高级英语教案 Book1 Unit3

Unit Three Ships in the Desert

Teaching Object: English majors of junior year

Time: 8 periods

Teaching Aims:

·To enable students to get better understanding of the text

·To help students learn to use new words and useful expressions in the text ·To enable students learn to paraphrase some complicated sentences

·To enable students to learn the use of rhetoric devices in the text

·To help students appreciate the techniques of argumentative writing

·To arouse students’ awareness of enviromental protection

Teaching Focus:

·Background Information

·Language points and expressions

·Main idea summarizing

·Figures of speech

·Writing practice

Teaching Difficulties:

·Appreciation of argumentative writing style

·Paraphrasing some sentences

·Identifying figures of speech

·Translating some sentences

Teaching Procedures:

·Background information

·Question to ponder

·Structural analysis

·Detailed study of the text

·Writing skills

·Exercises

Time Allocation：8 periods, 360minutes

·Background information (45 minutes)

·Intensive study of the text (225 minutes)

·Exercise (90 minutes)

I. Background Information

AL Gore: born in I948 in Washington D.C., U.S. Senator (1984-1992) from the State of Tennessee, and U.S. Vice-President (1992-2000) under President Bill Clinton. He failed to won the great presidential election in 2000 with a controversial results. Some people say his failure was, to a large extent, a result of the negative effects of Clinton's scandal. But more people are convincing that he will win next time. He is the author of the book Earth in the Balance from which this piece is taken.

Global warming: the earth is getting warmer due to the heat from gas in industry, and surfs heat accumulated because of too many man-made pollutants. The

temperature of the earth's atmosphere and its surface is steadily rising. The global warming is a great concern to our present environmental problems. It is a result of the greenhouse effect in which man-made pollutants in the atmosphere (carbon dioxide, carbon oxide---waste gas from factories and cars, etc,) trap heat at the surface of the earth. The warming of global warming will speed up the disappearance of glacier on both polar regions, increase of desert on earth's surface and unbearable heat in the summer, imposing a great danger to the living condition on Earth.

II. Questions to Ponder

1. Pre-reading Questions (optional)

1) What does "ships in the desert" originally refer to? (camels) Can we find ships in the desert? Where is the desert mentioned here and how did it come from?

2) From this title, what do you think the author is going to discuss in the text? (environmental problems) How does the title relate to the theme of the whole text? (a starting point to discuss the world environmental crisis, not just in Aral Sea, but all around the world)

3) What proofs does the text mention in presenting the environmental crisis around the world? (desert in Aral Sea, core ice sample from the Trans-Antarctic Mountain -- North Pole, air measurement in the South pole, thinning ice in Arctic Ocean, deforestation in the equator in Brazil, the "noctilucent cloud" in high northern latitudes areas. )

4) What does the author think cause all these environmental destruction? And what is the solution he suggests?

5) What is the main theme of this text?

III. Structural analysis

1) Section 1: Para 1 --- Para 8: Presenting readers with environmental problems we are experiencing.

proofs/examples to show the global environmental crisis due to the

humankind's assault on the earth.

Para 1: Desert in the Aral Sea---the new shoreline was almost forty kilometers across the sand from where the fishing fleet was now permanently docked; canning fish shipped from the Pacific Ocean more than a thousand miles away.

Para 2: core ice sample from Trans-Antarctic Mountains---moved his fingers back in time to the ice of two decades ago; the Clean Air Act, even a small reduction in one country's emissions had changed the amount of pollution found in the remotest and least accessible place on earth.

Para 3: industrial revolution caused the atmosphere, air measurement in South.Pole

Para 4-5: polar ice cap in Arctic Ocean is thinning as a result of global warming, which will bring disastrous consequences.

Para 6: billowing clouds of smoke regularly blacken the sky; the rain forest burned to create pasture for fast-food beef, we are silencing thousands of songs we have never even heard.