Two kinds Summary
现代大学英语2two kinds
Academic Challenge
1.
2.
Write a guide for parents, titled: “How to be a good parent” or “How to form good relationships with your kids.” Have at least 15 points on your guide. Explain the significance of the two pieces: “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Contented”.
Pre-reading Questions
What’s the meaning of the title “Two Kinds”? How is the story arranged? How many characters are there in the story?
Reading Strategy
IV. Organization of the Text
Part I. Beginning (Paras. 1-3): tells about the mother and her hopes for her daughter Part II. Development (P4-76): Subsection 1 (Paras. 4 – 11) the mother’s unsuccessful attempt to change her daughter into a Chinese Shirley Temple. Subsection 2 (Paras. 12 – 20) the mother was trying very hard to train her daughterto be genius.
summary 范文
Original:My neighbor's children love playing hide-and-seek as all children do, but no one imagine that a game they played last week would be reported in the local newspaper.One afternoon, they were playing in the vacant lot down the corner. Young Paul, who is only five years old, found the perfect place to hide. His sister, Natalie, had shut her eyes and was counting to ten when Paul noticed the storage mail box at the corner and saw that the metal door was standing open. The mailman had just taken out several sacks of mail and had carried them to his truck which was standing at the curb a few feet away. Paul climbed into the storage box and pulled the door closed so hard that it locked. Soon realizing what he had done, he became frightened and started crying. Meanwhile, Natalie was looking for him everywhere but could not find him. It was lucky that she happened to pause at the corner for a minute and heard her brother's cries. She immediately ran to tell the mailman who hurried back from his truck to unlock the metal door. Paul was now free, but he had had such a bad scare that he could not stop crying. The mailman, however, soon found a way of making him laugh again. He told him that the next time he wanted to hide in a mail box, he should remember to put a stamp on himself!Summary:The children were playing hide-and-seek in a vacant lot one afternoon. Finding that the storage mailbox had been left open, Paul hid and locked himself in it accidentally. His sister, Natalie, heard his cries and realized where he was hiding, so she immediately told the mailman to unlock the metal door. After letting him out, the mailman made him stop crying by telling him to put a stamp on himself the next he wanted to hide in a mailbox.Original:Why do some animals die out?In the past two hundred years people have caused many kinds of animals to die out--to become extinct. People keep building houses and factories in fields and woods. As they spread over the land, they destroy animals' homes. If the animals can't find a place to live, they die out. Sixteen kinds of Hawaiian birds have become extinct for this reason. Other animals, such as the Florida Key deer, may soon die out because they are losing their homes.Hunters have caused some animals to become extinct, too. In the last century, hunters killed all the passenger pigeons in North America and most of the buffalos.Today they are fast killing off hawks and wolves. Pollution is killing many animals today, too. As rivers become polluted, fish are poisoned. Many die. Birds that eat the poisoned fish can't lay strong, healthy eggs. New birds aren’t born. So far, no animals have become extinct because of pollution. But some, such as the bald eagle and the brown pelican, have become rare and may die out.Scientists think that some animals become extinct because of changes in climate. The places where they live become hotter or cooler, drier or wetter. The food that they eat cannot grow there any more. If the animals can't learn to eat something else, they die. Dinosaurs may have died out for this reason.Summary:In the past two hundred years, many kinds of animals have died out. There are several reasons for it. First, people keep building houses and factories in fields and woods, which destroys animals' homes. Then, hunters' killing has also caused some animals to become extinct. Besides, some animals aren't able to bear strong offspring and nor do they have enough food to eat because of pollution and climatic changes.Love languagesDo you know love what “love languages” are? Love languages are different ways that people show their love to others. We all want to have relationships where we can show our love to others and have them communicate love to us in return. In order