新世紀(jì)綜合教程(英專)第二版 unit 7 Letter to a B Student課件

1、Unit7,Watch the video and answer the following questions.,1. What do you think of the boy that the teachers were talking about? What attitudes did the teachers have towards the boy? 2. Do you have any study problem? Whats your teachers attitude?,Pre-reading Activities - Audiovisual supplement 1,Audi

2、ovisual supplement,Cultural information,The boy had some study problems. Most of the teachers did not believe that the boy could make any progress, but the young lady thought that he could.,Open.,Pre-reading Activities - Audiovisual supplement 2,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,Teacher 1:

3、 Teacher 2: Teacher 3: Teacher 1: Teacher 3: Teacher 4: Teacher 2: Teacher 4:,The big kids been here for, what, a month? Hes still not cutting it in my class. Why does Admissions do this? I mean, its not fair to us or the boy. Theyre just setting him up to fail. I dont think he has any idea of what

4、Im teaching. And how would you know if he did? He wont even talk. He writes. His name. Barely. He threw this in the trash can. “I look and I see white everywhere: white walls, white floors, and a lot of white people. The teachers do not know I,Video Script1,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural informatio

5、n,Video Script2,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,Teacher 1:,have no idea of anything they are talking about. I do not wanna listen to anyone, especially the teachers. They are giving homework and expecting me to do the problems on my own. I have never done homework in my life. I go to the

6、 bathroom, look in the mirror and say: This is not Michael Oher.” He entitled it “White Walls.” Hows the spelling?,1. Quote Histories make men wise; poems witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Francis Bacon,Cultural information 1,Aud

7、iovisual supplement,Cultural information,improvement), in percentages, or, as is common in some post-secondary institutions in some countries, as a Grade Point Average (GPA). The GPA can be used by potential employers or further post-secondary institutions to assess,Cultural information 2,Audiovisua

8、l supplement,Cultural information,2. Grades Grades are standardized measurements of varying levels of comprehension within a subject area. Grades can be assigned in letters (for example, A, B, C, D, or F), as a range (for example 4.0 1.0), as descriptors (excellent, great,satisfactory, needs,Cultura

9、l information 7,Audiovisual supplement,Cultural information,and compare applicants. A Cumulative Grade Point Average is the mean GPA from all academic terms within a given academic year, whereas the GPA may only refer to one term.,Global Reading - Text analysis,Structural analysis,Text analysis,1. W

10、hat issues does the writer of the letter intend to deal with?,How should students regard grades, both good and bad? Are grades as important as they are assumed to be? Do good grades necessarily lead to achievements and bad grades result in failure in a students later life?,Structural analysis,Text a

11、nalysis,2. Whats the theme of this piece of writing?,It is explicitly stated in the first sentence of the third paragraph: to put a B students disappointment in perspective by considering exactly what the grade B means and doesnt mean.,Global Reading - Text analysis,Structural analysis 1,It introduc

12、es the topic of the letter.,Grades do not mean everything.,Getting a B in class does not mean one will always be a B performer in life.,1. Divide the text into parts by completing the table.,Text analysis,Structural analysis,In a complex society like ours, labels are necessary but they should be kep

13、t in perspective.,Structural analysis 2,Structural analysis,Text analysis,Structural analysis 3,2. Apart from the first paragraph, the rest of the text falls clearly into three parts, each of which is marked at the beginning by a key word or words. Try to find these key words.,Paragraphs 25: Disappo

14、intment Paragraphs 6-8: The student as performer; the student as human being. Paragraphs 9-10: Perspective,Main idea,Structural analysis,Your final grade for the course is B. A respectable grade. Far superior to the “Gentlemans C” that served as the norm a couple of generations ago. But in those day

15、s As were rare: only two out of twenty-five, as I recall. Whatever our norm is, it has shifted upward, with the result that you are probably disappointed at not doing better. Im certain that nothing I can say will remove that feeling of disappointment, particularly in a climate where grades determin

16、e eligibility for graduate school and special programs.,Letter to a B Student,Detailed reading1,Detailed reading,Robert Oliphant,1,Disappointment. Its the stuff bad dreams are made of: dreams of failure, inadequacy, loss of position and good repute. The essence of success is that theres never enough

17、 of it to go round in a zero-sum game where one persons winning must be offset by anothers losing, one persons joy offset by anothers disappointment. Youve grown up in a society where winning is not the most important thing its the only thing. To lose, to fail, to go under, to go broke these are dea

18、dly sins in a world where prosperity in the present is seen as a sure sign of salvation in the future. In a different society, your disappointment might be something you could shrug away. But not in ours.,Detailed reading2,Detailed reading,2,Detailed reading3,My purpose in writing you is to put your

19、 disappointment in perspective by considering exactly what your grade means and doesnt mean. I do not propose to argue here that grades are unimportant. Rather, I hope to show you that your grade, taken at face value, is apt to be dangerously misleading, both to you and to others.,Detailed reading,3

