LEL #1-2

I've just finished doing my first two Learning Express Library courses. I decided to do one of the Grammar Skills for Writing courses, and one of the Fundamentals of Writing.

The first one I did was Grammar Skills for Writing 1: Punctuation in Sentences. I chose because I wanted to learn the specific rules of punctuation. At first, I thought it was nice, but it quickly became boring and redundant. I found it quite easy; I knew pretty much all the stuff in the course, which be another reason why I did not really like it. I still learned a few rules :
- When the first word of a sentence is a number, you have to write it as a word;
- You have to put a comma before a conjunction when you link two independent clauses.
- You also can't join two independent clauses with a comma without a conjunction; you have to put a semicolon instead of the comma.

I'd rate this course 6/10, because punctuation is very important when writing. Although it was a bit boring, it can't be a bad thing to review the rules of punctuation.


The second LEL course I did was Fundamentals of Writing 2: Drafting. It was more interesting than the first one. I especially liked the lesson about writing an introduction, since the introduction is always the hardest part of an essay to write. The course was also more difficult than the course about punctuation. I learned four interesting tips on how to grab the attention of the reader : using a definition, or a quotation, asking a question, and stating a surprising fact. The course also had a part about writing a conclusion, which is also a difficult when writing an essay. I learned that a great way to start the conclusion is to return to your thesis statement without rewriting it in the same words.

I rate this course 8/10. It was really well made, and it could be a valuable tool when writting essays, since it features checklists of things to do and things to avoid.

Tell-Tale Heart

Considered the father of american litterature, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809. His parents died when he was very young, so he was raised by a rich merchant family, the Allan. He enlisted in the army when he was only 18 and he was discharged two years later. His first published work was a collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in 1927.

The short story The Tell-Tale Heart depicts a narrator who tries to insist on his sanity. During the whole story, he states proofs that he is not mad. He tells the story of how he murdered the old man whith whom he lives. The man's clouded, pale, ''vulture-like'' eye obsesses him, disturbs him so much that he plots a way to get rid of the eye - to murder the old man. For seven nights in a row, he very carefuly and slowly opens the old man's door, and send a ray of light to the eye to see if it is open. The eye, however, is always closed. On the following night, the old man wakes up and sits up in his bed while the narrator is opening the door. Both stay perectly still for an hour. The narrator can even hear the old man's heart beating louder and louder. He jumps in the room of and murders him before hiding the body beneath the floor.

A neighbor heard noise however, and the police comes. They search the house but find nothing suspicious. The narrator is so confident that he made the perfect crime that he even invites the policemen to take a cup of tea. But then, his twisted mind starts hearing the heart again, and he goes mad. He admits that he killed the old man.