to be successful in communicating love, we need to understand what the different love languages are. There are five important love languages that people need to know about to communicate effectively with others.The first love language is Quality Time which refers to spending time together with the person you are trying to show your love to. This love language will cause people to feel loved when they are taken out on special dates, when their friend changes their schedules to be with them, or when they turn the television off to talk with them. It means giving all of your attention to another person.Another love language is Words of Attention as a way to show your love. Telling your boyfriend or girlfriend how you appreciate them, encouraging them, and through words praising them will show people that you love them. Telling someone “I believe in you” can really make someone feel loved. With this love language you can express yourself through both spoken and written words.Gifts is another type of love language. Gifts are not just material objects, they are expressions of your love. The most important aspect is not the cost, but the fact that you were thinking of them and spent the time to go and buy them a gift. Big or little, your gift will be a symbol of your love for the other person.Fourth is the love language called Acts of Service which means you express your love by helping someone else. You could help them with a difficult assignment ot help them fix their bicycle when it is broken. The most important part of this love languages is taking the time to do things for them that require thought, energy and time. Don’t wait to only do what they ask you to, but volunteer to show your kindness.The last love language is Physical Touch. A simple touch on the arm, hug or backrub will convey your love to them. Sit beside them when you have the chance and hole their hand when you are walking down the street. With this love language, just being near them and showing your care through touch will make them feel very loved.Just knowing about these love languages is not enough as they way in which people feel loves by others is different. It is important to know which love language is strongest for the person you are trying to love. Sometimes if you serve them, they will feel more loved than if you give them a gift. Or perhaps holding their hand will not be as meaningful to them as if you had spent two hours together. I recommend that you find out what the love language is of the person you are trying to love. Don’t forget that there is more than just one love language. As you learn how to give and receive love, you will find that your relationships with others will be richer and more satisfying.Olympic GamesOf all the games held throughout Greece, those staged at Olympia in honor of Zeus are the most famous. The Games, like all Greek games, were an intrinsic part of a religious festival. Held every four years between August 6 and September 19, they occupied such an important place in Greek life that time was measured by the interval between them – an Olympiad. Although the first Olympic champion listed in the records was one Coroebus of Elis, a cook, who won the sprint race in 776 BC, it is generally accepted that the Games were probably at least 500 years old at that time. According to one legend, they were founded by Heracles, son of Alcmene.The Games were held at Olympia in the city-state of Elis, on a track about 32 meters (35 yards) wide. The racing length was one stade, a distance of about 192 meters (210 yards) which was one length of the track. At the meeting in 776 BC, there was apparently only one event, the stade, but other events were added over the ensuing decades. In 724 BC a two-length race, diaulos, roughly similar to the 400-meter race, was included and four years later, the dolichos, a long-distance race possibly to be compared to the modern 1500- or even 5000-meter event, was added . wresting and the pentathlon were introduced in 708BC. The latter was an all-around competition consisting of five events – the long jump, javelin throw, discus throw, foot race, and wresting.Boxing was introduced in 688 BC, and in 680 a chariot race. In 648, the pancratium, a kind of all-strength, or no-hold-barred, wresting was included. Kicking and hitting were allowed; only biting and gouging (thrusting a finger ot thumb into an opponent’s eye) were forbidden. Between 632 and 616 BC, events for boys were introduced. And from time to time, further events were added including contests for fully armed soldiers, for heralds, and for trumpeters. The