20、,As a symbol on your college transcript, your grade simply means that you have successfully completed a specific course of study, doing so at a certain level of proficiency. The level of your proficiency has been determined by your performance of rather conventional tasks: taking tests, writing pape

21、rs and reports, and so forth. Your performance is generally assumed to correspond to the knowledge you have acquired and will retain. But this assumption, as we both know, is questionable; it may well be that youve actually gotten much more out of the course than your grade indicates or less.,Detail

22、ed reading4,Detailed reading,4,Detailed reading5,Lacking more precise measurement tools, we must interpret your B as a rather fuzzy symbol at best, representing a questionable judgment of your mastery of the subject.,Detailed reading,Your grade does not represent a judgment of your basic ability or

23、of your character. Courage, kindness, wisdom, good humor these are the important characteristics of our species. Unfortunately they are not part of our curriculum. But they are important: crucially so, because they are always in short supply.,5,The student as performer; the student as human being. T

24、he distinction is one we should always keep in mind. I first learned it years ago when I got out of the service and went back to college. There were a lot of us then: older than the norm, in a hurry to get our degrees and move on, impatient with the tests and rituals of academic life. Not an easy gr

25、oup to handle.,Detailed reading6,If you value these characteristics in yourself, you will be valued and far more so than those whose identities are measured only by little marks on a piece of paper. Your B is a price tag on a garment that is quite separate from the living, breathing human being unde

26、rneath.,Detailed reading,6,Detailed reading7,One instructor handled us very wisely, it seems to me. On Sunday evenings in particular, he would make a point of stopping in at a local bar frequented by many of the GI-Bill students. There he would sit and drink, joke, and s with men in his class, men w

27、ho had but recently put away their uniforms and identities: former platoon sergeants, bomber pilots, corporals, captains, lieutenants, commanders, majors even a lieutenant colonel, as I recall. They enjoyed his company greatly, as he theirs. The next morning he would walk into class and give these s

28、ame men a test. A hard test. A test on which he usually flunked about half of them.,Detailed reading,7,Oddly enough, the men whom he flunked did not resent it. Nor did they resent him for shifting suddenly from a friendly gear to a coercive one. Rather, they loved him, worked harder and harder at hi

29、s course as the semester moved along, and ended up with a good grasp of his subject economics. The technique is still rather difficult for me to explain; but I believe it can be described as one in which a clear distinction was made between the student as classroom performer and the student as human

30、 being. A good distinction to make. A distinction that should put your B in perspective and your disappointment.,Detailed reading8,Detailed reading,8,Detailed reading9,Perspective. It is important to recognize that human beings, despite differences in class and educational labeling, are fundamentall

31、y hewn from the same material and knit together by common bonds of fear and joy, suffering and achievement. Warfare, sickness, disasters public and private these are the larger coordinates of life. To recognize them is to recognize that social labels are basically irrelevant and misleading. It is tr

32、ue that these labels are necessary in the functioning of a complex society as a way of letting us know who should be trusted to do what, with the result that we need to make distinctions on the basis of grades, degrees, ranks, and responsibility.,Detailed reading,9,Detailed reading10,But these disti

33、nctions should never be taken seriously in human terms, either in the way we look at others or in the way we look at ourselves.,Detailed reading,Even in achievement terms, your B label does not mean that you are permanently defined as a B achievement person. Im well aware that B students tend to get

34、 Bs in the courses they take later on, just as A students tend to get As. But academic work is a narrow, neatly defined highway compared to the unmapped rolling country your will encounter after you leave school.,10,Detailed reading10,What you have learned may help you find your way about at first;

35、later on you will have to shift to yourself, locating goals and opportunities in the same fog that hampers us all as we move toward the future.,Detailed reading,2. What, according to the author, has caused the feeling of disappointment?,It has to do with the general social climate where grades deter

36、mine eligibility for graduate school and special programs. This is why the author says there is nothing he can do to remove the feeling of disappointment.,1. What change about grades has the author mentioned briefly?,Detailed reading1-Quesion 1.1,The author has mentioned briefly the change in the wa

37、y grades are regarded, i.e. the norm has shifted upward.,Detailed reading,Detailed reading1-Quesion 1.3,Detailed reading,3. Has the author stated his purpose of writing in this paragraph? If yes, what is it? If not, where is it stated in the text?,The purpose of writing the letter is not stated in t

38、his paragraph. It is not specifically mentioned until the third paragraph.,1. How does the author explain the notion of disappointment?,Detailed reading1-Quesion 2.1,Refer to Paragraph 2. Disappointment is a negative feeling. It is the stuff bad dreams are made of. What deserves our attention here i

39、s that the author explains disappointment in relation to success.,Detailed reading,There does not exist the situation in which all those who are involved will turn out successful and no one feels disappointed. Wherever there are winners, there are losers. When someone feels happy about his success,

40、someone else may feel disappointed at his failure. In a highly competitive society where the importance of winning is emphasized so much, it is inevitable that those who fail in the competition will feel disappointed.,Detailed reading1-Quesion 2.2,2. How do you interpret the second sentence in Parag

