Periods 2-3 Reading
整体设计
教材分析
This reading part provides three emails between two friends relating to the problem of being overweight and the experiences of losing weight. In the first email the young girl Amy relates to Zhou Lin the problem she has encountered—she is dying to be thin and how she loses weight. In the second email, Amy describes that she has had some harmful weight-loss pills, which causes her liver to fail. After the proper treatment, the girl dreaming of looking slim finally understands the relationship between beauty and health. In the third email which is from Zhou Lin to Amy, Zhou Lin expresses her worries about Amy and her own her ideas on how to keep a balance between looking good and feeling good. In a word, the topic is what students are concerned about and interested in. As a result, this topic will without any doubt arouse the students’ passion in the reading. At the same time, students can think about how to live a healthy life. By learning this unit, the teacher can also help the students to develop some good habits, which will have a good effect on their later life.
While reading the passage, some reading strategies should be introduced to the students-understanding sentences with “however” or “but”. When the students come across “however” and “but” while reading, they are supposed to guess the meaning of the following sentence which has something different to what has just been expressed. In this sense, these two words have a very important role in the understanding of the passage.
Meanwhile, various in-class activities should be well organized so that the students can take part in. In this way, the students are supposed to develop their abilities both in reading and in listening and speaking as well. Also, tables are used to help the students to find useful information in the text. More pair work and group work activities are designed for students to learn to cooperate with one another in the group. Besides, exercises in different forms are designed to help the students consolidate the usage of new words and phrases as well as language points.
三维目标
1. Train the students’ reading ability, introducing the important role of the two conjunctions however and but in reading by means of quoting the examples of these two conjunctions in the text.
2. Encourage the students to learn to discuss the different ways of losing weight and having a slim figure.
3. Learn some useful words and expressions
ashamed, weight-loss, priceless, recover from liver failure, contain, harmful, chemical, operation, exact, match, follow one’s advice, damage one’s health, attractive, embarrassed, pressure, overweight, go on diets, in secret, properly
4. Learn some important sentence structures
1)be worth doing, be embarrassed about, donate something to somebody 2)It is not until that 重点难点
1. Help the students to learn about the relationship between appearance and health and search for as many healthy ways as possible to lose weight and keep a slim figure.
2. Help the students to learn to use some of the new words and expressions.
3. Help the students to learn to make a booklet about how to keep feeling good and looking
good at the same time.
教学方法
1. Pair work and group discussion. 2. Task-based in class activities.
3. Explanations of some language points. 教具准备
A tape recorder and the multimedia
课前准备
1. Ask the students to prepare for a free talk for about two or three minutes. They can discuss the important effects of appearance on one’s confidence or say something about the different ways of losing weight, or even make a plan to lead a healthy life. This will help the students to get involved in the in-class activities and help them to keep a strong body and good figure. Considering some students may feel difficulty in doing such a group discussion, the teacher can help them to search for enough information and get well prepared before class.
2. Encourage the students to go to the library or resort to the Internet to get some examples about how famous people keep figure, which might succeed or fail. They can also be divided into several groups to share the information they have found and try to figure their own way to keep a strong body and a slim figure.
reading strategy on page 43. If time permits, ask them to finish exercises C1, C2 and D1, D2 on page 43 to make preparations for a better understanding of the text.
教学过程
→Step 1 Revision and Lead-in Check the homework
At the end of the previous class, the students are asked to find out the causes of the appearance of an increase number of overweight children in China today as well as the effect that fatness has on life and problems that fat people may encounter. At the beginning of this class, encourage the students to speak out their discoveries in front of the whole class to make a presentation. After one student finishes his or her free-talk, other students or the teacher can ask him or her some questions.
For the teacher, it is necessary to point out the fact that the real wealthy people in foreign countries usually eat good food instead of “much food”. On the contrary, poor people tend to eat more. In this sense, overeating is obviously not a sign of being rich. Also, it has been proved that those successful and wealthy people attach much importance to taking exercise after work, which is believed to have a significant effect on their life and career.
(If the multimedia is available, this design is recommended. )
Show part of the video about the movie with Lious Liu and Zhen as the leading role(瘦身男女), and ask the students to describe some of the scenes in the movie/some of the pictures about losing weight.
→Step 2 Reading skimming
Come to the reading material, which is made up of three letters written by two good friends who exchange their opinions about appearance and health after one of them has suffered after trying to lose weight in an unsafe way. Amy, a Canadian girl, gives a vivid description of losing weight and the following bad effects. Ask the students to read the text quickly and answer the
three questions in Part A.
Check the answers: 1. Canada
2. Weight-loss pills called Fat-less 3. The weight-loss pills
After the students finish it, the teacher can ask students their ways of doing fast reading. In other words, how to get the answers in such a short time?
The teacher should help the students to review the reading strategies of skimming and scanning in the process of looking for the useful information in a quickest way. The students have learned these two reading strategies at the very beginning of the semester and they have been practicing them in the reading training in and after class. Therefore, they are supposed to be very familiar with the two strategies and able to use them freely in the reading practice.