program must have been as varied as that of the modern Olympics, although the athletics (track and field) events were limited: there was no high jumping in any form and no individual field event, except in the pentathlon.Until the 77th Olympiad (472 BC) all of the contests took place on one day; later they were spread, with, perhaps, some fluctuations, over four days, with a fifth devoted to the closing ceremony presentation of prizes and a banquet for the champions. Sources generally agree that women were not allowed as competitors or, except for the priestess of Demeter, as spectators. In most events, the athletes participated in the nude.The Olympic Games were originally restricted to free-born Greeks. The competitors, including those who came from the Greek colonies, were amateur in the sense that the only prize was a wreath or garland. The athletes underwent a most rigorous of supervised training, however, and eventually, the contestants were true professionals. Not only were there substantial prizes for winning, but the Olympic champion also received adulation and unlimited benefits from his city. Athletes became fulltime specialists –a trend that in the modern games has caused a long and bitter controversy over amateurism.Summary example:In this article, the author explains the history of some of the earliest record Olympic Games held in Greece. It is generally accepted that these Games started around 1276 BC although the first champion was recorded in 776 BC. In the first Games there was only one event, however as time went on, different events were added. Longer distance running races were first added and then other events like wresting and the pentathlon. They even added events specially for boys and armed soldiers. Originally the Games were played on one day but this changed to five days. Another aspect of the Games was that women were not allowed as competitors or spectators. The competitors were also restricted to Greeks who were not professionals. However, a trend started where athletes became full-time specialists which ahs caused a lot of controversy.The original:A third kind of thinking is stimulated when anyone questions our beliefs and opinions. We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told that we are wrong we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the idea themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened. We may surrender, but rarely confess ourselves vanquished. In the intellectual world at least, peace is without victory.Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions; indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. Summary:❖ A third kind of thinking occurs when we are told that our beliefs and opinions are wrong. We may have been heedless in their formation, but our self-esteem will not permit us to change. We may have to give up, but we are not convinced. We donot study the origin of our beliefs; we believe as we have been accustomed tobelieve, and we seek arguments for continuing to believe as we already do.。
英文Summary写作方法、范例及常用句式
请同学(tóng xué)们注意，概要(gàiyào)和摘要(zhāiyào)的写作内容及写作方法是完全不同的。
有的人把概要也称为(chēnɡ wéi)摘要，切记一定要区分开！概要(gàiyào)的英语是：summary, 摘要的英语是：abstract 。
概要是对一篇文章的主题思想的简单陈述。
它用最简洁的语言概括了原文的主题。
写摘要主要包括三个步骤：（1）阅读；（2）写作；（3）修改成文。
第一步：阅读A．认真阅读给定的原文材料。
如果一遍不能理解，就多读两遍。
阅读次数越多，你对原文的理解就越深刻。
B．给摘要起一个标题。
用那些能概括文章主题思想的单词、短语或短句子作为标题。
也可以采用文中的主题句作为标题。
主题句往往出现在文章的开头或结尾。
一个好标题有助于确定文章的中心思想。
C．现在，就该决定原文中哪些部分重要，哪些部分次重要了。
对重要部分的主要观点进行概括。
D．简要地记下主要观点——主题、标题、细节等你认为对概括摘要重要的东西。
第二步：动手写作A. 摘要应该只有原文的三分之一或四分之一长。
因此首先数一下原文的字数，然后除以三，得到一个数字。
摘要的字数可以少于这个数字，但是千万不能超过这个数字。
B. 摘要应全部用自己的话完成。
不要引用原文的句子。
C. 应该遵循原文的逻辑顺序。
这样你就不必重新组织观点、事实。
D. 摘要必须全面、清晰地表明原文所载的信息，以便你的读者不需翻阅原文就可以完全掌握材料的原意。
E. 写摘要时可以采用下列几种小技巧：1) 删除细节。
只保留主要观点。
2) 选择一至两个例子。
原文中可能包括5个或更多的例子，你只需从中筛选一至二个例子。
3) 把长段的描述变成短小、简单的句子。
如果材料中描述某人或某事用了十个句子，那么你只要把它们变成一两句即可。
4) 避免重复。
在原文中，为了强调某个主题，可能会重复论证说明。
Lesson_2_Two_Kinds
Questions on the Content
5. Could the family afford piano lessons? How did the mother solve the problem?
Subsection 4 (Paras. 29-46)
How the girl was made to learn the piano under the instructions of Old Chong.
Lesson 2 Two Kinds
Amy Tan 谭恩美
Plot – the deliberately arranged sequence of interrelated events that constitute the basic narrative structure of a novel or a short story Theme – the general meaning, the central and dominating idea that unifies and controls the total work (The theme of a story is different from its plot. While the plot tells what happens in the story, the theme shows what the story is about)
Amy Tan
Amy Tan is one of the prominent Chinese American writers that have emerged since the 1980s.
