A Challenge!

If you are approaching the end of your first year of IGCSE English Literature study, you have probably already read at least one play. If you are approaching the end of your second year, you have definitely read at least one play.

I challenge every IGCSE English Lit student around the world to use xtranormal to create a video based on any scene, short dialogue exchange or speech from a play you have studied in your class. Creating your first video with xtranormal is free and easy and can be done entirely online at xtranormal.com.

When you have created your video, please post a link to it using the "comments" here on this blog. These could prove to be very useful study materials for others, so please try this, have fun and share!

Here's one example that I just made based on a scene in Act II of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman where Howard fires Willy.

Here's another example based on a speech in Act III, Scene II of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar where Mark Antony eulogizes Caesar. (I made this a couple of years ago using an older version of xtranormal, so had to split it into several small videos.)

Downloadable "Shakespearean Sonnet" Lesson

IGCSE English Literature teachers, here's a full 45-minute paper-based lesson that you can conduct in-class or assign as homework.

IGCSE English Literature students, here's a full 45-minute paper-based lesson that you can use on your own.

If, in your study of poetry so far in this course, you have studied poetic rhyme scheme and meter including iambic pentameter and you have also already read one or more narrative texts (novels, stories, plays) listed below, you are ready to go for this lesson!

Objective: To write a Shakespearean sonnet based on a narrative text.

Possible IGCSE narrative texts for this lesson:

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

My Mother Said I Never Should by Charlotte Keatley

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

Richard III by William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Journey’s End by R.C. Sheriff

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

“Games at Twilight” by Anita Desai

When Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai

“The Signalman” by Charles Dickens

“The Yellow Wall Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“How It Happened” by Arthur Conan Doyle

“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury

“Meteor” by John Wyndham

“The Lemon Orchard” by Alex La Guma

“Secrets” by Bernard MacLaverty

“The Taste of Watermelon” by Bordon Deal

“The Third and Final Continent” by Jhumpa Lahiri

“On Her Knees” by Tim Winton

Any other IGCSE Literature class text!


Click here to download the the “Shakespearean Sonnet” lesson handout.

When you have finished with this lesson, please feel free to share your final sonnets the “comments” section!

It will also be greatly appreciated if you fill in the survey below to help me in preparing future lessons.

Return of the Quizzes!

I have noticed that the quizzes posted six months ago on IGCSE English Literature poets and story authors have now each been visited about 3,000 times! I also notice that, as new posts are made to the blog, these quizzes are being visited less frequently, so am re-posting them now in hope that they will get more use. Enjoy brushing up on who wrote what!

Please Participate!

Please complete these short anonymous surveys to help me develop more learning materials.

Please be sure to answer these questions honestly and fully and not to look up information or ask for help from anyone. I need to know more about what you do know and about what you may not know. This should only take you about five minutes. Thanks!

Part 1


Part 2

In Our Time

After listening to the very interesting discussion of Lord Byron on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time, I went looking for other episodes that might be of interest to students of IGCSE English Lit and found several. Here they are.

"Charles Dickens" from 2001.


"The Sonnet" from 2001.


"Shakespeare's Life" from 2001.


"Gothic" from 2001.


"The Romantics" from 2000.


"Shakespeare's Work" from 2000.


"Shakespeare and Literary Criticism" from 1999.


"The Later Romantics" from 2004.


"The Charge of the Light Brigade" from 2008.

Story Recordings

Here are some online recorded versions of the stories you have read.


"The Signalman" by Charles Dickens




"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman




"How It Happened" by Arthur Conan Doyle




"Meteor" by John Wyndham (This one is a Canadian radio dramatization that strays a bit from the original story, so be careful to note the differences.)




"There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury



Here is another interesting video adaptation of this story.

Since the Russian animated adaptation of this story posted earlier has been taken down from its old youtube address, here it is again too.




"The Third and Final Continent" by Jhumpa Lahiri is available as an MP3 download for purchase on amazon.com . (If you have never bought an audio book through amazon, you can arrange to get it for free, but be careful to follow the rules or you may end up spending more than you intend!)


Unfortunately, an audio version of The Turning, the volume of Tim Winton's stories including "On Her Knees" is not available for download, but it does exist in CD format here.

Byron Stuff

I have just been listening to an interesting podcast about Lord Byron, author of "So, we'll go no more a roving" that may interest you.

Please note that though this discussion is about Byron, it is about a very long poem by him titled Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. It is not about "So, we'll go no more a roving". In other words, while this podcast includes a lot of interesting biographical information about the poet, do not expect it to provide "answers" concerning "So, we'll go no more a roving". In particular, please note that unlike Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, "So, we'll go no more a roving" is not written in Spencerian stanzas.

(Now that you know what this is not, here it is.)




On the subject of Byron, you may also be interested to listen to some recordings that are of "So, we'll go no more a roving". You'll notice that all these recordings are in song form and use the words of Byron's poem, but that they are also quite different from each other.


This one is by Gervase Elwes from 1911. That's right, about one hundred years ago, but also about one hundred years after Byron. The video is obviously by someone whose hobby is old recordings.



This is Joan Baez from 1964.



This is Leonard Cohen from 2004.

Which of these recordings do you think is the most effective adaptation of Byron's poem? Why?