Wednesday 2 March 2016

Shakespeare's English


This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of the man who is widely acclaimed as the greatest English writer - William Shakespeare.

This has inspired a lot of online teaching material where the words of Shakespeare are used as a platform for learning and improving English. Whether you are a native speaker trying to get your tongue around Shakespeare's poetry, or an English as a Second Language learner looking to pick up new vocabulary and expressions, there's plenty to take a look at.

BBC Learning English has a course dedicated to the Bard entitled Shakespeare Speaks which features many of his expressions which are still in use. It is broken up into a number of sessions, with each session containing various activities.

FutureLearn, a MOOC platform, has several courses on Shakespeare, either as a tool for learning language or for learning about the plays themselves. The British Council have a number of FutureLearn MOOCs, one of which features Shakespeare. The University of Birmingham also have several literature courses focusing on Shakespeare's plays. All these courses have run previously and get rerun in due course.

The British Council also have the 5 play summary video's from their MOOC posted on their Learn English Teens Literature UK page. These videos are accompanied by worksheets and online activities.

On Coursera, the University of Wisconsin has a MOOC entitled Shakespeare in the Community. It is scheduled to run again in April 2016.

On eDx, Wellesley College has a MOOC entitled Shakespeare: On the Page and in Performance. This course is currently archived but may run again.

Shakespeare is very quotable. For the marketing of my apps I use the following quotes which matched with pictures from Unsplash using Canva.



Hope you have plenty of fun learning about Shakespeare and improving your English.

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