Stephen DeVoy is our CELTA certified English instructor. He is also a degreed computer scientist, a degreed philosopher, and an inventor (two patents to his name). In addition to teaching English in Sardinia and online from the Republic of Georgia, he creates most of our online content and reference materials. Stephen is also our website creator. An interesting aspect of his technique is the use of Google sheets to generate content for our website. Stephen has programmed various Google sheets to generate the HTML code that produces our pages which are then published online.
Mikhail Bulgakov was born 15 May, 1891 in the city of Kyiv Ukraine. During the era of Stalin, Bulgakov was a suppressed writer. His famous novel The Master And The Margarita is a satire of the life of a writer under Stalin. The Master And The Margarita was banned in the USSR, but circulated secretly until "a censored version was published in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967, after the writer's death". I read the book on the recommendation of a friend in the Republic of Georgia, a former republic of the USSR.
Long has Sympathy for the Devil, a song by the Rolling Stones, been among my favorites. Recently, a friend in the USA mentioned that the The Master And The Margarita was the inspiration for Jagger's Sympathy of the Devil. This made sense, given the theme of the song and the plot of the book. I researched this connection and it turns out to be true. I was pleased to learn of this connection between one of my favorite books and one of my favorite songs. Below I offer two videos - one showing scenes from a movie based on the book while the song plays in the background and the other a music video for the song produced by the Rolling Stones featuring lyrics in the video.
There are many videos on this question. American videos take the view that American English is a better choice and British videos take the view that British English is a better choice. This video is from an Australian. I agree with most of her points. She argues based on the number of countries adhering to one standard or the other. While it is true that more countries adhere to the British standard, the fact is that in shear numbers, the number of speakers of American English is much larger, the influence of American English on media and business is much larger, and the comprehension of American English is more universal (due to the media and business influence).
Nevertheless, she makes a good point. If your mission includes impressing a British university for the purpose of studying there, the British are more strict in what they consider to be proper English. American universities, on the other hand, take a more holistic view on what constitutes proper English - a view more consistent with the position of linguists: all varieties of English are equally valid. In the USA, you are free to use British or American spelling and grammar. In the UK, a country with a much smaller population, universities expect you to conform to their own British dialect that they presume is "correct".
American English branched off from British English during the early colonial years of North America. Since then, it has evolved and flourished into its own and does not look to the English across the ocean as an authority on the English language. With a much larger population and greater influence upon the world, American English has become a source of new vocabulary for English around the world. While the powers-that-be in the UK imagine themselves arbiters of the English language, these Americanisms creep from the bottom up into British English. In reality, at this point in history, American English has a greater influence on the English language globally - not British English.
Working in conjunction with our sister project in Sardinia, Potenzia, led by Betti Uda, we will soon be offering our online meetups to English language learners in Italy. Currently, Stephen DeVoy and Betti Uda offer online and in-person English language classes in Sardinia.
(Betti Uda and Stephen DeVoy teaching English online in Sardinia, Italy)
I've decided to start a free online book discussion club hosted by Meet, Speak & Learn. I think it is a good way to help learners of the English language to improve their proficiency in English. Reading helps expand vocabulary and knowledge of grammar. Discussion improves speaking proficiency.
Since we operate in a global world, it is important to realize that many books are difficult to find in some parts of the world, so I will choose books that can be downloaded for free. I will also focus on books that are required reading for young adults in the Anglosphere. There are two reasons for this choice: the books are written at a level appropriate for intermediate learners and I suspect that having exposure to the same books that form the intellectual and cultural basis of most English speakers will help English learners have a frame of reference for common metaphors and references made by other English speakers.
I intend to cover the following books at a minimum:
Animal Farm by George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
On the Beach by Nevil Shute
I will cover others, but I think these are essential.