She published her first novel The Joy Luck Club in 1989, which was an instant success. It was followed by other novels: The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991), The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), and the Bonesetter’s Daughter (2001).
现代大学英语2two kinds
Lesson Two
Two Kinds
by Amy Tan
The Author
Amy Tan
譚恩美
an American writer of Chinese descent whose works explore mother-daughter relationships born February 19, 1952 In 1993, Tan's adaptation of her most popular fiction work, The Joy Luck Club (1989), became a commercially successful film.
3.
4. 5. 6.
7.
How does the daughter act when she continually fails her mother’s expectations? How would you describe the mother? How would you describe the daughter? How would you describe the relationship between mother and daughter? Why does the daughter refuse to live up to her mother’s expectations?
Academic Challenge
1.
2.
Write a guide for parents, titled: “How to be a good parent” or “How to form good relationships with your kids.” Have at least 15 points on your guide. Explain the significance of the two pieces: “Pleading Child” and “Perfectly Ck
two kinds
• a) Exposition - The background information on the characters and setting. It may also explain what happened before the story began. • b) Rising Action 上升- This is where the events in the story become complicated and the conflict in the story is revealed (events between the introduction and climax). • c) Climax - This is the highest point of interest and the turning point of the story. The reader wonders what will happen next; will the conflict be resolved or not?
TWO KINDS
TWO AIMS
• 1. How to appreciate short stories?
• 2.Brief Background Information of the story “Two Kinds” .
setting
plot conflict
theme
point of view characters
• what is the story about？ • what does the story mean？ • what does the story trying to say?
theme
Theme
(完整版)twokinds全文复习加赏析
piano lessons
performance in the talent bad performance show, high expectation
the most fierce quarrel being disobedient &
giving up hope
rebelliousห้องสมุดไป่ตู้
be herself
“Two kinds”, which is taken from it, is about the story of one of mothers and daughters: Suyuan Woo(吴夙愿)
and Jing-mei(精美)
Content
1 Warm-Up 2 Background Introduction 3 Genre & organization 4 Details to the text 5 Rhetorical device & assignment
Lesson 2
About Amy Tan & Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan's first and most successful novel
About the lives of four Chinese women in pre-1949 China and their American-born daughters in California
pleading child
Why did the Jingmei think she is a pleading child before? When she was a child, she only saw one side and couldn’t understand her mother, regarding her mother’s hope as tormenting pressure and regard herself as pleading child.
two-kinds-英语读物
Two KindsAmy TanMy mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly famous. "Of course, you can be a prodigy, too," my mother told me when I was nine. "You can be best anything. What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky." America was where all my mother's hopes lay. She had come to San Francisco in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. But she never looked back with regret. Things could get better in so many ways.We didn't immediately pick the right kind of prodigy. At first my mother thoughtI could be a Chinese Shirley Temple. We'd watch Shirley's old movies on TV as though they were training films. My mother would poke my arm and say, "Ni kan. You watch." And I would see Shirley tapping her feet, or singing a sailor song, or pursing her lips into a very round O while saying "Oh, my goodness." Ni kan," my mother said, as Shirley's eyes flooded with tears. "You already know how. Don't need talent for crying!" Soon after my mother got this idea about Shirley Temple, she took me to the beauty training school in the Mission District and put me in the hands of a student who could barely hold the scissors without shaking. Instead of getting big fat curls, I emerged with an uneven mass of crinkly black fuzz. My mother dragged meoff to the bathroom and tried to wet down my hair. "You look like a Negro Chinese," she lamented, as if I had done this on purpose. The instructor of the beauty training school had to lop off these soggy clumps to make my hair even again. "Peter Pan is very popular these days" the instructor assured m y mother. I now had bad hair the length of a boy's, with curly bangs that hung at a slant two inches above my eyebrows.I liked the haircut, and it made me actually look forward to my future fame.In fact, in the beginning I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so.I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images, and I tried each one onfor size. I was a dainty ballerina girl standing by the curtain, waiting to hear the music that would send me floating on my tiptoes. I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity. I was Cinderella stepping