综合教程4 Unit6 A FrenchFourth

Unit 6Unit 6A FRENCH FOURTH A FRENCH FOURTH Watch the video and answer the following questions.Why did Denise hit Paul?Audiovisual supplementCultural informationBecause Paul said that his father was stupid.Because no matter what,one does not hit people and Denise should know better than that.2.Why do you think Xu Datong insists on Denise apologizing to Paul?It is no big deal.Kids will make it up themselves.3.Whats Pauls father,Quinlins attitude towards the matter?Audiovisual supplementCultural information4.What do you think are the differences in educating children between Chinese and the Americans?open-ended.Audiovisual supplementCultural informationFrom The Gua-Sha Treatment Jian Ning:Denise:Jian Ning:Xu Datong:Quinlin:Xu Datong:Denise:Xu Datong:Quinlin:Xu Datong:Audiovisual supplementCultural informationDenise,why did you hit Paul?He hit me too.It doesnt matter.You dont hit people.You know better than that.Denise,I want you to apologize to Paul.Its no big deal.Yes,it is.Come on,apologize to Paul.Going to win.Say youre sorry.The kids are fine;they make up.Let it go.Come on.Count three.One two two and half Audiovisual supplementCultural information(Denise spit on Paul and Li Datong hit Denise on the head.)Jian Ning:Xu Datong:Denise:Datong!Say that youre sorry.He said that youre stupid.Li Datongs father:当面教子背后教妻。啊？当面教子背后教妻。啊？ceremonies,and various other public and private events celebrating the history,government,and traditions of the United States.1.Independence Day Audiovisual supplementCultural information In the United States,Independence Day,commonly known as the Fourth of July,is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4,1776,declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks,parades,barbecues,carnivals,picnics,concerts,baseball games,political speeches andOn June 14,1777,in order to establish an official flag for the new nation,the Continental Congress passed the first Flag Act:“Resolved,That the flag of the United States be made of thirteen stripes,alternate red and white;that the union be thirteen stars,white in a blue field,representing a new Constellation.”Audiovisual supplementCultural information2.American Flag For more than 200 years,the American flag has been the symbol of the nations strength and unity.Its been a source of pride and inspiration for millions of citizens.Audiovisual supplementCultural informationToday the flag consists of thirteen horizontal stripes,seven red alternating with six white.The stripes represent the original thirteen colonies,the stars represent the fifty states of the Union.The colors of the flag are symbolic as well:Red symbolizes Hardiness and Valor,White symbolizes Purity and Innocence and Blue represents Vigilance,Perseverance and Justice.In this text,the author discusses the costs and benefits of living in a foreign culture.He also points out that globalization is diminishing the divide between cultures.Structural analysis General analysis Rhetorical features(Paragraphs 10 12):The author talks about the effect of globalization,and argues that globalization has produced more negative than positive effects on cultural diversity.Part I(Paragraphs 1 3):The author describes his way of celebrating his home countrys National Day,i.e.the Independence Day of the United States.This text talks about the cultural influence of a foreign culture on expatriated families.It can be divided into three parts.Part II(Paragraphs 4 9):The author makes a contrastive analysis of the costs and benefits of the expatriated people.Part III Structural analysis General analysis Rhetorical features The author of this text follows a“specific-to-general”pattern in his discussion,i.e.he first talks about what it means to his children to hang out the national flag of their native land in a foreign country on July 4th every year and then expresses his view on the importance for expatriated people in general to keep their cultural identity,especially when the whole world is undergoing a process of globalization.The specific points can be found in his discussion of the costs and benefits of raising children in a foreign culture in Paragraphs 4 9 while the general conclusion can be found in Paragraphs 10 12,especially Paragraph 12.Structural analysis General analysis Rhetorical features1 Along about this time every year,as Independence Day approaches,I pull an old American flag out of a bottom drawer where it is folded away folded in a square,I admit,not the regulation triangle.Ive had it a long time and have always flown it outside on July 4.Here in Paris it hangs from a fourth-floor balcony visible from the street.Ive never seen anyone look up,but in my minds eye an American tourist may notice it and smile,and a French passerby may be reminded of the date and the occasion that prompt its appearance.I hope so.Detailed readingA FRENCH FOURTHCharles TrueheartDetailed reading2 For my expatriated family,too,the flag is meaningful,in part