At the same time, focus the students’ attention on the Reading Strategy in this unit. Try to make the students understand and distinguish the differences between “however” and “but”.
1)Read through the Reading Strategy together with the students, asking them: What can you expect in the following sentences or passage whenever you see the two words in an article?
2)Ask the students to underline all the sentences which have the word “but” and “however” in the text.
Brainstorming
Before asking the students to do careful reading of this reading passage, divide the whole class into small groups with four students in a group. And then ask them to have brainstorming.
Question:
Suppose one of your friends is addicted to losing weight and have tried many ways, which, however, are of little use. Do you think you can manage to help him or her out of the trouble and stay a healthy life?
This design, which has been introduced in Unit 1, is used to help the students to get familiar with how to predict what to read in this passage, to learn how to select different materials, and to get the students more interested in reading the passage, to push the students to get involved in the class more actively and share their opinions with other students confidently. In this way, more students are given opportunities to speak in class. While the students are having a discussion, the teacher can go into the students, give them some inspiration, listen to their creative ideas and sometimes can even help them with some difficult expressions. In this way, the teacher and the students will be able to have an interactive communication.
List all the possible ways raised by the students on the blackboard. The teacher also can put forward some other ideas according to the text.
Possible answers: To go on a diet.
To exercise in the gym.
To receive surgical treatment.
To take weight-loss pills with the help of the doctor. Don’t eat junk food.
Try and eat a healthy diet. Don’t go to bed too late.
Make sure you get sufficient sleep. Get regular exercise.
Go to see the doctor if you are not feeling well.
Don’t spend too much time using computers or watching TV, as it is bad for your eyes and will cause you to put on weight.
Learn to accept and respect herself and her body and then aim for a realistic weight.
First make a change deep inside, a change that will affect your entire outlook on weight loss. Learn to treat it with love and respect. Listening for information
After the students give some suggested answers, ask them to listen to the tape of the text with their books closed, and then guess the meaning of the title of the passage “Dying to be thin”. Then after the listening, check the answers.
Possible answers:
1. The first meaning of the title is that Amy wanted to be thin very much.
2. The second meaning is that Amy was going to die because she had taken some weight-loss pills.
Scanning
Now it’s time for the students to scan the passage to get some detailed information quickly. Ask the students to have a group competition. Team work is very helpful in students’ learning English because students should be encouraged to use English in daily life. Competition will arouse students’ interest in taking part in the in-class activities. Tell the students that they will be divided into four groups, group 1, 2, 3, and 4, or they can be divided into 2 groups as Boys VS Girls. They are encouraged to find out the details about the things talked about in the text and answer the following questions. When anyone of them gets one of them, he or she will obtain 10 marks for his or her group. Ask them to remember to use the reading strategy-scanning.
Questions:
1. What is Amy’s job?
2. Why dose she try to lose weight? 3. Was Amy dying to be thin?
4. How does she try to lose weight? 5. What’s the result of taking the pills? 6. Did Amy regret taking weight-loss pills? 7. What did Li Dong do? 8. Who is Zhou Lin?
9. Was Zhou Ling sorry to hear about Amy’s problems? 10. What does Amy’s mother keep telling in the first e-mail? 11. Did the doctor tell Amy she would die without a new liver? 12. What did Amy do to recover from her disease?
13. Why did Zhou Ling fail to answer Amy’s e-mail in time?
14. Is Amy’s experience like that of some people in China? Possible answers: 1. She is an actress.
2. Looking good is important to women and she is ashamed of her body. 3. Yes, she wants to be thin very much. 4. She tries to take weight-loss pills.
5. The harmful chemical that is contained in those weight-loss pills causes her liver to fail. 6. Yes, she regrets a lot. 7. He is a doctor.
8. She is Amy’s friend.
9. Yes, she felt worried to hear about Amy’s problem.
10. Amy’s mother keeps telling her not to take them because they are dangerous. 11. Yes, the doctor told her that she would die if she couldn’t get a new liver.
12. She followed her doctor’s advice and did exercise for at least half an hour every day. 13. Because Zhou Lin’s computer was broken.
14. Yes, in China, many people, some of whom are not overweight at all, are always going on diets or taking weight-loss pills, which are often dangerous.
Then the teacher can ask the students to fill in the blank of the chart according to the details of the text. What Amy did Reasons for losing weight Results(successful/unsucceAmy’s emotions
ssful) ↓
take fat-loss pills prepare for a new role slimmer; Happy
beauty is important have lost 7 kg ↓ be ashamed of her body feel tired and weak dying Frustrated
be in hospital Reasons for frustration Reactions to illness ↓
liver failure; feel better Hopeful . . . liver donation recovering
Reason for hope Lessons Amy has learnt do an liver find an exact match Don’t damage your donation for her health for a slim and operation Li Dong’s donation of attractive figure.
more than half of his liver Learn to be confident. to save her life
Mother’s words Health is priceless.
Don’t damage your health for a slim and attractive figure.