The Language She Chose to Keep
Grammar: Embedded Questions
A Level 5 English lesson exploring culture.
What's in this lesson
A Level 5 (advanced) ESL lesson on culture, practising embedded questions. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: The Language She Chose to Keep
"I had been living in English for so long," the Irish poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill once told an interviewer, "that when I finally returned to Irish, it felt like opening a room in the house I had forgotten existed." Ní Dhomhnaill was born in 1952 in Lancashire, England, to Irish-speaking parents, but she was spending her early childhood in the Kerry Gaeltacht — an Irish-speaking region on the southwest coast — where her aunts were raising her. She grew up bilingual, but it was English, with its global reach and institutional weight, that was slowly pulling at her. By the time she left for university in Cork, she was carrying both languages inside her, one dormant, one dominant.
Vocabulary
- deliberate choice
- dormant language
- generational loss
- linguistic exile
Grammar: Embedded Questions
- Past simple
- She switched back to Irish in her twenties. — single completed action at a known past time
- Past continuous
- English was pulling at her while she studied in Cork. — ongoing backdrop to a narrative
Discussion questions
- Have you noticed how some people switch languages mid-sentence when they get emotional?
- Why do you think people sometimes feel ashamed of the language their grandparents spoke?
- Is there a word or phrase in your language that simply cannot be translated into English?
The Language She Chose to Keep
Grammar: Embedded Questions
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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