The Bride Price (Oxford Bookworms S.) - Softcover

Emecheta, Buchi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0194216454 ISBN 13: 9780194216456

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1989

Synopsis

"Oxford Bookworms" offer students at all levels the opportunity to extend their reading and appreciation of English. There are six stages, taking students from elementary to advanced level. At the lower stages, many of the texts have been specially written for the series, to provide elementary and lower-intermediate students with an introduction to real reading in English. At the higher stages, most of the books have been adapted from works originally published for native speakers. The language controls used in "Oxford Bookworms" are based on a syllabus specially created for the series by Tricia Hedge. This takes account of the more traditional approaches to grading and recent research into the nature of reading difficulty. The approximate vocabulary count for each stage is: Stage 1 - 400 words; Stage 2 - 700 words; Stage 3 - 1000 words; Stage 4 - 1400 words; Stage 5 - 1800 words; Stage 6 - 2500 words. All stages have exercises for classroom or private use, plus a supporting glossary to help students with vocabulary. Illustrations are used, especially at the lower stages, to help comprehension.

About this title

Review

An artless story about a young Nigerian girl who has to leave Lagos and go back to her mother's family village after her father dies. There she and her young schoolteacher fall in love, but she is kidnapped into marrying someone else, and a scandal arises from the lies she tells her kidnapper about her loss of virginity in order to escape him. Nevertheless her lover rescues her and they live happily until she dies in childbirth, confirming the tradition that a dowryless bride will not survive. Emecheta as in Second-Class Citizen (1975), explicitly fills in her lessons about the clash between modernization and tribal residues in the 1950's. Particular twists crop up when it is a WWII wound that kills the girl's father, and an Esso-built hut that the young couple is so delighted to move into. But the book remains a fairy tale, written with a certain genuine sweetness, offering nothing that would disturb - or especially challenge - an adolescent reader. (Kirkus Reviews)

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0194216454
• ISBN 13: 9780194216456
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 95