The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen, by Graham Greene 

 

 

There were eight Japanese gentlemen having a fish dinner at Bentley's. They spoke to each other rarely in their incomprehensible tongue, but always with a courteous smile and often with a small bow. All but one of them wore glasses. Sometimes the pretty girl who sat in the window beyond gave them a passing glance, but her own problem seemed too serious for her to pay real attention to anyone in the world except herself and her companion.

She had thin blonde hair and her face was pretty and petite in a Regency way, oval like a miniature, though she had a harsh way of speaking - perhaps the accent of the school, Roedean or Cheltenham Ladies' College, which she had not long ago left. She wore a man's signet-ring on her engagement finger, and as I sat down at my table, with the Japanese gentlemen between us, she said, 'So you see we could marry next week.’

'Yes?'

Her companion appeared a little distraught. He refilled their glasses with Chablis and said, 'Of course, but Mother…' I missed some of the conversation then, because the eldest Japanese gentleman leant across the table, with a smile and a little bow, and uttered a whole paragraph like the mutter from an aviary, while everyone bent towards him and smiled and listened, and I couldn't help attending to him myself.

The girl's fiancé‚ resembled her physically. I could see them as two miniatures hanging side by side on white wood panels. He should have been a young officer in Nelson's navy in the days when a certain weakness and sensitivity were no bar to promotion.

She said, 'They are giving me an advance of five hundred pounds, and they've sold the paperback rights already.' The hard commercial declaration came as a shock to me; it was a shock too that she was one of my own profession. She couldn't have been more than twenty. She deserved better of life.

He said, 'But my uncle...'

'You know you don't get on with him. This way we shall be quite independent.

'You will be independent,' he said grudgingly.

'The wine-trade wouldn't really suit you, would it? I spoke to my publisher about you and there's a very good chance … if you began with some reading …'

'But I don't know a thing about books.'

'I would help you at the start.'

'My mother says that writing is a good crutch …'

'Five hundred pounds and half the paperback rights is a pretty solid crutch,' she said.

'This Chablis is good, isn't it?'

'I daresay,'

I began to change my opinion of him - he had not the Nelson touch. He was doomed to defeat. She came alongside and raked him fore and aft.

'Do you know what Mr Dwight said?'

'Who's Dwight?'

'Darling, you don't listen, do you? My publisher. He said he hadn't read a first novel in the last ten years which showed such powers of observation.'

'That's wonderful,' he said sadly, 'wonderful.'

'Only he wants me to change the title.'

'Yes?'

'He doesn't like The Ever-Rolling Stream. He wants to call it The Chelsea Set.'

'What did you say?'

'I agreed. I do think that with a first novel one should try to keep one's publisher happy. Especially when, really, he's going to pay for our marriage, isn't he?'

'I see what you mean.' Absent-mindedly he stirred his Chablis with a fork perhaps before the engagement he had always bought champagne. The Japanese gentlemen had finished their fish and with very little English but with elaborate courtesy they were ordering from the middle-aged waitress a fresh fruit salad. The girl looked at them, and then she looked at me, but I think she saw only the future. I wanted very much to warn her against any future based on a first novel called The Chelsea Set. I was on the side of his mother. It was a humiliating thought, but I was probably about her mother's age.

I wanted to say to her, Are you certain your publisher is telling you the truth? Publishers are human. They may sometimes exaggerate the virtues of the young and the pretty. Will The Chelsea Set be read in five years? Are you prepared for the years of effort, 'the long defeat of doing nothing well'? As the years pass writing will not become any easier, the daily effort will grow harder to endure, those 'powers of observation' will become enfeebled; you will be judged, when you reach your forties, by performance and not by promise.

'My next novel is going to be about St Tropez.'

'I didn't know you'd ever been there.'

'I haven't. A fresh eye's terribly important. I thought we might settle down there for six months.'

'There wouldn't be much left of the advance by that time.'

'The advance is only an advance. I get fifteen per cent after five thousand copies and twenty per cent after ten. And of course another advance will be due, darling, when the next book's finished. A bigger one if The Chelsea Set sells well.'

'Suppose it doesn't.'

'Mr Dwight says it will, He ought to know.'

'My uncle would start me at twelve hundred.'

'But darling, how could you come then to St Tropez?'

'Perhaps we'd do better to marry when you come back.'

She said harshly, 'I mightn't come back if The Chelsea Set sells enough.'

'Oh.'

She looked at me and the party of Japanese gentlemen. She finished her wine. She said, 'Is this a quarrel?'

'No.'

'I've got the title for the next book - The Azure Blue.'

'I thought azure was blue.'

She looked at him with disappointment. 'You don't really want to be married to a novelist, do you?'

'You aren't one yet.'

'I was born one - Mr Dwight says. My powers of observation …"

'Yes. You told me that, but, dear, couldn't you observe a bit nearer home? Here in London.'

