Is a paling stout and spiky?

Won't it make you lose your wits,

Writing grouts and saying grits?

It's a dark abyss or tunnel:

Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,

Islington and Isle of Wight,

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough,

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?

Hiccough has the sound of cup.

My advice is to give up!!

Exercise 2. Read, translate, and transcribe the following rhymes. Repeat for clarity of articulation. Work for precision with a minimum of tension. After you have accurately mastered the phrases for clarity, work for speed in repetition. Continue the list of berries. Speak about your summer menu:

Cherries and strawberries,

Cranberries, blueberries,

Hawthorn and bird cherries,

Raspberries, blackberries,

Cornel, Cornelian Cherries,

Currants, wild strawberries,

Ash berries, bilberries,

Cowberries, gooseberries,

Mountain cranberries,

Barberries, sea-buck thorn

Black currants, red currants

I like them all!

Exercise 3. Read and translate the following poem by Carol Levin. Underline geographic names. Repeat them over and over. Accuracy first, the speed! Make a recording of the way you sound as you begin your studies, and then make a comparison, recording every six to twelve months:

Snapshot of Some Love

Wallowing in the Adriatic's surf in the village

of Petrovac, Yugoslavia I’m frozen in this photo

the summer France explodes its first hydrogen bomb.

The Doors, back home, hit the charts with my leitmotif:

Hello, I love you. The Supremes sing Love Child as I wail

This Guy’s in Love With You, Green Tambourine and Love Is Blue.

I’m looking good in a new nineteen sixty-eight hanky style

red bikini flaunting a torso supple and serpentine unaware

the volcano Arenal erupts for the first time in centuries in Costa Rica

and African-American militants engage in a fierce

gunfight with police in Cleveland, Ohio a week

after, in Buenos Aires, a soccer stampede tramples seventy-four.

I’m tilting my cheek for the sun to stroke. The aqua

sea endures under my eyelids. I’m secretly

pondering the pleasure of being the air traveling

down my own lungs, the diamonds of sand that sparkle

in the sun riding my thighs. I’m frozen in this place in this photo.

The Chinese believe that a person buried in the wrong place

will return to haunt the living. At the instant the photo snaps

I’m recalling voluptuous bliss falling into that state

of euphoria before chance scatters fibrillations

in the stomach at the accidental sight of him

in an embrace. And her

satiny skin, soft lidded eyes, silky black hair. The ecosystem

of my brain explodes, my breath erupts into a storm six

hours after that photo was stuck in time. One of the things

he didn’t mean to teach me, how promiscuous layers out of control,

trying to escape, rapacious but frozen are unable to find

an entente benign as the nonbinding nuclear

nonproliferation treaty thirty-six nations, in Moscow, are joining.

Exercise 4. Read the poem, discuss it with your neighbour. Remember that you are not in competition with anyone, and that you will progress at your own rate:

Juncture Where Victims Of Love Say Zip

Swam all those three days in a small blue

deserted bay we found. Had a nice quiet time

and recuperated from our trauma. Drove

haphazardly exploring remote villages picking up

people on the road in the middle

of nowhere and dropping them off when

they said to, still in the middle

of nowhere. Ran across several

who spoke some English. The men,

many of them had been seamen, loved

to tell us about where they’d been. How

many sweethearts, how many ports,

how each day was dangerous.

We said zilch.

At least it was a calm sea when we boarded

the only boat off the island, rinky-dink,

jam packed awful thing overnight

leaning out over a sea that appeared endless.

Maybe we’ll let you know our plans

when we know where we are after this,

this city honking and hollering, after

spiked snarls about straying eyes condense

our quibbles, after I fall into daydreams

of white wedding cake submerged in butter frosting

and emerge in the lull

of our reconciliation too cheerful, too airy.

Exercise 5. Read, translate, and transcribe the following song. Listen to it and sing it together with the soloist. Speak on the history of it. Who was the author of the Russian lyrics? Music? When was it written in Russia? Why is it so popular all over the world? Why is it translated into Greek, Spanish and other languages? Have you ever heard it in French or German? Write down the unknown words into your dictionary. Use them in sentences of your own:

Once upon a time there was a tavern,

Where we used to raise a glass or two.

There we used to laugh away the hours,

Thanks to all the good things we would do.

Those were the days, my friend!

We thought they’d never end.

We’d sing and dance forever and a day.

We’d live the life, we’d chose,

We’d fight and never lose,

Those were the days,

Oh yes those were the days!

Exercise 6. Read, translate and sing the following English folk song,

transcribe the text. Give three forms of irregular verbs. Use them in sentences of your own:

My Boney is over the Ocean,

My Boney is over the sea.

My Boney is over the ocean,

Oh, bring back my Boney to me.

Bring back, bring back

Oh, bring back my Boney to me.

Exercise 7. Read the following poem. Work for precision with a minimum

of tension. After you have accurately mastered the phrases for clarity, work for speed in repetition. Give three forms of irregular verbs, continue the dialogue:

Silence is Sacred Too

They split and the ripe sticky seeds

spill, hidden under Adam and Eve’s

dark green leaves, they are sweetest then.

Abundant, ok for us to lift our hands, gather

them to our mouth, the fragrance fills afternoon

air, the tree shades our eyes and we eat

and eat, sweet as honey ancient

figs and later, again, that night the nuns

we visit at the convent after chanting

evening psalms offer on platters of fig leaves

the ripe fruit we don’t tell them we ate

all day and we close our lips

on other sins I still keep

to myself forty years after.

Exercise 8. Read the poem by Ogden Nash. Discuss it with your friend, use the words whenever, whatever, wherever, whoever in sentences of your own.

Repeat the lines of a poem for clarity of articulation.

Friendship

To keep your friendship brimming,

With love in the loving cup,

Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;

Whenever you’re right, shut up.

Exercise 9. Read, translate and transcribe the dialogue. Add it with sentences of your own. Mind the usage of Imperative. Repeat for clarity of articulation:

- I’m afraid of the dark.

- Don’t be silly!

- I am scared of the dark.

- Don’t be silly! She’s scared of the dark. Scary cat!

- I am scared of the dark.

- She’s scared of the dark.

-Turn on the lights. Turn them on.

- Don’t be silly!

Exercise 10. Describe the room where you study. Make a list of objects in it. Use them in sentences of your own. Make up a dialogue about your working day. Mind the usage of nouns in the Singular and Plural.

Exercise 11. Read, translate, and transcribe the poem by C. Levin. Give comparative and superlative of adjectives:

Up

Crazy monks perched

monasteries on tips

of Metoeora’s black

rock peaks

hauling themselves up in baskets

in ancient days. We danced

at an ancient village bacchanal on a steep

slope the music echoed all night

until we were loony praying

for anything to keep our spirits

that high forever.