What´s the difference between the way people lived in the Middle Ages and the way people live nowadays?
You have read some texts about the Middle Ages: Feudalism, Life in the Middle Ages & Medieval towns in Britain. Now you have here some more activities to help you to learn more about this period. You will have to:
- Classify the main vocabulary and create a table, a mind map… so that it helps you later to write and talk about the Middle Ages (words related to people, verbs, adjectives, other key words, …)
- Compare the life in the Middle Ages with the life today. You can talk about different topics: food, clothes, homes, … (http://eldstrategies.com/functions1.html)
- Describe pictures about the Middle Ages: You should describe all you see in the picture and add some information about what you have learnt in relation to this period in history.
ACTIVITIES:
1. Middle Ages: Daily life & Quiz:
Read the information and complete the quiz. Write down the questions with the correct answer.
2. Middle Ages: Feudal system & Quiz:
Read the information and complete the quiz. Write down the questions with the correct answer.
3. Cities game-quiz: First, click on the picture and match. Then, do the audio quiz, write the complete sentences and underline the words filling the blank.
4. Medieval towns: Play hangman and guess the hidden words; then write the complete sentences and underline the hidden words.
Two pages from the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. After centuries of French-language dominance in England, Chaucer's decision to write in English (Middle English) shows a renewed interest in English at the end of the fourteenth century.
Here you have two scenes related to the Middle Ages and related to the book you are going to read. What can you see in the pictures? Who are these people? Where are they going? Why?
Introduction to the work and his author
Now look at the lines below. They belong to the original work (you are going to read an adapted version). What do you notice?
“A knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme he first bigan
To ryden out, he loved chivalrye,
Trouth and honour, fredom and curteisye.”
Do those lines look a little strange to you? They should do – they were written almost six hundred years ago.
Their author was a man called Geoffrey Chaucer, a writer who rivals Shakespeare for the title of England’s greatest poet. Although the English is a little difficult, and the words sometimes have different meanings to their modern ones, one becomes used to them.
Chaucer’s most famous work is The Canterbury Tales, in which 29 people gather at a London inn to make a pilgrimage to Canterbury. The host of the inn promises a free meal to the person who tells the best story on the way.
Among the company are a knight, a squire, a prioress, a clerk, all of whom compete with each other to tell the best story.
Now, you should be able to answer these questions
What are The Canterbury Tales?
Who wrote The Canterbury Tales? What do you know about him?
Why are The Canterbury Tales important?
Here you have some links to help you: https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-are-the-canterbury-tales