from her pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air. In all of my imaginings I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect: My mother and father would adore me.I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk, or to clamor for anything. But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. "If you don't hurry up and get me out of here, I'm disappearing for good," it warned. "And then you'll always be nothing."Every night after dinner my mother and I would sit at the Formica topped kitchen table. She would present new tests, taking her examples from stories of amazing children that she read in Ripley's Believe It or Not or Good Housekeeping, Reader's digest, or any of a dozen other magazines she kept in a pile in our bathroom. My mother got these magazines from people whose houses she cleaned. And since she cleaned many houses each week, we had a great assortment. She would look through them all, searching for stories about remarkable children. The first night she brought out a story about a three-year-old boy who knew the capitals of all the states and even the most of the European countries. A teacher was quoted as saying that the little boy could also pronounce the names of the foreign cities correctly. "What's the capital of Finland?” my mother asked me, looking at the story. All I knew was the capital of California, because Sacramento was the name of the street we lived on in Chinatown. "Nairobi!" I guessed, saying the most foreign word I could think of. She checked to see if that might be one way to pronounce Helsinki before showing me the answer. The tests got harder - multiplying numbers in my head, finding the queen of hearts in a deck of cards, trying to stand on my head without using my hands, predicting the daily temperatures in Los Angeles, New York, and London. One night I had to look at a page from the Bible for three minutes and then report everything I could remember."Now Jehoshaphat h ad riches and honor in abundance and...that's all I remember, Ma," I said. And after seeing, once again, my mother's disappointed face, something inside me began to die. I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations. Before going to bed that night I looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink, and I saw only my face staring back - and understood that it would always be this ordinary face - I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made high - pitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror. And then I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me - a face I had never seen before. I looked at my reflection, blinking so that I could see more clearly. The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful. She and I were the same. I had new thoughts, willful thoughts - or rather, thoughts filled with lots of won'ts. I won't let her change me, I promised myself. I won't be what I'm not. So now when my mother presented her tests, I performed listlessly, my head propped on one arm. I pretended to be bored. And I was. I got so bored that I started counting the bellows of the foghorns out on the bay while my mother drilled me in other areas. The sound was comforting and reminded me of the cow jumping over the moon. And the next day I played a game with myself, seeing if my mother would give up on me before eight bellows. After a while I usually counted only one bellow, maybe two at most. At last she was beginning to give up hope. Two or three months went by without any mention of my being a prodigy. And then one day my mother was watching the Ed Sullivan Show on TV. The TV was old and the sound kept shorting out. Every time my mother got halfway up from the sofa to adjust the set, the sound would come back on and Sullivan would be talking. As soon as she sat down, Sullivan would go silent again. She got up - the TV broke into loud piano music. She sat down - silence. Up and down, back and forth, quiet and loud. It was like a stiff, embraceless dance between her and the TV set. Finally, she stood by the set with her hand on the sound dial. She seemed entranced by the music, a frenzied little piano piece with a mesmerizing quality, which alternated between quick, playful passages and teasing, lilting ones. "Ni kan," my mother said, calling me over with hurried hand gestures. "Look here." I could see why my mother was fascinated by the music. It was being pounded out by a little Chinese girl, about nine years old, with aPeter Pan haircut. The girl had the sauciness of a Shirley Temple. She was proudly modest, like a proper Chinese Child. And she also did a fancy sweep of a curtsy, so that the fluffy skirt of her white dress cascaded t o the floor like petals of a large carnation. In spite of these warning signs, I wasn't worried. Our family had no piano and we couldn't afford to buy one, let alone reams of sheet music and piano lessons. So I could be generous in my comments when my mother badmouthed