Historical Criticism

MAN WITH A HOE 

BY Edwin Markham

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power.
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this—
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed—
More filled with signs and portents for the soul—
More fraught with menace to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries?

ANALYSIS

            

            Historical criticism is the art of distinguishing the true from the false concerning facts of the past. It has for its object both the documents which have been handed down to us and the facts themselves. We may distinguish three kinds of historical sources: written documents, unwritten evidence; and tradition. In the case of the poem, the evidence is written document.This poem  falls under Historical Criticism because it is based on the context in which a work was written, it also includes facts about the author’s life and the social and historical circumstances of the time. The poem shoes what kind of society the author has during the time he is writing the poem. As we can see, a farmer is the central character of the poem which reflects the kind of social stratification early societies has.Thus, the poem of Markham falls under the historical criticism because the status of the main character of the poem is being emphasized to show what kind of social leveling early societies has. It complies with the requirement of historical criticism where the background of the author is very reflective on his writing. The Man with the Hoe is a famous poem written by Edwin Markham inspired by the paintingL’homme à la houe by Jean-François Millet; it was first presented as a public poetry reading at a New Year’s Eve party in 1898, and published soon afterwards. It evokes the laboring of much of humanity using the symbolism of a laborer leaning upon his hoe, burdened by his work, but receiving little rest or reward. It has been called “the battle-cry of the next thousand years” and translated into more than 30 languages.

New Historicism

ELEGY 

BY Thomas Gray

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault
If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, —

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

‘One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

‘The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,-
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven (‘twas all he wish’d) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

ANALYSIS 

            

 This undoubtedly and naturally demonstrates the death of the forefathers and the men being put to rest within their tombs. Also, the use of the term forefathers gives clues that these men were of various backgrounds - farmers, politicians, fathers, rich, and poor. Thus, the elegy complies with the focus of New Historicist where they attempt to to describe the culture of a period. They regard text not only simply a reflection of the culture that produced them but also as productive of that culture by playing an active role in the social and political conflicts of an age.Thus, Thomas Gray can be criticized through the use of New Historicism school of literary criticism because “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem clearly demonstrating the history of and tradition the society particularly the death of man.Gray is able to express how all must die, and it does not matter if one is rich or poor, noble or a commoner, or a poet or a politician. Gray is also able to elevate the common man with the use of the elegy and freedom of wording and poetic style.

Comparative Criticism

Shelf Life

By: W.S.C Johnson

Two loose leafs of collected Plath
and ‘un-sent letters home’
are propped up by two tombs
of dust jacketed Hughes
accompanied by ‘aussie’ verse by Frieda.

Only the ‘old-master’ Heaney has spaces reserved,
Pollard, Holland and Padel exchange expletives,
just the brave Sophie and Hannah find time to write rhyme.

Three by Thomas of the valley lie flat on their backs,

undervalued and incomplete, buried before his time.

Duffy and companion front-up together.

Prof Motion and Sir Milligan, misplaced, rub alphabetic shoulders.

Zephaniah and McGough, are falling apart, having split their sides.

Fabre & Fabre elite classics are Bloodaxed, by the upstarts,

both fight off laughable laminates and glossy ‘self-pampered booklets’

by the overlooked, hard done by ‘vanity un-fair’.

Brave and upright, a spine of steel, yester-years young Owen

proudly stands ‘head and shoulders’ above the warring rest.

Pammie Ayres and Wendy try to Cope and take each other seriously,

Glossy and embossed, Paul McCartney is slotted in,

‘new kid on the block’, poetry or rock, lively or lyrical?.

