My colleague and I decided to improve our English speaking by reading the book 1984 every workday. We start a small reading group, listen the 1984 Audiobook and read aloud. Hope we can finish reading this book in one year.

I will share some interesting things and document what I learned.

How to order adjectives in English

it depicted simply an enormous face more than a metre wide the face of a man of about 45 with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features

In many languages, adjectives denoting attributes usually occur in a specific order. Generally, the adjective order in English is:

1. Quantity or number
2. Quality or opinion
3. Size
4. Age
5. Shape
6. Color
7. Proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin, or material)
8. Purpose or qualifier

Quizlet

After the first two days, my colleague decided use quizlet (https://quizlet.com/class/5050371/) to document the new words we have learned everyday, however, we didn’t start to use it, because we need do a lot of copy and paste work, lol.

Third person

The flat was seven flights up.

flight: A series of stairs rising from one landing to another.

A flight of stairs is usually defined as an uninterrupted series of stairs. This can mean the set of stairs between floors or the set of stairs between landings. The term is used in many different ways and there’s really no set rule for what can be called a flight of stairs.

The author use third person to describe Winston is living the the seventh floor. In literally, it means that Winston need walk up 7 flights of stairs to go to his home.