The Girl with Green Eyes--One Way Ticket (Oxford Bookworms)

{Updated November 3, 2014}

The name of this story is important. In old Chinese stories, some ugly monsters have red hair and green eyes. In the West, however, we think that women with red hair and green eyes are beautiful and even sexy. When we see the name of story #1 in One Way Ticket ("The Girl with Green Eyes"), many westerners will think this is a story about a sexy woman.

Here is a portrait of Julia Roberts. Do you like Julia with red hair?

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo by PIX-JOCKEY (photo-manipulation)
http://flickr.com/photos/rizzato/6871398040/

Some more redheads appear below. What do you think of them?

South for the Winter--One Way Ticket (Oxford Bookworms)

{Updated November 3, 2014}

"South for the Winter" is a story about con artists (confidence tricksters) on a train. These are people who use clever talk to gain your confidence (make you trust them). All of this talk is a lot of con tricks, or confidence tricks (詐騙手法). Here are two kinds of con tricks:

1) Get rich quickly tricks, such as the Airplane Game:

The OFFICIAL rules (not the REAL rules) are like this: the "captain" (the captain flies the "airplane") asks 2 people to pay him $1000. These people are the "copilots" (copilots help the captain to fly the airplane). The 2 copilots each ask two more people for $1000; These 4 people are the "crew" (the crew work on the airplane, but don't fly it. They take care of the passengers). The 4 people on the crew each ask two more people for $1000 each.

With the official rules, each person gets $2000. This doesn't seem like a lot of money. But if you know the real rules, the picture changes.

Night Train--One Way Ticket & 熱愛火車的加拿大人 A Canadian Who Loves Trains 熱愛火車的加拿大人人

{Updated November 21, 2014}

One Way Ticket is about people taking long distance trains. "Night Train" begins in an interesting way: a man of fifty who likes trains. Does that sound strange to you?

Mr Harris liked trains. ... When he was a boy of ten, he liked trains. Now he was a man of fifty, and he still liked trains. 

In Europe and North America, many boys enjoy playing with trains  (Your teacher was one of them). Some people build model trains and train stations in their basements. Playing with trains is great fun! 歐美許多男生小時候都很喜歡玩火車 （筆者也是其中之一）。有些人在家裡的地下室鋪蓋模型鐵路、火車站。玩火車非常有趣！

If you have the book, remember to study the pictures. They definitely help you understand the story.

Here is one more picture and two short videos:

Lego trains are cheap, but some model trains cost much more money!

Spotting Mr. Freeze in front of the Lego Apple store ( flickr photo CC--BY JD Hancock)
http://flickr.com/photos/jdhancock/2952792290/

In Western countries, some people continue playing with trains after they grow up. In the daytime, they are teachers, doctors, lawyers etc, but at night they build model train tracks, add buildings and trees and play with their trains. Below is a YouTube video of a man in Canada who built a life-size train in his basement. Is he crazy? Maybe he's a bit crazy (he says he's insane), but so what! Actually, I'm a little bit jealous. 

在西方國家有些人長大以後還是一樣繼續玩火車。白天呢，他們當老師、醫生、律師等等，而晚上他們模型鋪鐵路、蓋房屋、種樹，玩起火車來了。加拿大有一位熱愛火車的人在自家的地下室造了一輛全尺寸模型火車廂。或許有人會說他有一點神經不正常，可是那又怎麼樣！他好像玩得自得其樂。其實我多少有一點羨慕他呢！

Syntax Trees: Basic Structure of English Sentences

Updated 27 October, 2914

S ---》 NP VP

“A sentence is made of a Noun Phrase and a Verb Phrase”

Most English sentences are made of (at least) a Noun Phrase and a Verb Phrase.  Other things can be added to the sentence.

英文句子（陳述句）的基本結構是：

名詞組 （NP, Noun Phrase) + 動詞組 （VP, Verb Phrase)

（有個別例外）

The following sentences come from the beginning of One Way Ticket (Oxford Graded Readers). Syntax trees show the sentence structure from top to bottom:

1A "Bill laughed" only has two words, a noun and a verb, the smallest possible declarative sentence.

1B "The two children were hot and bored" has seven words, but the structure is the same: NP VP

1C "The man in the brown hat talked and talked" has even more words, but the structure doesn't change: NP VP

1D "The  children  ate  their  oranges  and  were  quiet  for  a minut" is still NP VP, but the VP part is actually TWO VPs linked with "and"

The NPs and VPs can be expanded to show the complete structure. The complete trees below use some short forms:

DT = DeTerminer

CD = Cardinal Number

NN = NouN

NNP = proper noun (name of a place, a person etc.) 
NNS = plural noun

NP = Noun Phrase

JJ = adJective

ADJP = Adjective Phrase

VB = VerB

VBD = past tense (-ed) verb

PP = Prepositional Phrase (介詞組)

IN = preposition（用最具代表性的介詞當縮略語）

CC = Coordinating Conjunction (並列連詞)