the little girlon TV. "Play note right, but doesn't sound good!" my mother complained "No singing sound." "What are you picking on her for?" I said carelessly. "She's pretty good. Maybe she's not the best, but she's trying hard." I knew almost immediately that I would be sorry I had said that. "Just like you," she said. "Not the best. Because you not trying." She gave a little huff as she let go of the sound dial and sat down on the sofa. The little Chinese girl sat down also, to play an encore of "Anitra's Tanz," by Grieg. I remember the song, because later on I had to learn how to play it.Three days after watching the Ed Sullivan Show my mother told me what my schedule would be for piano lessons and piano practice. She had talked to Mr. Chong, who lived on the first floor of our apartment building. Mr. Chong was a retired piano teacher, and my mother had traded housecleaning services for weekly lessons and a piano for me to practice on every day, two hours a day, from four until six.When my mother told me this, I felt as though I had been sent to hell. I whined, and then kicked my foot a little when I couldn't stand it anymore. "Why don't you like me the way I am?" I cried. "I'm not a genius! I can't play the piano. And even if I could, I wouldn't go on TV if you paid me a million dollars!" My mother slapped me. "Who ask you to be genius?" she shouted. "Only ask you be your best. For you sake. You think I want you to be genius? Hnnh! What for! Who ask you!" "So ungrateful," I heard her mutter in Chinese, "If she had as much talent as she has temper, she'd be famous now." Mr. Chong, whom I secretly nicknamed Old Chong, was very strange, always tapping his fingers to the silent music of an invisible orchestra. He looked ancient in my eyes. He had lost most of the h air on the top of his head, and he wore thick glasses and had eyes that always looked tired. But he must have been youngerthat I though, since he lived with his mother and was not yet married. I met Old Lady Chong once, and that was enough. She had a peculiar smell, like a baby that had done something in its pants, and her fingers felt like a dead person's, like an old peach I once found in the back of the refrigerator: its skin just slid off the flesh when I pickedit up. I soon found out why Old Chong had retired from teaching piano. He was deaf. "Like Beethoven!" he shouted to me: We're both listening only in our head!" And he would start to conduct his frantic silent sonatas. Our lessons went like this. He would open the book and point to different things, explaining, their purpose: "Key! Treble! Bass! No sharps or flats! So this is C major! Listen now and play after me!" And thenhe would play the C scale a few times, a simple cord, and then, as if inspired by an old unreachable itch, he would gradually add more notes and running trills and a pounding bass until the music was really something quite grand. I would play after him, the simple scale, the simple chord, and then just play some nonsense that sounded like a rat running up and down on top of garage cans. Old Chong would smile and applaud and say Very good! Bt now you must learn to keep time!" So that's how I discovered that Old Chong's eyes were too slow to keep up with the wrong notes I was playing. He went through the motions in half time. To help me keep rhythm, he stood behind me and pushed down on my right shoulder for every beat. He balanced pennies on top of my wrists so that I would keep them still as I slowly played scales and arpeggios. He had me curve my hand around an apple and keep that shame when playing chords. He marched stiffly to show me how to make each finger dance up and down, staccato, like an obedient little soldier. He taught me all these things, and that was how I also learned I could be lazy and get away with mistakes,lots of mistakes. If I hit the wrong notes because I hadn't practiced enough, I never corrected myself, I just kept playing in rhythm. And Old Chong kept conducting hisown private reverie. So maybe I never really gave myself a fair chance. I did pick upthe basics pretty quickly, and I might have become a good pianist at the young age. But I was so determined not to try, not to be anybody different, and I learned to play only the most ear-splitting preludes, the most discordant hymns. Over the next year I practiced like this, dutifully in my own way. And then one day I heard my mother andher friend Lindo Jong both after church, and I was leaning against a brick wall, wearing a dress with stiff white petticoats. Auntie Lindo’s daughter, Waverly, who was my age, was standing farther down the wall, about five feet away. We had grown up together and shared all the closeness of two sisters, squabbling over crayons and dolls. In other words, for the most part, we hated each other. I thought she was snotty. Waverly Jong had gained a certain amount of fame as "Chinatown's Littlest Chinese Chess Champion." "She bring home too many