UNIT 1
Part 1 Text-processing
Teacher-aided Work
Lead-in
Listen to the recorder and take notes. Then fill in each gap in the following passage with ONE word according to what you have heard. Finish your work within 10 minutes.
Tape script:
E. B. White was born in 1899 in Mount Vernon, New York. He served in the army before going to Cornell University. There he wrote for the college newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun. After he graduated, he worked as a reporter for the Seattle Times in 1922 and 1923. As he put it, he found that he was ill-suited for daily journalism, and his city editor had already reached the same conclusion, so they came to an amicable parting of the ways. In 1927 he became a writer for The New Yorker magazine, where he became well known. He wrote columns for Harper’s magazine from 1938 to 1943, which resulted in an anthology entitled One Man’s Meat and published in 1942.
White‘s career had already brought him much fame, but he was about to try something new. His nieces and nephews always asked him to tell them stories, so he began writing his own tales to read to them. In 1945 he started publishing these stories as books. All three, Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte’s Web (1952) and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970), are now considered classics of children‘s literature.
His best essays appear in three collections: One Man’s Meat (1944), The Second Tree from the Corner (1954) and The Points of My Compass (1962).
In 1959, White edited and updated The Elements of Style. This handbook of grammatical and stylistic dos and don‘ts for writers of American English had been written and published in 1918 by William Strunk Jr., one of White‘s professors at Cornell. White‘s rework of the book was extremely well received. The volume is a standard tool for students and writers, and remains required reading in many composition classes.
In 1977 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his lifetime‘s work.
White died on October 1, 1985 at his farm home in North Brooklin, Maine, after a long fight with Alzheimer's Disease. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried beside his wife at the Brooklin Cemetery.
A leading essayist and literary stylist of his time, White is known for his crisp, graceful, relaxed style. To him, ―style not only reveals the man, it reveals his identity, as surely as would his fingerprints.‖ (The Elements of Style) The subtlety, the sentiment, the facility and sensitivity with words—all mark him out from his fellow essayists.
―Once More to the Lake‖, selected from E. B. White‘s One Man’s Meat, is the story of a man returning to his younger days by revisiting a lake from his childhood. Throughout the trip he hovered between being an older man and a younger boy and felt that ―the years were a mirage and there had been no years.‖ But throughout the story, there are small hints that are just enough not to let him fall completely into his dream and to remind him that man is mortal after all.
Passage for gap-filling:
E. B. White, an American writer, was born in 1899. After his graduation from Cornell University in 1822, he reported for a newspaper. In 1927 he became a writer for The New Yorker magazine. He wrote 1) columns for Harper’s magazine from 1938 to 1943. In 1945 he started publishing 2) tales he had written for his nieces and nephews in book form. White wrote a large number of 3) essays, and the best of them were published in three collections. In 1959, he edited and updated The Elements of Style, a handbook by one of his professors at Cornell. In 1977 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his lifetime‘s work, and he died in 1985.
―Once More to the Lake‖, selected from his One Man’s Meat, is the story of a man returning to his younger days by coming back to a lake he had visited when a boy. Throughout the trip he felt that he had a 4) double identity and that ―there had been no years.‖ But throughout the story, there are just enough hints to remind him that time passes and man must 5) die after all.
In-depth Comprehension 1. Questions
1) Para 1: What happened to the author‘s father when he was in a canoe? Was it good
or bad? How do you know?
His father‘s canoe overturned and he fell into the lake with all his clothes on. That was something bad, for it is mentioned together with another bad thing—getting ringworm, and is excluded from what made the visit a success.
2) Para 1: What does ―a saltwater man‖ mean? Since when has the author become a
saltwater man? Give your reasons.
―Saltwater‖ here refers to seawater, which is salty. ―A saltwater man‖ doesn‘t mean a man who drinks saltwater, but one who bathes in the sea, because the intention in going to the seaside was to vacation there. (Attention: One should be careful about the actual relation between a noun as modifier and the noun modified) Most probably, the author has gone to the seaside for vacation instead of the lake in Maine since he got married and had a family of his own.
