California (Oxford Bookworms Factfiles)

Everyone has heard of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. Everyone has seen films from Hollywood. But what else do we know about California? This book looks at the cities and the mountains, at the sea and the deserts…

California is a book in the Factfiles subseries of Oxford Bookworms. As you may know, Factfiles is a nonfiction subseries. Many of the books are about places, and some about social problems such as the environment. Many of the books about places are about countries, but this one is about America's most populous state. Like many of the books, California has nine chapters: The Golden State; The Gold Rush; San Francisco; Parks; Highway 1; Los Angeles; The Desert; San Diego; and California. Some consist of two pages, as with the Stage 1 books, others of four pages. The first and last chapters (The Golden State and California) consist of only one page each. The last chapter has a nice large map of California, and photos are included on every page. The book ends with two pages of exercises and a glossary.

The language in general is fairly simple, but the impression is that it's noticeably more challenging than Stage 1 books. Most of the vocabulary is fairly simple, but there are many proper nouns. This is unavoidable in a book introducing a place, but may give an impression of difficulty to some students. Picking page 8 at random, the numbers of words in each sentence are as follows: 15, 14, 17, 10, 19, 11, 14, 8, 21, 11, 12, 10, 11, 12, 22. These figures give a mean of 13.8. One noticeable difference from Stage 1 books is the absence of very short sentences of fewer than 10 words, which may slow down reading speed a little.

The chapter that appealed to me the most was Chapter 4: Parks. The first park mentioned is Humboldt Redwoods State Park, which, according to the book, "is a twenty million year-old forest. Visitors drive through its fifty-two kilometre Avenue of the Giants to see some of the world's tallest redwood trees." The other parks introduced are Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, and Kings Canyon National Park. In Sequoia National Park, we can find the General Sherman Tree, which is 31 metres round and 84 metres tall. This chapter also introduces Lake Tahoe, which "is a favourite place for water sports, horse-riding and walking—and in the winter for skiing."

More on the Premier League

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Rafa Benitez was not made at all welcome during Chelsea's match against Manchester City. Chelsea fans remember him well from his time at Liverpool, when he often engaged in arguments with Jose Mourinho, the then Chelsea manager. According to the Dominic Fifield at the Guardian, fans held up banners saying: "Welcome to the circus starring Fat Rafa as the new clown."  Fifield suggests that Benitez "may always just represent Liverpool, ghost goals, plastic flags, a diving Didier Drogba and a bitter rivalry that flared brightly for six years".

The match ended as a 0–0 draw. Against Manchester City, the reigning champions, and taking into account Chelsea's recent poor results, that surely represents progress. 

Next week, Chelsea will be in Japan for what used to be called the Toyota Cup. Maybe that will represent a nice break from the Premier League! 

London (Oxford Bookworms Factfiles)

London—two thousand years of history. From the Romans and King Henry the Eighth to the city of today and tomorrow—and from St Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham Palace to Petticoat Lane and Ronnie Scott's Jazz club.

London is a book in the Factfiles series. Factfiles, as you may know, is a sub-series of Oxford Bookworms. London is a Stage 1 book.

The book is divided into nine chapters. Each chapter consists of two facing pages, with the exception of Chapter 1, which is an introductory chapter of only one page. The nine chapters are: This is London!; In the Beginning; Visiting the City; Some Places to Go; Westminster; Shops and Eating; Going Out; Museums and Galleries; and Places and Parades. These nine chapters are followed by a map and, as with other Factfiles books, some exercises and a glossary.

The language, as one would expect with a Stage 1 book, is quite simple, the only difficult feature being the large number of proper nouns, unavoidable in a book introducing a city. Sentences tend to be quite short and simple. For example, the 14 sentences on page 2 have the following lengths (numbers of words): 7, 17, 8, 15, 5, 16, 6, 21, 12, 25, 6, 10, 7, and 14. This yields a mean of 12.07 words per sentence. The general pattern appears to be a short sentence followed by a longer one. Looking more closely at the longer sentences, we can see that many are composed of two independent clauses joined by the conjunctions "but" or "and". If we count these as separate sentences, we get a new mean sentence length of 9.75 words. To cut a long story short, it is unlikely that any students would be overwhelmed with the difficulty of this book.

The most interesting chapters for me were those with some connection with history, particularly Chapter 2 (In the Beginning), Chapter 4 (Some Places to Go), and Chapter 5 (Westminster). Chapter 2 looks back over 2000 years of history:

The Romans came to England in AD43. They built houses and other buildings and made a town next to the River Thames.

This was followed five hundred years later by a Danish invasion, but

King Alfred was king of England then. He got the Danes to leave London and his men built the town again.

 

Chelsea

I had a network problem this morning so I can't do the full 10 minutes. You may have heard that last week Chelsea fired their manager, Roberto di Matteo, because of poor results over the last month. Chelsea fans were a bit angry because he had led Chelsea to victory in the Champions League only 6 months ago. But they were VERY angry when they heard who was to replace him: Rafael Benitez!