trophy." Auntie Lindo lamented that Sunday. "All day she play chess. All day I have no time do nothing but dust off her winnings." She threw a scolding look at Waverly, who pretended not to see her. "You lucky you don't have this problem," Auntie Lindo said with a sigh to my mother. And my mother squared her shoulders and bragged: "our problem worser than yours. If we ask Jing-mei wash dish, she hear nothing but music. It's like you can't stop this natural talent." And right then I was determined to put a stop to her foolish pride.A few weeks later Old Chong and my mother conspired to have me play in a talent show that was to be held in the church hall. But then my parents had saved up enough to buy me a secondhand piano, a black Wurlitzer spinet with a scarred bench. It was the showpiece of our living room. For the talent show I was to play a piece called "Pleading Child," from Schumann's Scenes From Childhood. It was a simple, moody piece that sounded more difficult than it was. I was supposed to memorize the whole thing. But I dawdled over it, playing a few bars and then cheating, looking upto see what notes followed. I never really listed to what I was playing. I daydreamed about being somewhere else, about being someone else.The part I liked to practice best was the fancy curtsy: right foot out, touch the rose on the carpet with a pointed foot, sweep to the side, bend left leg, look up, and smile. My parents invited all the couples from their social club to witness my debut. Auntie Lindo and Uncle Tin were there. Waverly and her two older brothers had also come. The first two rows were filled with children either younger or older than I was. The littlest ones got to go first. They recited simple nursery rhymes, squawked out tunes on miniature violins, and twirled hula hoops in pink ballet tutus, and when theybowed or curtsied, the audience would sigh in unison, "Awww, and then clap enthusiastically. When my turn came, I was very confident. I remember my childish excitement. It was as if I knew, without a doubt, that the prodigy side of me really did exist. I had no fear whatsoever, no nervousness. I remember thinking, This is it! This is it! I looked out over the audience, at my mother's blank face, my father's yawn, Auntie Lindo's stiff-lipped smile, Waverly's sulky expression. I had on a white dress, layered with sheets of lace, and a pink bow in my Peter Pan haircut. As I sat down, I envisioned people jumping to their feet and Ed Sullivan rushing up to introduce me to everyone on TV. And I started to play. Everything was so beautiful. I was so caught up in how lovely I looked that I wasn't worried about how I would sound. So I was surprised when I hit the first wrong note. And then I hit another and another. A chill started at the top of my head and began to trickle down. Yet I couldn't stop playing, as though my hands were bewitched. I kept thinking my fingers would adjust themselves back, like a train switching to the right track. I played this strange jumble through tothe end, the sour notes staying with me all the way. When I stood up, I discovered my legs were shaking. Maybe I had just been nervous, and the audience, like Old Chong had seen me go through the right motions and had not heard anything wrong at all. I swept my right foot out, went down on my knee, looked up, and smiled. The roomwas quiet, except for Old Chong, who was beaming and shouting "Bravo! Bravo! Well done!" By then I saw my mother's face, her stricken face. The audience clapped weakly, and I walked back to my chair, with my whole face quivering as I tried not to cry, I heard a little boy whisper loudly to his mother. "That was awful," and mother whispered "Well, she certainly tried." And now I realized how many people were inthe audience - the whole world, it seemed. I was aware of eyes burning into my back.I felt the shame of my mother and father as they sat stiffly through the rest of the show. We could have escaped during intermission. Pride and some strange sense of honor must have anchored my parents to their chairs. And so we watched it all. The eighteen-year-old boy with a fake moustache who did a magic show and juggled flaming hoops while riding a unicycle. The breasted girl with white make up who sang an aria from Madame Butterfly and got an honorable mention. And theeleven-year-old boy who was first prize playing a tricky violin song that sounded likea busy bee. After the show the Hsus, the Jongs, and the St. Clairs, from the Joy Luck Club, came up to my mother and father. "Lots of talented kids," Auntie Lindo said vaguely, smiling broadly. "That was somethin' else," my father said, and I wondered if he was referring to me in a humorous way, or whether he even remembered what I had done. Waverly looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. "You aren't a genius like me," she said matter-of-factly. And if I hadn't felt so bad, I would have pulled her braids and punched her stomach. But my