Lucian Blaga University, SibiuDepartment of British and American StudiesAna-Karina Schneider, PhDkarina.schneider@ulbsibiu.ro

THE BLUEBOOK

Things to Know by Heart in English:

1. Irregular verbs2. Irregular adverbs3. Irregular adjectives4. Nouns with irregular plurals5. Prepositions with their various meanings and the particular verbs, adjectives and nouns

with which they are used6. Phrasal verbs7. Idioms 8. Phonetics rules about long and short vowels and diphthongs 9. Rules about double consonants

The Most Sensitive Parts of English Syntax:

1. The Sequence of Tenses 2. “If” clauses3. The Subjunctive 4. Modal verbs and phrases

Things to Beware of:

1. False friends/cognates2. Run-on sentences3. Elliptical sentences4. Plagiarism 5. Beginning sentences with conjunctions (and, but, because, so etc.)6. Using the first person singular personal pronoun in essays

EXERCISES

Language

1. Translate the following words and phrases into Romanian: the river Ganges, trade, lovely, riverfront, sham, idiom, phrase, beware, orderly, to take a mistress, ruthless, 50 miles off, to tell the difference, board, boarding house, boarding school.

2. What is the difference between: raise and rise; by and through; tell and say; waist and waste; overpass and overcome; wholly and holy; conscious, consciousness and conscience; physiology and physiognomy; picaresque and picturesque; South America and the American South; tub and tube; college and high school.

3. Choose the correct variant: interested in or interested on; go in a trip or go on a trip; tell the truth or say the truth; overpass difficulties or surpass difficulties; arrive at London or arrive in London; arrive at Heathrow or arrive in Heathrow; go to London or go at London; famous by or famous for; inspired himself from or was inspired by; representant or representative; typical of or typical to; happy end or happy ending; playrite or playwright; was wrote or was written; to graduate from college or to graduate college; paid or payed.

4. Derive nouns starting from the following words: to hate, to analyse, lovely, to write, to interpret, to create, to motivate, to ignore, to develop.

5. What is the difference in meaning and pronunciation between: sore & soar, live & leave, its & it’s, boy & buoy, tale & tail, layer & lair, pray & prey, he’s & his, eight & ate, burrow & borrow, few & a few, plane & plain. Make up sentences with each of these words.

6. Translate the following words: library, college, mutual, phrase, sentence, bio food, accommodation, economical, apply/ make an application, PR, CPU, EU, MD, to download, to forward (a message), to reset.

7. Discuss the stylistic value of the following words: gonna, wanna, it’s, he’s, we’ll, don’t, can’t, won’t, ain’t, hi! (at the beginning of a letter), best/ love (at the end of a letter), ’cause, tho’, bro, sis, kid, mom, dad, a lot of, a kind of, but, nice, good, interesting.

Literature

1. Define and exemplify the following terms: blank verse, sonnet, epic poem, stream of consciousness, interior monologue, soliloquy, denouement, couleur locale, pantheism,

2. Enumerate, define and exemplify the three main literary genres. Tip: one of them is the lyrical.

3. Who claimed that he wrote “comic epic poems in prose” and what did he mean by that?4. Who claimed that he wanted “to justify the ways of God to Man” and what did he mean

by that?5. Name the greatest 19th-century novelist and the greatest 19th-century poet in English

literature and justify your choices.6. Which are, in your opinion, the key concepts of modernism? Name and define two of

them. 7. Name the greatest modernist novelist and the greatest modernist poet in English literature

and justify your choices. 8. Name the three greatest writers in American literature and justify your choices.

9. Give the titles of the works from which the following quotes were taken, and the names of their authors (you must be able to recognise at least 12 of them):“April is the cruellest month.” “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”“Water, water everywhere / Nor any drop to drink.”“I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox.”“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” “Not in entire forgetfulness, / And not in utter nakedness, / But trailing clouds of glory do we come.” “Frailty, thy name is woman!”“The President of the Immortals had ended his sport with Tess.”“Four great walls and four great towers / Overlook a space of flowers, / And the silent Isle embowers / The Lady of...”“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”“True! – nervous – very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am…”“I would prefer not to.”“Uri, be ’umble!”“For love all love of other sights controls / And makes one little room an everywhere.”“My mother is a fish.” “I gave commands; / Then all smiles stopped together.” “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself. / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”“I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o'er vales and hills…”“Reader, I married him.”“In my beginning is my end... In my end is my beginning.”“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights… Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards…”“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet..” “Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece -- all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round -- more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out.”

10. Which of the following statements are true and which are false?Paradise Lost is a novel.Joseph Andrews is a play.Dubliners is an experimental novel. The Faerie Queene was written by Sir Philip Sidney. A Passage to India is about the plight of the Irish people. Adela Quested is a character in To the Lighthouse.Graham Greene was a playwright. “The Good Morrow” is an aubade.

George Durrell was an Anglo-American novelist. Volpone is a novel.Gulliver’s Travels is a novel. George Orwell was a great stylistic innovator. Jane Austen was a romantic novelist. Song of Myself is America’s greatest epic poem. William Shakespeare wrote in blank verse as well as rhymed verse. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy is a realistic novel. Ezra Pound was influenced by William Carlos Williams. Ezra Pound was a woman.The mythical method is a classicist narrative method devised in the 18th century. Ernest Hemingway devised the iceberg narrative technique.