because we dont do anything else to celebrate the Fourth.People dont have barbecues in Paris apartments,and most other Americans I know who have settled here suppress such outward signs of their heritage or they go back home for the summer to refuel.3 Our children think the flag-hanging is a cool thing,and I like it because it gives us a few moments of family Q&A about our citizenship.My wife and I have been away from the United States for nine years,and our children are eleven and nine,so American history is mostly something they have learned or havent learned from their parents.July 4 is one of the times when the American in me feels a twinge of unease about the great lacunae in our childrens understanding of who they are and is prompted to try to fill the gaps.Its also a time,one among many,when my thoughts turn more generally to the costs and benefits of raising children in a foreign culture.Detailed readingDetailed reading4 Louise and Henry speak French fluently;they are taught in French at school,and most of their friends are French.They move from language to language,seldom mixing them up,without effort or even awareness.This is a wonderful thing,of course.And our physical separation from our native land is not much of an issue.My wife and I are grateful every day for all that our children are not exposed to.American school shootings are a good object lesson for our children in the follies of the society we hold at a distance.Detailed reading5 Naturally,we also want to remind them of reasons to take pride in being American and to try to convey to them what that means.It is a difficult thing to do from afar,and the distance seems more than just a matter of miles.I sometimes think that the stories we tell them must seem like Aesops(or La Fontaines)fables,myths with no fixed place in space or time.Still,connections can be made,lessons learned.Detailed reading6 Last summer we spent a week with my brother and his family,who live in Concord,Massachusetts,and we took the children to the North Bridge to give them a glimpse of the American Revolution.We happened to run across a reenactment of the skirmish that launched the war,with everyone dressed up in three-cornered hats and cotton bonnets.This probably only confirmed to our goggle-eyed kids the make-believe quality of American history.Detailed reading7 Six months later,when we were recalling the experience at the family dinner table here,I asked Louise what the Revolution had been about.She thought that it had something to do with the man who rode his horse from town to town.“Ah”,I said,satisfaction swelling in my breast,“and what was that mans name?”“Gulliver?”Louise replied.Henry,for his part,knew that the Revolution was between the British and the Americans,and thought that it was probably about slavery.Detailed reading8 As we pursued this conversation,though,we learned what the children knew instead.Louise told us that the French Revolution came at the end of the Enlightenment,when people learned a lot of ideas,and one was that they didnt need kings to tell them what to think or do.On another occasion,when Henry asked what makes a person a“junior”or a“II”or a“III”,Louise helped me answer by bringing up kings like Louis Quatorze and Quinze and Seize;Henry riposted with Henry VIII.9 I cant say I worry much about our childrens European frame of reference.There will be plenty of time for them to learn Americas pitifully brief history and to find out who Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt were.Already they know a great deal more than I would have wished about Bill Clinton.Detailed reading10 If all of this resonates with me,it may be because my family moved to Paris in 1954,when I was three,and I was enrolled in French schools for most of my grade-school years.I dont remember much instruction in American studies at school or at home.I do remember that my mother took me out of school one afternoon to see the movie Oklahoma!I can recall what a faraway place it seemed:all that sunshine and square dancing and surreys with fringe on top.The sinister Jud Fry personified evil for quite some time afterward.Cowboys and Indians were an American clich that had already reached Paris through the movies,and I asked a grandparent to send me a Davy Crockett hat so that I could live out that fairy tale against the backdrop of gray postwar Montparnasse.Detailed reading11 Although my children are living in the same place at roughly the same time in their lives,their experience as expatriates is very different from mine.The particular narratives of American history aside,American culture is not theirs alone but that of their French classmates,too.The music they listen to is either“American”or“European,”but it is often hard to tell the difference.In my day little French kids looked like nothing other than little French kids;but Louise and Henry and their classmates dress much as their peers in the United States do,though with perhaps less Lands End