3) Para 2: What does the author mean by saying his son ―had never had any
freshwater up his nose‖ and ―had seen lily pads only from train windows?‖
He means that the boy had always gone with him to the seaside for his holidays and never bathed in a freshwater lake where you often find lily pads, that is, water lily with its large, floating leaves. He had only seen them from train windows. The author here states the result (freshwater up his nose) rather than the cause (swimming in freshwater), which is a case of metonymy.
4) Para 2: How could the tarred road, which had no life, have ―found out‖ the lake?
What is the author‘s real meaning? Was it good or bad in the author‘s opinion? What is your reason for this conclusion?
The lifeless tarred road is here personified (compared to a human being) by the use of the verb ―found out‖. The author‘s real meaning is that the tarred road must have extended to the lake. He views it as a bad thing, because he mentions it together with ―other ways it (the lake) would be desolated.‖
5) Para 2: How can a person‘s mind move in grooves, which are physical? How would
the author have said it in plain words?
A groove is a long narrow hollow path or track in a surface, esp. to guide the movement
of something. Here a person‘s mind is compared to something that moves in grooves. In plain words, the author would have said ―Once you recall the past.‖
6) Para 2: What does ―clear‖ in ―extend clear to‖ mean? How would the author have
probably described the partitions if he had used an affirmative sentence? What is the author‘s intention in describing the partitions?
Here ―clear‖ means ―all the way‖. Using an affirmative sentence, the author would probably have said ―The partitions in the camp were thin and there were blanks between their tops and the top of the rooms.‖ He describes the partitions to imply that they were not soundproof and that that was the reason for his soft actions.
7) Para 2: Is it possible that there is a cathedral on the shores of the lake? If not, what
does ―cathedral‖ really refer to? And why does the author call it a cathedral?
A cathedral is a big church that serves as the official seat of a bishop, which is usually located in a fairly large town or city. So it is impossible that there is a real cathedral by the lake. The author here is comparing the lake, which is holy to him, to a cathedral.
8) Para 3: What is the author‘s intention in saying ―you would live at the shore and eat
your meals at the farmhouse?‖
He says this to imply that the farmhouses were very near to the shore of the lake, which in turn supports the idea that the lake had never been what you would call a wild lake.
9) Para 5: What is a mirage? What does the author mean by ―the years were a mirage
and there had been no years?‖
A mirage is an optical effect sometimes seen at sea or in a desert caused by bending or reflection of light by a layer of heated air (海市蜃楼). Here it refers to something unreal, illusory. The author means that the years that had passed appeared to be unreal because nothing of consequence had really changed.
10) Para 5: Does a rowboat really have a chin? What does ―chucking the rowboat under
the chin‖ mean?
Both the rowboat and the lake are personified by the use of the words ―chuck‖ and ―chin‖. ―Chuck‖, here meaning ―stroke gently with the hand‖, refers actually to ―beat very lightly‖, and ―chin‖ here refers to that part of the bow (the front part) which protrudes over the water.
11) Para 5: Which does ―catch‖ in ―the dried blood from yesterday‘s catch‖ refer to, an
action or things? What is your reason?
―Catch‖ here does not mean the action of catching, but what is caught, referring specifically to fish that had been caught, because ―yesterday‘s catch‖ could shed blood.
12) Para 5: Was it really the author‘s hands that held his son‘s rod, his eyes that were
watching? If not, what does he mean?
―It was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching‖ simply repeats what is meant by ―I began to sustain the illusion that he was I‖ in Paragraph 4.
13) Para 6: Which is usually bigger and stronger, a bass or a mackerel? Give your
reasons.
A bass is usually bigger and stronger than a mackerel, because the angler usually has to use a landing net when pulling in a bass, while he does not have to do so when landing a mackerel.
14) Para 6: Can a lake move to another place? If not, why does the author say ―the lake
was exactly where we had left it?‖
Here ―the lake‖ refers to the level of the body of water. If the level rises, it will cover a wider area, and will seem to have moved.
15) Para 6: What does ―attendance‖ mean? How is the attendance doubled?
―Attendance‖ usually means the number of people present on a particular occasion, but here refers to the number of minnows swimming in the water. The attendance was doubled by their shadows.
16) Para 6: What does ―cultist‖ mean? Whom does ―this cultist‖ refer to in this
context?