Tennyson, Wordsworth and Byron solely occupy the elite upper shelf,

Shakespeare’s Sonnets are all ‘booked out’,

his plays and other ditty’s are filed under literature

ANALYSIS

I need to remind you that these exercises are meant to comple­ment, not replace, the usual analysis we carry out in our literature courses. As far as I'm concerned,  reading/appreciating  texts is still the primary occupation one expects of a literature class. The idea behind incorporating creative writing techniques and strategies in such a class rests on the assumption, let me repeat, that writing or "creating" is already, in itself, the clearest and highest expression of literary appreciation. In other words:  a good writer is necessarily already a good reader. Likewise, encouraging students to write imaginatively inevitably leads to their having a stronger grasp of ideas, which should prove helpful to them in their literary analyses, as well. In fact, I believe that as long as a student cannot use words to describe ordinary objects, she cannot be expected to use words to argue by or communicate complex ideas with.

The second activity I thought of telling you about today builds on the strengths that should've ideally been effectuated by these different exercises in description. It involves, this time around, the telling of a story—in particular, a story about a secret. It remains a poet's exercise, however, and in this case, the poet who suggested it to me is the Hawaiian American Garrett Hongo. I call it, simply, "Secrets," and what it does is to drive home the point that poetic writing involves imagining as vividly, as concretely, as meaningfully, as possible—a task admittedly difficult for beginning writers, who can only write about themselves, about experiences they themselves go through.

The activity goes this way: you ask your students to put down in writing, in a single, complete sentence on a small piece of paper they shouldn't write their names on, a secret about themselves. Because of the potentially scandalous nature of this exercise, I like to insert a proviso into this uneasy bit of instruction: the secret they write may not be completely accurate, even as it should, in essence, be "true." At this point the class becomes evidently excited.

Certainly, I've not always been able to prove myself equal to this challenge. There have been dark and dreary days. There have been days of abject frustration and despair. But what I will share with you this morning is not the bitter sap of any of those days—but, rather, the sweet nectar of the good days, the days when success seemed easy enough to achieve. Over the years I have been able to evolve a personal "style," one might say, of teaching poetry, and to a great extent it involves getting the students to write—not just reactions or themes, but still other examples of creative or imaginative writing.

Poetic Criticism

ITS A FEMALE FANTASY

 By: Ronnie Frye

I’m a premier dream team

you know whatta mean

I night-scape, bringing my five alive.

vain.., maybe, long ago, bit of a game!

not these days, I’m neat and meaty

but... not a lot like Warren Beatty.

I’m a romantic hit... not a Brad Pitt

got creative talent.. but no bank balance

a poetic muse, daring, suggestive, but never crude.

I haven’t got a car, can’t take you very far..

don’t make a fuss... please get on the bus.

I’m a ‘he-mail’, throaty and course

not a seductive radio voice., rather a Marlboro horse

no other vice., only chicken tikka with rice.

Got moist, rosy lips.., but, unlike your perfect pair

mine are red raw with, ‘sad’... down turned tips.

Don’t sing for a tenner... or in Vienna, I’m a fan who won’t cling

but I do own a sizeable ‘ding a ling’.

Cally-Ally, I’m not a match for Downey Junior

but energetic ‘green fingers’... will grow you a perfect petunia.

ANALYSIS

Literary criticism, poetic evaluation especially, has become increasingly negative. Forums designed for support in one's poetic ascent have turned into to an exhibition of ego-oriented digression, where one poet debases another and claims superiority. Commentary on poetry has developed into a competition, instead of a learning process. There are many methods of constructive annotation that are more successful than negative critique. One technique among these is the affirmative analysis approach, where the adviser emphasizes only the well written portions of the poem, and explains why he or she enjoyed it by using technical criteria. By implementing this method, the author grows confident and wary of what people know as excellent writing.

As I mentioned, the first activity I give my students serves to complement their reading: literature distinguishes itself from other kinds of writing because it trafficks heavily in image-laden words—words that renew our awareness of reality, of the world. Thus, unlike abstract argumentation or bare exposition, literature makes use of a whole lot of description. A simple way of putting it might be: where an essay will say that one is sad, a poem will show the sadness—by evoking it in the figures that may be found in the landscape where the persona happens to be, for instance.

