English throughout the Centuries. Teaching Archaic Possessive Structures to Upper-intermediate Level Students

Abstract

Facilitating access to knowledge of possessive structures and their accurate use in context can widen students’ linguistic horizon, improve their listening and reading comprehension, as well as their writing and speaking skills, thus leading to reliability and efficiency in English language communication. Possession is undoubtedly related to our existence in a most relevant way. Everybody owns principles, ideas, personal belongings, different kinds of properties, responsibilities concerning others’ lives. Thus, the matter of expressing possession is highly significant to foreign language learners, being at the same time engaging and easy to connect with real world situations. It is generally agreed that nowadays students are no more interested in reading. There are many old language forms that seem even more discouraging for intermediate level students who may be willing to approach literary texts. That is why we have tried to break down some cultural barriers and help students decode Shakespearean conversations. The current article focuses on the evolution of the English language in time and on efficient methods of teaching archaic forms of possessive pronouns to students.