So, the origins of this lesson go back to the sunlight times when I taught the Cambridge Exams. Forster’s Howards End was a set text for, I think, CPE. I always loved the three letters that begin the book and those who have followed this blog for a long time will know a lot of the earlier lessons had a literature base. This then, is a return of sorts.

The text itself gives us the chance to do some Danny Norrington-Davies style grammar activities and the chance to really look at how we examine gist.

As always when I use some Literature in class it is only fair to draw attention to Gillian Lazar’s excellent book: Literature and Language teaching.

There is a lot of reading in this lesson and this gives us the chance to look at prepositions as part of chunks of language.

• Level: advanced C1/C2 (High upper Ints could maybe manage if scaffolded well)
• Aim: to examine tone and how it is conveyed in an authentic text
• Time: 2-3hrs

Materials:

• Worksheet word doc: Howards End Worksheet
• Worksheet PDF: Howards End Worksheet
• Letters word doc: Letters
• Letters PDF: Letters

Procedure:

For all of these activities I would recommend asking the students to look on their own first and then work in pairs or groups.

Reading and Reaction

The reading here aims to give the students the chance to react more naturally to the text than the standard gist questions. Answers obviously some are subjective here. Your job is to probe the reasoning. I have put some answers below. I would give them time to read, and then put them into groups to answer the questions.

1. How old do you think Helen is? (Why?) perhaps young – refers to aunt, whole style of the piece
2. What is the relationship between Helen and Meg? sisters
3. Who do you think Tibby might be? brother
4. Who are the Wilcoxes and where did Meg and Helen meet them? family they met while travelling
5. What is the impression given of the Wilcoxes? Sporty – different from Helen’s family

However, accept any reasonable answers. Here the key is to encourage the students to engage and come to their own conclusions.

Vocabulary from context and co-text

This activity is about building a skill rather than teaching ‘key’ lexis. We want the students to be able to work out meaning from context and co-text. The students will enver need the word wych-elm, but they will need to be able to see when a lexical set is being referred to as it is here.

1. it is a tree and they can see this from the following sentence ‘I quite love that tree already’
2. There are 6:

‘Also ordinary elms, oaks—no nastier than ordinary oaks—pear-trees, apple-trees, and a vine. No silver birches, though’

Focus students on the reflective activity, we want them to know why we have done the task. Ask them where they can use it next.

Grammar Focus

This is about moving away from established rules and looking at why a tense or structure is used and how they work together. This can be important as a lot of students can trot out the rules for tenses but don’t seem then seem to be able to use them productively. This type of activity aims to address that.

1. mostly present simple as it is a series of descriptions of things as they are now. e.g. ‘it is old and little’
2. This extract gives the chance to see different tenses interacting.

I looked out earlier, and Mrs. Wilcox was already in the garden. She evidently loves it. No wonder she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the large red poppies come out.

• Which tenses are used here? past simple / present simple / past continuous
• What difference in meaning do the different tenses show us here?

1. Past simple – used for main activity in the anecdote
2. Present simple – Helen’s comments on it
3. Past continuous – an activity that happened over a period of time in the anecdote.

The interesting thing here is the present simple which is used in an interesting way. The other two tenses follow what we would expect in a story.

3. Now look at the conditional in the sentence below:

…if you shut your eyes it still seems the wiggly hotel that we expected.

• What type of conditional is it? Does it refer to present / past / future / all time? 0 conditional talking about all time
• Why is it used here? I think to give them impression of this being like a dream – the idea of being able to go back to their assumptions about the house and people who live there.

Reading and Reaction II

Now look at the letter again and answer these questions

1. Is there anything unusual about the letter? things have been omitted, lots of fractured sentences, the use of burn this
2. What impression does Helen give us about Aunt Juley? that she is boring
3. Can you think of three adjectives to describe Helen? Any answers fine
4. Use your phone to find a picture of what she looks like to you and compare with your neighbour. Any answers fine

Reading and Reaction III

All answers in this section are up to the students, you should put them into groups and let the students discuss them before coming together in all class feedback to check them.

Preposition focus

The aim here is to get the students to focus on chunks of text. Too often students think of prepositions without seeing them as part of larger chunks.

There is the secondary aim in that looking in the letters for the answers gives them scanning practise.

1. We can scarcely pack in as it is
2. … and there are the stairs going up in a sort of tunnel
3. I must get on to my host and hostess
4. … she kept on smelling it
5. how good of her to come
6. the others do not take advantage of  her
7. I laugh at them for catching hay fever

Reflection

These questions are just to make them realise the point of the different activities so put them in groups to discuss and monitor.

There is a lot more you can do with this text if you wanted, but these are some hopefully interesting things.