Living the Theory
Grammar: Inversion
A Level 6 English lesson exploring art.
What's in this lesson
A Level 6 (proficiency) ESL lesson on art, practising inversion. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: Living the Theory
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." So wrote Simone de Beauvoir in 1949, and so complete was her commitment to this idea that she spent the next four decades testing it against her own life with a ferocity that alarmed even her closest friends. She was not content to argue that existence precedes essence from the safety of an armchair. Her journals, her memoirs, and the extraordinary correspondence she maintained with Jean-Paul Sartre across nearly half a century reveal a philosopher who treated her own situated existence — her loves, her jealousies, her contradictions — as the primary data of philosophical inquiry.
Vocabulary
- authenticity
- bad faith
- reciprocity
- situated existence
Grammar: Inversion
- so + adj/adv inversion
- So complete was her commitment that she tested it daily. — fronted so triggers subject-auxiliary inversion
- such…that inversion
- Such was her suspicion of bad faith that she turned it on herself. — such fronted for literary emphasis
Discussion questions
- Have you noticed how people who write about ethics often seem to live quite differently from what they preach?
- Why do you think some philosophers become famous for their personal lives as much as for their ideas?
- Do you think it is possible to live entirely according to your own principles, with no compromise at all?
Living the Theory
Grammar: Inversion
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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