'I've done that in The Chelsea Set. I don't want to repeat myself.'

The bill had been lying beside them for some time now. He took out his wallet to pay, but she snatched the paper out of his reach. She said, 'This is my celebration.'

'What of?'

'The Chelsea Set, of course. Darling, you're awfully decorative, but sometimes - well, you simply don't connect.'

'I'd rather … if you don't mind … '

'No, darling, this is on me. And Mr Dwight, of course.'

He submitted just as two of the Japanese gentlemen gave tongue simultaneously, then stopped abruptly and bowed to each other, as though they were blocked in a doorway.

I had thought the two young people matching miniatures, but what a contrast in fact there was. The same type of prettiness could contain weakness and strength. Her Regency counterpart, I suppose, would have borne a dozen children without the aid of anaesthetics, while he would have fallen an easy victim to the first dark eyes in Naples. Would there one day be a dozen books on her shelf? They have to be born without an anaesthetic too. I found myself hoping that The Chelsea Set would prove to be a disaster and that eventually she would take up photographic modelling while he established himself solidly in the wine-trade in St James's. I didn't like to think of her as the Mrs Humphrey Ward of her generation - not that I would live so long. Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears. I wondered to which publishing firm Dwight belonged. I could imagine the blurb he would have already written about her abrasive powers of observation. There would be a photo, if he was wise, on the back of the jacket, for reviewers, as well as publishers, are human, and she didn't look like Mrs Humphrey Ward.

I could hear them talking while they found their coats at the back of the restaurant. He said, 'I wonder what all those Japanese are doing here?’

'Japanese?' she said. 'What Japanese, darling? Sometimes you are so evasive I think you don't want to marry me at all.'
                                                        

 

 

 

    Activity

google.com/presentation/d/18H3jvitXgUBAcxDblZfV1QrR-l35YspEJEJtHBJOLTE/edit?usp=drive_web#slide=id.p4

 

 

Step of reading activities

   

                 For better comprehension of the reading text some activities can be beneficial. Also some visiual aids will help to comprehend reading text. As it is known a reading activity can be divided as pre-reading, while or during reading and post reading.

               English language learners (ELLs) have great difficulty jumping into new texts without any background support. Students should know at least something about the topic before reading. Some topics may be unfamiliar to students, such as recreational activities at the beach if students have never been to the beach before. Pictures, drawings, or short skits can help develop relevant background information. Students need to know at least 90% to 95% of the words they read if they are going to comprehend the text. Therefore, it is important to use several strategies to build background knowledge that leads to better reading comprehension and overall achievement for ELLs. It doesn't hurt to review many words we often take for granted — not only for the benefit of ELLs, but also for students who may not come to school with a rich vocabulary background or exposure to certain experiences.  

   While-reading strategies can help the student to improve his ability to become more fluent in English, especially in the areas of speaking and reading. The while-reading activities I use in the classroom vary according to my aim in using a particular text. Hopefully, such strategies will help them cope with problematic and grayer areas of the text, such as identifying the main ideas of a text, which are also problematic for them in their native or first language.
   Post-reading activities offer the students the opportunity to make connections with the text(s) and their own experiences,self-expression, and creative responses in light of having read and analyzed the text. These activities enable students to apply a more global understanding and interpretation of the text and integrate information from different parts of the text.

ELT

The biggest practical challenges in using English language children's literature rather than readers created specifically for EFL/ESL students are:

• choosing an appropriate book
• preparing to teach, from writing lesson plans to developing supporting teaching materials
• brainstorming creative teaching ideas

This paper will serve as a guide for those who would like to use literature in the classroom with their young students, but aren't sure how to begin.

Introduction

For some readers, the very word literature brings to mind dusty, difficult books stacked in a rarely frequented corner of the library. Typically, in an EFL/ESL context, literature is associated with advanced university students or other high level adults. However, children's literature is an important part of English language literature as a body of work, and using it for EFL/ESL teaching has many benefits for students.
Given a creative teaching approach and suitable supplemental activities, children's literature can be used successfully as the content base for an integrated-skills EFL/ESL classroom. Appropriate selections give students exposure to new, illustrated vocabulary in context, provide repetition of key words and phrases that students can master and learn to manipulate, and provide a sense of accomplishment at the completion of study that finishing a single unit in a textbook cannot provide. Turning to the last page of a well-read book is a pleasure, and students feel a sense of accomplishment when they have mastered a piece of literature written in English, regardless of whether it is The Cat in the Hat or Ulysses.

The suggestions here are based on my teaching experience with first, second, and third grade EFL learners from fairly low to intermediate levels of proficiency. Most of these students were still developing a vocabulary base with which to navigate their new language, and so were in the pre-production to early production stages of language acquisition (Haynes 2001). As such, every phase of this approach aims to increase students' exposure to English and to help them build their English vocabulary.