―Cultist‖ means ―a follower of a particular custom‖, here referring to the person always washing himself with a cake of soap. 2. Multiple-choice Questions
1) The author would like it better _______A________.
A. if the lake were completely wild
B. if there were more farmhouses near the lake C. if the lake were more easily accessible by car D. if they could eat right in their camp Explanation:
The phrase ―wish for the placidity of a lake in the woods‖ and the sentence ―I was sure the tarred road would have found it out and I wondered in what other ways it would be desolated‖ show that the author likes a wild lake which is not spoilt by human activity.
2) The arrival of the author and his family at the lake is described in Paragraph
_______C_______. A. 2 B. 3 C. 4 D. 5 Explanation:
Paragraph 4 begins with ―I was right about the tar: it led to within half a mile of the shore‖ and that indicates that the author is beginning to describe what he actually saw of the lake area on this trip, while the previous paragraphs only tell about his recollections and guesses.
3) What is common to Paragraphs 4, 5, and 6 is _______D_______.
A. that they are about the same length
B. that they are of the same degree of difficulty
C. that they tell about the experiences of the same people
D. that they describe the illusion of the exact repetition of the same scenes Explanation:
―It was going to be pretty much the same as it had been before‖ in Para 4, ―everything was as it always had been‖ in Para 5, ―there had been no years‖ in Para 6 and the frequent repetitions of the word ―same‖ in these paragraphs show that the answer is D. 4) Which of the following is false? _______A_______
A. Paragraph 3 describes the lake as the author sees it when he visits it this time.
B. Paragraph 4 tells about the resemblance of the father and son of the present to those of
the past.
C. Paragraph 5 focuses on the sameness of the scenes of fishing at different times. D. Paragraph 6 emphasizes the unchangeableness of the lake.
Explanation:
―That‘s what our family did‖ and ―there were places in it which, to a child at least, seemed infinitely remote and primeval‖ hint that the author is describing his impressions of the lake when he came as a child with his father, not as a father on this trip. 5) From this excerpt we can see that the author ________B________.
A. is a conservative
B. is a nostalgic nature-lover
C. is a muddle-headed person who cannot tell the present from the past. D. lives a double life. Explanation:
The author loves the wild lake, and hates it‘s being spoilt by human activity. He indulges in recollections of the past and often feels as if there had been no years. So we say that he is a nostalgic nature-lover.
Extension from the Text 1. Speaking
Based on clues in the text alone, say something about the author (his nationality, the approximate date of his birth, his age when he wrote this essay, his family, etc.) and give reasons for what you say.
The author was American because when he was still a boy his family often visited a lake in Maine, which is a state of the US. In the year 1904, he was still a teenager, so he was probably born around 1890. When he wrote this essay he had a son about the same age as he had been when he went with his father to the lake, so he was now about forty. Most probably, he had a family of three, because he had only one son and must have had a wife though he never mentions her. 2. Cloze
Up to the farmhouse to dinner through the teeming, dusty field, the road under our sneakers was only a two-track road. The middle track was missing, the 1) one with the marks of the hooves and the splotches of dried, flaky manure. There had always been 2) three tracks to choose from in choosing which track to walk in; now the 3) choice was narrowed down to two. For a moment I 4) missed terribly the middle alternative. But the way led past the tennis 5) court, and something about the way it lay there in the sun reassured me; the tape had loosened along the backline, the alleys were green with plantains and other 6) weeds, and the net (installed in June and removed in September) sagged in the dry noon, and the whole place steamed with midday 7) heat and hunger and emptiness. There was a choice of pie for dessert, and one was blueberry and one was apple, and the 8) waitresses were the same country girls, there having been no 9) passage of time, only the illusion of it as in a dropped curtain—the waitresses were still fifteen; their hair had been washed, that was the only 10) difference—they had been to the movies and seen the pretty girls with the clean hair.
Explanations: 1) ―The . . .‖ is in apposition to ―the middle track‖ and refers to it. ―One‖ is used
to avoid the repetition of ―track‖. 2) ―A two-track road‖ and ―the middle track was missing‖ tell us that there had been
three tracks before. 3) ―Three tracks to choose from‖ and ―. . . was narrowed down to two‖ show that the