This first activity doesn't have to be exhausted all at once: in certain instances, it might be wise to spread out a number of cumula­tive "description exercises" all throughout the semester. Since my students are lucky enough to be studying in a school whose campus is the last green place in the mega-city nightmare of  Metropolitan Manila, there isn't a paucity of beautiful things they can describe. Weather permitting, I sometimes hold  sessions outside the classroom and under the generous shade of UP's wizened trees, where I instruct my students to describe any particular scene or image that appeals to them then and there.

Or sometimes, I decide to make the class stay in the classroom, and bring an interesting, usually mysterious picture—a person, a flower, a landscape,  whatever—instead. At other times, I ask the students to each bring a picture or an object to class, and I raffle these off back to them: whatever a student gets she is asked to describe it in writing before the end of the meeting. Depending on what I wish to accomplish, I may or may not ask them to have a "direction"—which is to say, to be "meaningful"—in their descriptions. Thus, I cannot really say I require that their descrip­tive passages have a point right away. The more important point of this activ­ity is to help them bridge the gap between words and things, between language and the world it both serves and brings into being.

As a supplement to this, I ask my students to keep a journal which I collect at the end of every week and try to read and scribble feedback in over the weekend. Problems relating to grammar invariably present themselves on these occasions, and if the errors prove system­ic¾which is to say, enough students share them—I sometimes decide to devote a few minutes in the subsequent meetings to a quick review of these problem areas. (Offhand, they never fail to include varying combinations of the following grammatical topics: Subject-Verb Agree­ment, Tense, Pronouns, Prepositions and Idioms). My idea is that by asking students to write more or less constantly and with a generous amount of friendly supervision, these problems will resolve themselves somewhat. After all, the acquisition of language is necessarily a solitary thing—and as in any other skill, there is no substitute for hard and painstaking work, for practice.

Psychoanalytic theory

FAT CAT'S DANCE

by Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen

With a wolfish look 

to his calicoed face, 

and eyes of amber true , 

Fat Cat lumbers 

and keeps his place 

as head of cat household, 

demanding his due. 

With Maine Coon's blood 

in largeness of form, 

and length of shaggy coat, 

Fat Cat will wait 

outside the door, 

first in line for mealtime food, 

which he loves the most. 

When a new kitten comes 

into our house, 

twice now the others have died, 

Fat Cat, though male, 

without a grouse, 

adopts the mite, 

the other two go and hide. 

With leaps and bounds, 

he starts to play, 

amazing young and old, 

Fat Cat, so huge, 

with legs asplay, 

proceeds to dance, 

acting limber and bold! 

Dedicated to Fluffy 

a lover of kittens 

and all things catty.

ANALYSIS

       I need to remind you that these exercises are meant to comple­ment, not replace, the usual analysis we carry out in our literature courses. As far as I'm concerned,  reading/appreciating  texts is still the primary occupation one expects of a literature class. The idea behind incorporating creative writing techniques and strategies in such a class rests on the assumption, let me repeat, that writing or "creating" is already, in itself, the clearest and highest expression of literary appreciation. In other words:  a good writer is necessarily already a good reader. Likewise, encouraging students to write imaginatively inevitably leads to their having a stronger grasp of ideas, which should prove helpful to them in their literary analyses, as well. In fact, I believe that as long as a student cannot use words to describe ordinary objects, she cannot be expected to use words to argue by or communicate complex ideas with.

The second activity I thought of telling you about today builds on the strengths that should've ideally been effectuated by these different exercises in description. It involves, this time around, the telling of a story—in particular, a story about a secret. It remains a poet's exercise, however, and in this case, the poet who suggested it to me is the Hawaiian American Garrett Hongo. I call it, simply, "Secrets," and what it does is to drive home the point that poetic writing involves imagining as vividly, as concretely, as meaningfully, as possible—a task admittedly difficult for beginning writers, who can only write about themselves, about experiences they themselves go through.