fleeciness.When I returned to visit the United States in the 1950s,it was a five-day ocean crossing for a months home leave every two years;now we fly over for a week or two,although not very often.Virtually every imaginable product available to my childrens American cousins is now obtainable here.Detailed reading12 If time and globalization have made France much more like the United States than it was in my youth,then I can conclude a couple of things.On the one hand,our children are confronting a much less jarring cultural divide than I did,and they have more access to their native culture.Re-entry,when it comes,is likely to be smoother.On the other hand,they are less than fully immersed in a truly foreign world.That experience no longer seems possible in Western countries a sad development,in my view.Detailed readingWhy does the author hang the American flag from his fourth-floor balcony in Paris?(Paragraph 1)He does it for two reasons.First,as an American living in Paris,he does not want to forget his native heritage and flag-hanging is the only thing he can do to celebrate Independence Day.Second,he wants to use the flag-hanging as a special means to teach his children about American history and as a reminder of their American identity.Detailed readingThe author has kept the old flag for a long time.Why didnt he get a new one?(Paragraph 1)The text does not tell us explicitly,but it is very likely that this flag was brought to Paris from the U.S.a long time ago.To the author,the old flag is a better reminder of his home country than a new one.Detailed readingWhat are the costs and benefits of raising children in a foreign culture?(Paragraph 4)According to the author,it is difficult for children to understand and identify the virtues of their native country without living in it,so they need to go back to their native country to make up for the ineffective family education.But the practice of raising children in a foreign culture has its merits.For example,it helps the children to acquire the new culture without being exposed to the disadvantages of their native culture.Detailed readingDetailed readingWhy do the author and his family go back home for the summer?(Paragraph 5)As expatriates,they have little access to the traditional culture of their motherland.So they go back home to trace the heritage of Americans.In addition,because their children are reared up in a completely foreign culture,they have the obligation to teach their children the culture and history of their motherland.Detailed readingWhat are the differences between the author and his children as expatriates at about the same age?What causes the differences?(Paragraph 910)They are different in both behavior and mentality.His children are quite like their French peers in behavior and dress style,while when the author was a child he was quite different from his French peers.These differences are due to the rapid social changes and cultural merging that have been happening all over the world.The world is becoming a huge melting pot in which different cultures are mixing up.Detailed readingWhy does the author say the development is sad?(Paragraph 12)Because globalization becomes the keynote of life in the world today.Cultures are merging with each other;distinctions between different cultures are becoming blurred.Children cannot tell the exact differences between their own culture and other cultures and it is impossible for them to relive the authors experience of living in a foreign culture.This kind of development of cultural globalization is a sad thing in the authors view.fold away:fold into a smaller,neater shape for easy storage e.g.These camping chairs can be folded away and put in the trunk.The piece of paper was folded away carefully and tucked into her purse.foldaway(i.e.,collapsible)bed/iron board Detailed readingregulation:a.in accordance with the regulations;of the correct or designated type Detailed readinge.g.As we walked along the street,we could see the noisy cheerful group of people in regulation black parade tunics.He had the short regulation haircut of a policeman.prompt:v.cause or bring about an action or feeling e.g.The Times article prompted him to call a meeting of the staff.My choice was prompted by a number of considerations.Detailed readingDerivation:prompt n.prompt a.promptly ad.refuel:v.Detailed readinge.g.The authorities agreed to refuel the plane.1)supply a vehicle with more fuel e.g.In a society of intense competition,people have to refuel every year.2)take on a fresh supply of knowledge,information,etc.twinge:n.e.g.John felt a twinge of fear when he saw the officer approaching.Detailed readinge.g.I feel a twinge in my back now and again.1)If you feel a twinge of an unpleasant emotion,you suddenly feel it.2)A twinge is a sudden,sharp pain.Teens exposed to second-hand smoke have a higher risk of developing heart disease later in life._exposed to:If you are exposed to something dangerous or unpleasant,you are put in a situation in which it might harm you.Detailed readinge.g.Poor John was exposed to the wind and rain.Derivation:expose v.exposure n.Translation:吸二手烟的青少年长大以后患心脏疾病的机率比较高。