.
This site is mainly useful as a gateway to information on, and the works of, C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien and T S Eliot.
Affiliated to the Bronte Society, this site offers young readers information on the Bronte texts, as well as fascinating background information, reviews, articles and links.
Official pages for the Bronte Birthplace in Thornton, Oakwell Hall and Red House in Kirklees, and Gawthorpe Hall in Padiham near Burnley, as well as links to various other Bronte literature and tourism sites.
Into
the Wardrobe: The C S Lewis Web Site
An attractive site with plenty of information and illustration for pupils reading the ‘Chronicles of Narnia’.
This excellent resource contains almost everything someone approaching Donne might require.
Designed with young readers in mind, this site offers interesting background information plus a variety of activities to develop children’s understanding of the book and literacy skills.
Work
in Progress: a web-site devoted to James Joyce
A bibliography of online essays on Joyce, and links to online texts, this useful site includes maps of Dublin, recordings of the writer reading extracts from his work. Still to be completed.
Based around a busy and informative discussion group, this site’s other useful features include a detailed chronology, links to online texts of Milton’s works.
Includes a short but adequate biography with chronology and essays.
This interesting site attempts to place Moore’s poetry in its proper economic context.
One of the English language's greatest epic poems is available on this website in its original and revised versions. Each is divided into chapters and lines are numbered for easy reference.
This site offers criticism, access to texts and extracts, a biography and chronology of his works.
It features biographical information on Jonathan Swift, illustrations, famous quotes and features on the recent Channel 4 production of the novel.
This useful resource contains a number of online texts, including a complete version of the 'The Village Minstrel and Other Poems'.
Containing the text of most of Coleridge's poetry along with a wide selection of (brief) extracts from his prose (criticism, letters and journalism), indexed by source and/or subject.
Part of the massive Victorian Web resource, and benefiting particularly from that site's wealth of contextual material, this is probably the best introduction to Carroll’s work available online.
This site, part of the wider Victorian Web project, concentrates upon 'North and South', including brief essays on subjects such as Gaskell's relation to other Victorian writers and her political and social context, plus a biography.
Key Stage 4 pupils will find valuable information about Seamus Heaney at this site, which provides text and readings of poems including ‘Digging’ and ‘Tollund Man’.
This valuable resource includes not only online texts of Spenser’s works including 'The Faerie Queen', 'Astrophel and Stella' and 'The Shepheardes Calendar'.
Doris
Lessing: A Retrospective
Make every year a Year of Reading with this site, which organises an international Read In event. The project aims to keep older teenagers.
Downloadable reading ideas and literacy resources for those of all ages.
As it is aimed at the adult market, Book Reporter could be an excellent resource for teachers encouraging Key Stage 4 pupils to widen the range of their reading.
A celebration of books is the theme of this BBC website and it is relevant to all readers even though World Book Day has been and gone.
Year seven and eight pupils will enjoy this site which keeps young readers up to date with recent book releases.
The
BBC and the Year of Reading
This is the introductory page that leads you to the BBC's literacy and reading websites.
Aimed directly at teenage readers, this site offers reviews of new fiction. Pupils can browse through a range of categories such as ‘Boy Meets Book’ ‘Riot Girrrl’ and ‘Slacker Fiction’, for titles which have been approved by librarians.
Arthur
C. Clarke Foundation Site
Course
Materials for the Study of Science Fiction
Offers study guides for nine significant works, from Wells’ 'War of the Worlds' to Gibson’s 'Neuromancer'.
A helpful introduction to Kafka along with a brief chronology, a lightly annotated list of his works, and a large critical bibliography etc.
This is one of the best sites on Anne Frank because it has been created by the owners of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
This charity aims to educate against all forms of racism and discrimination by explaining the history of Anne Frank and the Holocaust.
Fyodor
Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Contains study guides for four of Dostoevsky's works.
Porta
Ludovica: an Umberto Eco Website
This well-illustrated site contains a wealth of information on Eco, including a detailed biography, an extensively annotated bibliography of his works (with long introductions to each of his three novels).
A
Celebration of Women Writers
Site also includes texts of over fifty works written by women in various genres (with a slight bias towards Canadian writers).
Dark
Shadows and the Power of the Female
For those attracted by either Gothic novels or Pre-Raphaelite painting this site is a must.
This is a well-put-together site that charts the work and progress of the key figures in American feminism over the last century.
An international online literature and arts magazine (sample only provided) written by and for English-speaking children up to age 13.
The BBC has come up with what they believe to be the hundred most significant writers, painters, architects, film-makers, designers, sculptors and poets of our century.
This is a varied and up-to-date collection of children's book reviews, mainly of US origin.
A ready-made role-play exercise, this is a well structured site with good links enabling relevant information to be sought supporting each of four role players' viewpoints.
True
Stories for Native American Youth
Presented with a strongly anti-racist emphasis, this site covers a wide range of Native American history, mythology, stories and other material, with the intention of preserving the oral tradition.
Just
Think Foundation - Youth Voices
A slick American site with the intention of teaching children to think critically about the media.
Erlangen
Centre for Contemporary English Literature
This site currently contains pages on seven writers including Tibor Fischer, Jane Rogers and Pauline Melville, each with a brief biography, primary bibliography and selected, detailed plot summaries.
Celestial
Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Oates Homepage
This informative resource contains a selection of Oates’s works (though little fiction), some online articles including the introduction to a recent biography.
A thorough biography, list of related links and video clips are all available for pupils studying Maya Angelou.
A detailed site, this page provides GCSE pupils with access to a variety of Alice Walker’s work, as well as biographical information.
Macondo:
a Gabriel Garcia Marquez Website
This well-illustrated site, currently under revision, includes a very detailed biography, a well-annotated bibliography of works by Marquez.
A
Few Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
'A Few Poems by Carol Ann Duffy' is exactly that; well presented e-texts of poems such as ‘Valentine’ and ‘Girlfriends’. While the site offers no background information on the poet, it does provide pupils with a chance to read her work more widely.
A website intended to encourage communication between schools and students world-wide.
An online magazine which encourages young writers to submit their work and asks young people to submit non-fiction writing about issues in their own locality.
Kids on the Net looks at life online and offline through children's eyes. This UK-based site publishes writing by children aged 6-15 at home and at school all over the world.
A site purely for teachers, Computer Pals is based in Australia and aims to have teachers from all over the world sharing ideas and experiences of the classroom. This programme is ideal for English teachers wishing to explore aspects of literature from other cultures and who wish to set up computer pals schemes for pupils.
This is primarily an education Internet service that aims to link members of the education community and provide resources for them.
Panworld
-newspapers on-line from Europe and the US.
This excellent site lists all the world's major newpapers.
A Guide to Stories on the Internet
One of many interactive stories available online, Amnesia involves its readers in a voting process to determine the next step in the mystery story.
This site provides very useful resources for students studying 'Dear Nobody', the novel by Berlie Doherty. Sections include a comparison between parts of the novel and extracts of the BBC radio playscript.
Didaskalia:
Ancient Theatre Today
This excellent resource combines a well-illustrated introduction to classical theatre, via its website, with materials to stimulate further interest through an attached online journal.
This is a useful site for teachers or educators involved in youth arts or classroom drama.
An attractive site aimed directly at children, this features a variety of areas aimed at encouraging children to see themselves as writers.
This site supplies young people interested in writing with an opportunity to submit articles, stories and poetry.
The site includes a range of frequently asked questions for young people interested in writing, interviews with other young writers and information on the writing market place.
Dead links deleted 11th December 2000
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