The activity goes this way: you ask your students to put down in writing, in a single, complete sentence on a small piece of paper they shouldn't write their names on, a secret about themselves. Because of the potentially scandalous nature of this exercise, I like to insert a proviso into this uneasy bit of instruction: the secret they write may not be completely accurate, even as it should, in essence, be "true." At this point the class becomes evidently excited.

The twist, however is this: after the class have finished writing their secrets down, you ask them to fold the pieces of paper once or twice and to put them  inside a box or a hat (I bring my baseball cap to class just for this purpose). Everyone then gets to pick out a secret from this common repository—the moment a student happens to pick out her own secret, she is asked to refold it and put it back in, and to pick out another one. In the end, everyone should have someone else's secret in her possession.

The final instruction is a simple one, although it never fails to elicit a collective moan of despair from the class: they are now to write, in a page or two, the story behind and around that secret—a story that should be told in the first person, by the person (more accurately, persona) whose secret it supposedly is. The story doesn't have to be complete. It can end in the present or in the past. The important thing is that the secret gets to be revealed—and revealed in a well-described and interesting way.

The danger implicit in Lacan's 'grafting of an ambitious philosophy of "the human" on to an argument purporting to be a technical contribution to the study of specific mental disorders' has always been that 'the speculative welter of his own theoretical speech can easily drown out the undistinguished locutions in which ordinary human suffering finds voice. In his later years, indeed, 'Lacan seemed more interested in psychoanalytic theory than in clinical practice', particularly through his association with 'a circle of philosophers and mathematicians around his son-in-law, Jacques-Alain Miller. The result has been that a kind of 'militant intellectualism runs through the entire French psychoanalytic community...the problem of the philosopher manque.

At its most recondite - 'The One of meaning is not to be confused with what makes the One of the signifier...The Other is thus a dual entry matrix - Lacanianism could be considerd as 'in constant danger of degenerating into intellectual games. At its most succinct - Lacan's "mathemes" - as 'Serge Leclaire, who is one of the most respected and distinguished of all French analysts, remarked...they were basically no more than "graffiti.

At the least, however, as Lacan himself put it in the first of his Seminars to be published, 'through all the misadventures that my discourse encounters...one can say that this discourse provides an obstacle to the experience of analysis being served up to you in a completely cretinous way.

Cultural Criticism

The Battle of the Brain

By: Anonymous

the revolt is revived

a decade of woolly wars

...  all lost

defeated by the infiltration

of drug warfare

scatter bomb capsules

toxic terminators

first-aid, ‘pill-boxes’

‘anti-improper gander’

parachuted in by leaflet dropped prescription.

a reduction in brain border

forces and fodder

allows a ‘theatre of opportunity’

the level playing field

atop the brain roof.

potent drug arsenals are depleted 
the underground resistance begins to swell

auto pilots are shot down

the bug-bandits are shell shocked.

nerve endings are repaired 
roads to reason are re-built

the un-elected benzo-bullies

are on the retreat...

to the margins of the mind

and the deserted, long dead                                                     labyrinths of hollow cells. 

ANALYSIS

Cultural criticism is what is practiced by cultural critics, the formerly known as moralists and publicists, before those became dirty words. That is to say, they are those who have taken it upon themselves to describe the conduct of their fellow citizens to their fellow citizens, taking conduct in a very broad sense, including prominently that part of it which concerns ; to judge whether and how that conduct is wanting; and to suggest more desirable states of affairs. No principled distinction can be drawn between cultural criticism and the writing of newspaper editorials, just as there is none between book reviewing and ; the main social difference is that people who say they engage in "foo criticism" are now more likely to be university professors than the op-ed writers and reviewers.

