Tag: 英語

バックナンバー of the SQ1 Reader – Issue #2

From the Library

The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Stories is a wonderful first step into reading gothic literature. Retold by Adrian Kelly, these tales are still as spooky as Poe intended.

Illustrations also help the reader to get a better picture of some of the scenes described.

It’s a level 3 book from Pearson written at the A2 CEFR level, that means it is suitable for beginners and lower intermediate students.

It’s 11000+ word count sounds like a lot, but it would only take a student an hour or so to read. As it is actually 5 short stories it’s a nice choice for reading just 1 story a day.

SQ1 Original Content – Losing your Cool (CEFR B1/B2 Level)

Losing your cool is an English idiom. It means that you fail to stay calm and controlled. It means you got angry. It means you lost your temper. It means you snapped.

Will Smith lost his cool at the Oscars when he slapped comedian Chris Rock in the face live on international television.

It was a huge shock to everyone involved. The audience were not sure whether it was real or not. They probably assumed it was a bit, a comedy routine, that was part of the show. When Smith continued to shout after returning to his seat it was clear this was no performance. This was real life.

In real life, if you slapped a comedian on stage you would be thrown out of the venue and most likely arrested. Indeed, you probably wouldn’t be able to reach the stage before a security guard tackled you. In Hollywood the rules are different for A-List celebrities. What security guard would want to tackle Will Smith?

An hour or so later, after refusing to leave the venue voluntarily, Smith won an Oscar for his performance in the movie King Richard. The crowd even applauded his acceptance speech. It was a truly bizarre moment.

A man violently assaulted another person because of a joke. He then received a prize. It was a deeply embarrassing night for most of Hollywood, but it was a shameful night for Will Smith.

Study Tips – Mini-Dictionaries

Sometimes dictionaries are not very helpful. They give you a long list of words and you don’t know which one is the best fit. When you are a language learner it’s really tough to pick the right word for the right place and the right time.

Topic dictionaries can help you. A topic dictionary is a mini-dictionary. It collects the most common words you might need and arranges them by theme or topic.

They also tell you what level the word is. If it’s an A1 word you definitely need to know that as soon as possible. If it’s a C2 word you can avoid studying that until later if you want.

The Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries website has a collection of topic dictionaries you can use for free. Please give them a try!

Visit the topic dictionaries page by clicking here.

Thanks for taking the time to read Issue #2 of The Square One Reader.

If you enjoyed the newsletter, please recommend and share The Square One Reader with friends, family, and colleagues!

See you next Monday!

Matt Keighley

Representative Partner @ Square One Japan Ltd.

バックナンバー of the SQ1 Reader – Issue #1　ー　American Life

From the Library

American Life by Vicky Shipton was first published in 2001. It has had some small updates since then, but some of the information inside will not be recent. However, it is a really good book for seeing how much America has changed over 20 years.

It’s a level 2 book from Pearson so students can probably finish it in about 30 minutes. It’s around 3000 words long and has 26 pages. The book is full of photos and illustrations, in addition to lots of fun facts and bits of history.

If you don’t know much about America this little book is a really nice place to start.

SQ1 Original Content – The Opioid Crisis in America (CEFR B1/B2 Level)

In America, there is currently a big problem with people misusing painkillers and becoming addicted to them. In one 12 month period between 2020 and 2021 more than a 100,000 Americans died from a drug overdose. However, many of these people are not the stereotyped drug addicts we see in movies and TV shows. These are everyday people who became addicted to prescription painkillers after getting a prescription from their doctors. In particular, many people blame big pharmaceutical companies for aggressively and irresponsibly marketing very powerful painkillers for ever day use. It is a real tragedy that affects many communities across the US to this day.

Want to Learn more? – Book Recommendation for Advanced Students and Teachers

If you are interested in learning more, the book Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe is a fascinating non-fiction account of the history of the Sackler Family. This comment sums it up beautifully,

“A brutal, multigenerational treatment of the Sackler family… Keefe deepens the narrative by tracing the family’s ambitions and ruthless methods back to the founding patriarch, Arthur Sackler…His life might be a model for the American dream, if it hadn’t arguably laid the foundations for a still-unfolding national tragedy.” – Brian Mann, NPR.org

Study Tips – Anki Software

When I came to Japan I didn’t speak any Japanese at all. I wasn’t a fan of manga or anime either. As a result, I hadn’t had much exposure to Japanese language and I found it really, really hard to learn and remember new words. Kanji was especially tough.

I often went to cafes to study for two or three hours at a time. However, hours later I could not remember most of the new words I had learned. Writing was a big help, and so was watching western TV with Japanese subtitles turned on. The biggest help though was learning about the software application called Anki. It’s free software, although on a smartphone or tablet it costs about 3000 yen.

Anki is memorization software. It is popular with language learners and medical students in particular. Here is a youtube introduction for Japanese speakers.

I still use Anki today and I find it very helpful for picking up new vocabulary. The main benefit of Anki is its use of spaced repetition (click the link for the Japanese wikipedia page). This approach is now used in many different learning applications. If using Anki seems too difficult for you, please try a simple vocabulary application that makes use of spaced repetition.