A TOTAL of 20,803 Japan's public elementary schools have classes involving listening and speaking in English, according to the survey by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology. Sixth-graders have 13.7 hours of English classes a year on average. In more than 90 per cent of the schools, homeroom teachers teach English classes. Native-speaking assistant language teachers took part in these classes in more than 60 per cent of the schools.
Big win for blogger-turned-author
世界首届博客书籍文学奖近日揭晓
A YEAR-LONG tale of struggles in the kitchen to master French recipes won the inaugural Blooker Prize for books which started life as blogs, reports AFP. "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen", by US secretary Julie Powell, beat off 88 other "blooks" and scooped the 2,000-dollar prize awarded by Lulu.com, which claims to be the world's fastest-growing provider of print-on-demand books. The Blooker Prize is so named as a hybrid word combining book and blog.
