Sometimes a song just fills the bill at Word & Song. And don’t fear! I’m not going to venture into children’s songs such as “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” which I’m guessing many of our readers fondly remember from their earliest school days. (If you have forgotten to sing such sweet little songs with the sweet little childre…

How strange are the currents of poetic and artistic fame! When the author of our Poem of the Week, William Blake, died at the age of 72, he had sold a grand total of 30 copies of what is now his best-known work, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. I’m including today two short poems from the Songs of Innocence, featuring the image of the la…

You know what I’ve never really talked out in our Hymn of the Week? What a hymn is! Often the most important things are directly in sight, which is why we miss them. The obvious thing about a hymn is that we sing it, and singing, says Saint Augustine, is what the lover does. He doesn’t mean that nobody else sings, but that the lover by the very pow…

With “road” as our word of the week, I had some good choices, including a favorite of mine, a late Beatles number, “The Long and Winding Road.” But I’ve talked about that here already. Some of you may have expected Elton John’s “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road” or even its inspiration, “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” from The Wizard of Oz. Or maybe a Ray…

Our Word of the Week, road, gives us a lot of chances to recommend again movies we’ve featured here — really fine movies, such as The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy and her dog Toto and her three faithful friends, singing along the Yellow Brick Road; or my vote for the greatest screwball comedy ever, a surprisingly profound film that shaves close to trag…

Specials on upgrades or gift subscriptions are up now through the end of April. People who study the art and literature of the high Middle Ages know that you get the merriest and most boisterous celebrations of Christmas then, and popular carols in all the languages of Europe. But you don’t get Easter carols — the high solemnity and the joy of East…

Our regular readers know that I try to allow the our Word of the Week to suggest our featured song. Often, the song just immediately comes to my mind, but there are times when a word doesn’t give me too many leads. Other times the word makes me thing of half a dozens songs, and I have to settle on just one. And occasionally I throw up my hands and …

Specials on upgrades or gift subscriptions are up now through April 30th A change of pace here at Word and Song — a film whose only connection to our Word of the Week is the coincidence that eight happens to be involved; or maybe there’s more, by way of negation. But let that be for now. Eight Men Out is a film that the director and writer John Say…

Specials on upgrades or gift subscriptions are up now through the end of April. Our Word of the Week is eighth, in honor of the great Eighth Day, Easter, the consummation of the ancient and the instauration of the ever-new. So you might think my mind would be on octaves, and in fact, many churches do celebrate an Octave of Easter, from Easter to th…

From now through Easter Week enjoy a 20% discount on new paid and gift subscriptions to Word & Song. Click the button below to visit the discount offer page. Easter Paid Subscription & Gift Offer Today we are revisiting at Sometimes a Song, as seems appropriate to the Saturday before Easter, a folk hymn that some of our readers have heard before. M…

Chapters 17-19, Teaching english & Chapter 6, Unlocking

Let's begin from the very beginning. There are so many acronyms related to ESOL. You have probably heard such words as ESL, ESOL, ELL, EL, L1, L2, and LEP. What do they all mean?