吸二手烟的青少年长大以后患心脏疾病的机率比较高。Detailed readingobject lesson:a striking practical example of some principle or ideal e.g.They responded to daily emergencies in a way that was an object lesson to us all.That was an object lesson in how to handle a difficult customer.take pride in=pride oneself on:be proud of e.g.She took pride in her flower garden.The team has achieved unprecedented success in this season.All the players take pride in being a member of this team.We pride ourselves on always being punctual.Detailed readingconfirm:vt.prove that sth.is true e.g.These statistics confirm our worst fears about the depth of the recession.The spokesman confirmed that the area was now in the rebels hands.Detailed readingDetailed readingswell:v.gradually increase e.g.The group of onlookers soon swelled into a crowd.The murmur swelled,but then died away.Please see to it that you are dealing with someone with a different frame of reference.The observer interprets what he sees in terms of his own cultural frame of reference.e.g.Detailed readingframe of reference:a particular set of beliefs,ideas,or observations on which one bases his judgement Detailed readingresonate:vi.evoke or suggest images,memories,and emotions May this song resonate in your heart throughout the holidays.I would like these thoughts to resonate widely,especially with the citizens of China.This inspiring tale based on a bestselling nonfiction novel will resonate with audiences around the world.e.g.Detailed readinglive out sth.:do sth.that you have thought or dreamed of doing The inheritance would allow her to live out her fantasies.e.g.Detailed readingnothing other than:only They were given nothing other than dry bread and water for their evening meal.Therefore,nothing other than a hurt received in love affairs affects one more severely.I am very tired and want nothing in the world other than to be at home.e.g.Detailed readingimmerse:v.engage wholly or deeply;absorb Collocation:immerse sb./sth.inimmerse oneself in/be immersed ine.g.First of all,you should immerse your clothes in the water.He immersed himself in the history of Rome.Translation:克莱尔和菲尔在角落里深谈。克莱尔和菲尔在角落里深谈。Clare and Phil were immersed in conversation in the corner._ but in my minds eye an American tourist may notice it and smile.(Paragraph 1)Detailed readingParaphrase:but I imagine that an American tourist may notice it and show his appreciation of my action with a smile suppress such outward signs of their heritage (Paragraph 2)Paraphrase:do not give manifestations of their traditional culture handed down from their ancestors Detailed readingJuly 4 is one of the times when the American in me feels a twinge of unease about the great lacunae in our childrens understanding of who they are and is prompted to try to fill the gaps.(Paragraph 3)Paraphrase:July 4 is one of the times I,as a native American,feel indistinctively uneasy about the great gaps in our childrens understanding of their American identity,and thus I am motivated to do something to fill the gaps.Detailed readingAnd our physical separation from our native land is not much of an issue.(Paragraph 4)Paraphrase:And living away from our native country does not matter much(in our childrens acquisition of our native language).Detailed readingIn my day little French kids looked like nothing other than little French kids.(Paragraph 11)Paraphrase:In the days when I lived in France as an expatriated child,French children were dressed in the unique French style,thus looking quite different from their counterparts in other countries.Detailed reading our children are confronting a much less jarring cultural divide than I did (Paragraph 12)Paraphrase:our children are faced with a much less shocking cultural difference Detailed readingRe-entry,when it comes,is likely to be smoother.(Paragraph 12)Explanation:It seems to be easier for the children to restart the acquisition of their native culture.Detailed readinglDeveloping countries get access to the latest technology.lThe quality of products is improved due to global competition.lIncreased media coverage draws the attention of the world to human living conditions.Detailed readingClass Activity:Discussion:Globalization is a very controversial issue today.Opinions vary considerably over its pros and cons.Please discuss with your classmates about the positive and negative effects of globalization.For your reference Positive:Detailed readingNegative:lGlobalization has led to exploitation of labor and job insecurity.lLocal industries are being taken over by foreign multinationals.lBad aspects of foreign cultures are affecting the local cultures through TV and the Internet.lDeadly diseases like HIV/AIDS are being spread by travellers to the remotest corners of the globe.Phrase practice Word derivationSynonym/Anton