41、raph 2 “The essence of success is that ”?,Detailed reading,What does the phrase “put sth. in perspective” mean?,Detailed reading1-Quesion 3,It means “judge the importance of sth. correctly.” So what the author wants to do is to show the students how they should regard / view their disappointment cor

42、rectly.,Detailed reading,Try to find out what a grade means and what it does not mean.,Detailed reading1-Quesion 5,It means the successful completion of a specific course at a certain level of proficiency. It is an indication of the students performance of some conventional tasks. However, it may no

43、t be a truthful indication of the students knowledge. It does not represent a judgment of the students basic ability or of his character.,Detailed reading,1. What is the authors view concerning social labels?,Detailed reading1-Quesion 9,Social labels are on the one hand irrelevant and misleading and

44、 on the other hand necessary in a complex society.,Detailed reading,2. How do you interpret the sentence “To recognize them is to recognize that social labels are basically irrelevant and misleading”?,Detailed reading1-Quesion 9,If we are aware that human beings, despite their apparent differences,

45、are basically identical physically and emotionally, we would think definitely that the social labels used to distinguish them are irrelevant, i.e. meaningless, and misleading, i.e. distorting the fact.,Detailed reading,How does the author relate a students academic performance with his future life?,

46、Detailed reading1-Quesion 10,While a students performance at school may be quite consistent throughout his school years and what he has learned at school may help him after he leaves school, in the long run he will depend much more on himself, i.e. he will have to learn to find his way when travelin

47、g in his life path. A grade B student may turn out to be a grade A life achiever.,Detailed reading,norm n. 1) an accepted standard or a way of behaving or doing things that most people agree with,Detailed reading1 norm,e.g.,You must adapt to the norms of the society you live in.,Derivation:,normal a

48、. normally ad. normalize v. normalization n.,Detailed reading,2) the norm = a situation or type of behavior that is expected and considered to be typical,e.g.,One child per family is fast becoming the norm in some countries.,shift vt. weakness,e.g.,I always suffer from feelings of inadequacy when Im

49、 with him.,Detailed reading1 inadequacy 2,Detailed reading,Derivation:,inadequate a. inadequately ad.,Antonym:,adequacy,Detailed reading1 inadequacy 3,Detailed reading,Exercise: Use the following words to fill in the blanks.,1. Unemployment can often cause feelings of and low self-esteem. 2. He doub

50、ted her for the job. 3. Will future oil supplies be to meet world needs? 4. While some patients can be cared for at home, others are best served by care in a hospital. 5. Our scientific research is funded.,inadequacy,_,inadequacy inadequately adequacy adequate adequately,inadequately,_,adequacy,_,ad

51、equate,_,adequately,_,Detailed reading1- essence,essence n. the most basic and important idea or quality,e.g.,The essence of his argument was that education should continue throughout life. Yet change is the very essence of life.,Detailed reading,Collocation:,in essence 本質(zhì)上，大體上,of the essence 非常重要的，

52、不可缺少的,e.g.,In essence, both sides agree on the issue.,e.g.,In any of these discussions, of course, honesty is of the essence.,Detailed reading1 essence,Derivation:,essential a. to be overwhelmed,Detailed reading1 go under,e.g.,His business went under because of competition from the large corporation

53、s. Poor Donaldson had no head for business, and it was not long before he went under.,Detailed reading,Detailed reading1 go / be broke,Detailed reading,go / be broke to become penniless; to go bankrupt,e.g.,The business kept losing money and finally went broke. I cant afford to go on holiday this ye

54、ar Im broke. A lot of small businesses went broke during the recession. 經(jīng)濟(jì)不景氣，很多小公司都倒閉了。,Detailed reading1 perspective1,Detailed reading,perspective n. a way of regarding situations, facts, etc.,e.g.,His fathers death gave him a whole new perspective on life. The novel is written from the perspectiv

55、e of a child.,The background of this picture is all out of perspective.,Collocation:,in / out of perspective,e.g.,He sees things in their right perspective.,e.g.,Detailed reading1 perspective2,Detailed reading,Collocation:,put / see / view sth. in perspective to compare something to other things so

56、that it can be accurately and fairly judged get / keep sth. in perspective to think about a situation or problem in a wise and reasonable way,You must keep things in perspective the overall situation isnt really that bad.,e.g.,Detailed reading1 take at face value 1,take at face value to accept somet

57、hing for what it appears to be,e.g.,She took his stories at face value and did not know he was joking. If you take his remarks only at their face value, you will not have understood his full meaning.,Detailed reading,Detailed reading1 take at face value 2,Detailed reading,Translation:,1. 如果這一生中我學(xué)會(huì)了一件事的話，那就是絕不要聽什么就相信什么。 2. 我們不應(yīng)只看到失敗的表面，而要從失敗中得出經(jīng)驗(yàn)教訓(xùn)。,If there is one thing I have learned in life, it is never to take anything you are told at face value.,_ _,We shouldnt take failures at face value. Instead, we should learn from our failures.,_ _,Detailed reading1 be apt to 1,Detailed