There are differences between cultural criticism and  apart from the merely conventional ones made by publishers, tenure committees, etc. Sociology is not (overtly) normative, and at least claims to prefer statistics and data, and logical and methodological rigor, to personal impressions and arbitrary or conventional generalizations appeals. In reality, of course, much sociology is just disguised cultural criticism, and much cultural criticism is just conventional wisdom --- that is to say, prejudice --- in distilled form.

Imagery. Metaphor, simile, symbol, simple description. All poetry relies in conjuring up ideas through imagery. Literally speaking, of course, imagery would be about representing pictures in words, but in reality, it is about creating pictures or sensations in the mind which go beyond the factuality of words. In My last Duchess, the imagery is almost exclusively dramatic—Browning puts us into a fully imagined situation, but it is a situation largely without flowery language. To Autumn, on the other hand, uses ever poetic device to conjure up a completely sensual recollection of Autumn. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock uses elaborate similie, describing the yellow fog as if it were a cat, and powerful metaphor, but its fundamental imagery is the symbol of the women talking of Michelangelo, a symbol whose meaning is hinted at but never explained in the poem. A poem which is entirely built around one image is called a ‘conceit’.

 Versification. Does the poem have a rhyme scheme? Is it presented in stanzas on the page? Are there a particular number of stresses per line? Versification is the most mechanical thing you can write about in a poem. You should be able to name the common verse types hexameters are six stressed syllables per line, pentameters are five stresses. Iambic verse is where the stresses typically (but almost never invariably) fall as unstress-stress. Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be. That is the question” can be read as an iambic pentameter with a weak ending (ie, and extra unstressed syllable), although most readers will put the emphasis on ‘that’ rather than ‘is’. Heroic couplets are iambic pentameters which rhyme in pairs. A sonnet is a fourteen line iambic pentameter with a very particular rhyme scheme. Iambic pentameters without rhyme are known as ‘blank verse’, and are the main verse form in Shakespeare’s plays. Very few poets will stick to a rhythm or rhyme scheme slavishly. It’s also worth commenting on whether the punctuation comes at the end of the line, or the phrases run-on from line to line.

Formalism

ON A PENCIL (Essay)

By: Lydia V. Arguilla

ANALYSIS

Thanks for the question. Since it is not my job to do your homework for you, I will answer your question by describing what formalist criticism is, so you can think about it and find examples of it in Hamlet yourself.

Formalist criticism:  An approach to literature that focuses on the formal elements of a work, such as its language, structure, and tone. Formalist critics offer intense examinations of the relationship between form and meaning in a work, emphasizing the subtle complexity in how a work is arranged. Formalists pay special attention to diction, irony, paradox, metaphor, and symbol, as well as larger elements such as plot, characterization, and narrative technique. Formalist critics read literature as an independent work of art rather than as a reflection of the author's state of mind or as a representation of a moment in history. Therefore, anything outside of the work, including historical influences and authorial intent, is generally not examined by formalist critics.

That should be all you need to start looking for examples in your Hamlet text. Start by looking for ironies, paradoxes and metaphors; they should be easy to find. In order to learn something, you are required to put in the work yourself rather than dig up complete answers elsewhere. If you are not sure which examples to choose, just pick some that you think might be fitting. As a student, you don't need perfect answers; you are engaging in exercises meant to educate you, and this is a gradual process.

As a supplement to this, I ask my students to keep a journal which I collect at the end of every week and try to read and scribble feedback in over the weekend. Problems relating to grammar invariably present themselves on these occasions, and if the errors prove system­ic¾which is to say, enough students share them—I sometimes decide to devote a few minutes in the subsequent meetings to a quick review of these problem areas. (Offhand, they never fail to include varying combinations of the following grammatical topics: Subject-Verb Agree­ment, Tense, Pronouns, Prepositions and Idioms). My idea is that by asking students to write more or less constantly and with a generous amount of friendly supervision, these problems will resolve themselves somewhat. After all, the acquisition of language is necessarily a solitary thing—and as in any other skill, there is no substitute for hard and painstaking work, for practice.