Ireland

Oxford Bookworms Factfiles is a sub-series in the Oxford Bookworms series. It is devoted to nonfiction, and most of the books are about countries or famous cities or environmental problems. 

The book I read today is Ireland. Generally, the book is quite easy to read. There are few embedded clauses, and the sentences are simple in structure. The average sentence length is about 10 words. There are some much longer sentences, but most of those are lists or have easy-to-understand clauses such as "because" clauses. The vocabulary is quite simple, with few unknown words that learners will need to look up in the dictionary. But the books do have quite a lot of information and the number of words is fairly large. Thus, these books are recommended for learners who are aiming to progress beyond very short and simple books such as Usborne First Reading or Oxford Reading Tree.

The book consists of ten chapters: A strange and interesting country; Around the island; The Irish church and people; The English come to Ireland; Death from hunger; Fighting to be free; Northern Ireland; Dublin; Stories, music and dancing; and A country for young people.

Chapter 2, Around the island, describes the geography of Ireland. Most of the mountains in Ireland are near the sea [rewrite], and the chapter explains that the middle of the island has many beautiful lakes and rivers. The north and west of Ireland are mountainous, so most of the farming happens in the middle and east. Ireland is famous for its meat and milk. "There are hundreds of small islands in the sea around Ireland." (p. 2)

[chapter 2 summary]

For me, one of the most interesting chapters was Chapter 3, The Irish church and people. Living in Japan, it is sometimes difficult to understand the importance of religion in people's daily lives in the Catholic country of Ireland.

Overall, the book was very interesting and useful for me. My knowledge of Ireland was very limited, and the book gave me lots of useful information and made me want to visit Ireland myself. As mentioned above, this book and other books in the Factfiles sub-series may be a useful next step for learners who have read mainly very simple books.

[368 words]

Football

The weekend in the Premier League was very interesting. Chelsea and Manchester United both lost, as did Spurs, meaning that several of the teams that traditionally are at the top of the table are having some problems. Manchester United's loss allowed Manchester City to go back to the top; winning the Premier League is very important for Manchester City this year, since it looks almost certain that they will be knocked out of the Champions League very soon.

One of the teams in the top 4 is West Bromwich Albion. They are usually in the middle or the bottom of the table, and sometimes out of the Premier League completely, so this is a great achievement for them.

Rutgers visit to PUK

I had a busy weekend. On Thursday, David Finegold, Senior Vice President at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey (near New York), came to visit PUK. Last year, we signed an agreement with Rutgers to engage in various exchanges, and this time he came to talk in detail about some ideas, but also to speak at our 65th-anniversary symposium. The symposium was very interesting. In addition to Professor Finegold, we had speakers from Cambodia and Taiwan. Professor Finegold talked about changes in India and China and how they will affect Japan.

Movies

Although many of the winter hit movies will be coming in December, there are also some interesting ones coming soon of playing now. The Cirque du Soleil movie, Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, is now playing at three cinemas. I've never seen the circus live, but the movie appears to be a combination of several of their well-known shows. It is playing in 3D.

A Nicolas Cage movie, called Get Back in Japanese, Stolen overseas, features Nicholas Cage fighting to get back his daughter, who has been kidnapped by a former friend.

Premier League

As usual, I didn't get a chance to see any of the Premier League matches this weekend, but they were pretty exciting. Manchester City and Manchester United both won, City beating Spurs while United beat Aston Villa in another comeback. Chelsea drew against Liverpool. Near the bottom of the table, QPR, Reading, and Southampton all drew, while Wigan lost to West Brom. After the weekend's matches, the top 3 are Manchester United, Manchester City, and Chelsea, while the bottom 3 are QPR, Southampton, and Reading. My prediction is that the relative orders of each group of 3 teams will change, but that the composition of each group will be the same at the end of the season.

Movies playing now and coming soon

Autumn and winter are traditionally a pretty good time for movies, though sometimes in late autumn there's a bit of a gap, as some movies are delayed until the holiday season.

Probably everyone has heard that Skyfall, the latest James Bond film, is coming on December 1st. It is already playing in the UK and USA, and has been getting great reviews. The previous Bond movie was affected by the writers' strike, so it will be good to see a 007 film of good quality. Skyfall has beaten all previous Bond films for weekend box office receipts. It is directed by Sam Mendes, who has until now directed quite serious movies such as Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road, and American Beauty.

You can see a trailer for Skyfall on the iTunes Movie Trailers site.

Another major release is of course the first film in the Hobbit series, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Just like Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit is also directed by Peter Jackson, and will be in three parts.

The weekend in football

This weekend was rather a disappointing one in the Premier League. Arsenal lost as expected to Manchester United, though the margin in the end was very slim. Chelsea drew with Swansea, perhaps rather tired after their Champions League and League Cup matches. Spurs lost to Wigan, and Manchester City could only manage a scoreless draw against West Ham. Everton are playing very well, but could only manage a draw against Fulham.