Unit 4 World of the Future
Unit 4 World of the Future
1. Teaching Objectives
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To help students to get to imagine the future world; To help students to get to know the style of science fiction; To help students to learn to analyze the text; To help students to learn the language in this text; To help students to develop oral English ability and communicative competence.
2. Teaching Procedures
1) Lead-in activities
2) Cultural Backgrounds
3) Text analysis
4) Structural analysis
5) Language study
6) Exercises
I. Lead-in activities
1. Audiovisual supplements
Watch the film episode and then answer the following questions
Film Episode: I, Robot
Questions:
1). Why was the police officer scolded by the woman?
2). If you had a robot as your assistant, what would you want it to do?
2. Group Discussion
1. What the world may be if there were only robots?
2. Can robots finally take the place of human beings? What can we do to avoid?
II. Cultural background
With the rise of human civilization about 8,000 years ago and especially since the Industrial
Revolution in the mid-1700s, human beings began to alter the surface, water, and atmosphere of
Earth. In doing so, they have become active geological agents, not unlike other forces of change
that influence the planet. As a result, Earth’s immediate future depends to a great extent on the
behavior of humans. For example, the widespread use of fossil fuels is releasing carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and threatens to warm the planet’s surface. This
global warming could melt glaciers and the polar ice caps, which could flood coastlines around the
world and many island nations. In effect, the carbon dioxide that was removed from Earth’s early
atmosphere by the oceans and by primitive plant and animal life, and subsequently buried as
fossilized remains in sedimentary rock, is being released back into the atmosphere and is
threatening the existence of living things.
III. Text introduction
Throughout the text, the writer describes or tells the wonderful things of the future face to face
with you as a reader, which is appropriate and impressive, and which sounds more objective and
believable. Some questions are asked either to introduce the main topic or to project paragraph
topics.
IV. Structural analysis
Paragraphs 1 – 4