mother's expression was what devastated me: a quiet, blank look that said she had lost everything. I felt the same way, and everybody seemed now to be coming up, like gawkers at the scene of an accident to see what parts were actually missing. When we got on the bus to go home, my father was humming the busy-bee tune and my mother kept silent. I kept thinking she wanted to wait until we got home before shouting at me. But when my father unlocked the door to our apartment, my mother walked in and went straight to the back, into the bedroom. No accusations, No blame. And in a way, I felt disappointed. I had been waiting for her to start shouting, so that I could shout back and cry and blame her for all my misery.I had assumed that my talent-show fiasco meant that I would never have to play the piano again. But two days later, after school, my mother came out of the kitchen and saw me watching TV. "Four clock," she reminded me, as if it were any other day.I was stunned, as though she were asking me to go through the talent-show torture again. I planted myself more squarely in front of the TV. "Turn off TV," she called from the kitchen five minutes later. I didn't budge. And then I decided, I didn't have todo what mother said anymore. I wasn't her slave. This wasn't China. I had listened to her before, and look what happened she was the stupid one. She came out of the kitchen and stood in the arched entryway of the living room. "Four clock," she saidonce again, louder. "I'm not going to play anymore," I said nonchalantly. "Why should I? I'm not a genius." She stood in front of the TV. I saw that her chest was heaving up and down in an angry way. "No!" I said, and I now felt stronger, as if my true self hadfinally emerged. So this was what had been inside me all along. "No! I won't!" I screamed. She snapped off the TV, yanked me by the arm and pulled me off the floor. She was frighteningly strong, half pulling, half carrying me towards the piano as I kicked the throw rugs under my feet. She lifted me up onto the hard bench. I was sobbing by now, looking at her bitterly. Her chest was heaving even more and her mouth was open, smiling crazily as if she were pleased that I was crying. "You want me to be something that I'm not!" I sobbed. " I'll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!" "Only two kinds of daughters," she shouted in Chinese. "Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!" "Then I wish I weren't your daughter, I wishyou weren't my mother," I shouted. As I said these things I got scared. It felt like worms and toads and slimy things crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good, that this awful side of me had surfaced, at last. "Too late to change this," my mother said shrilly. And I could sense her anger rising to its breaking point. I wanted see it spill over. And that's when I remembered the babies she had lost in China, the ones we never talked about. "Then I wish I'd never been born!" I shouted. " I wish I were dead! Like them." It was as if I had said magic words. Alakazam!-her face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms went slack, and she backed out of the room, stunned, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless.It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I failed her many times, each time asserting my will, my right to fall shortof expectations. I didn't get straight As. I didn't become class president. I didn't get into Stanford. I dropped out of college. Unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me. And for all those years we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible declarations afterward at the piano bench. Neither of us talked about it again, as if it were a betrayal that was now unspeakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped for something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse, I never asked her about whatfrightened me the most: Why had she given up hope? For after our struggle at the piano, she never mentioned my playing again. The lessons stopped The lid to the piano was closed shutting out the dust, my misery, and her dreams. So she surprised me. A few years ago she offered to give me the piano, for my thirtieth birthday. I had not played in all those years. I saw the offer as a sign of forgiveness, a tremendous burden removed. "Are you sure?" I asked shyly. "I mean, won't you and Dad miss it?" "No, this your piano," she said firmly. "Always your piano. You only one can play." "Well, I probably can't play anymore," I said. "It's been years." "You pick up fast," my mother said, as if she knew this was certain. " You have natural talent. You could be a genius if you want to." "No, I couldn't." "You just not trying," my mother said. Andshe was neither angry nor sad. She said it as if announcing a fact that could never be disproved. "Take it," she said. But I didn't at first. It was enough that she had offered it to me. And after that, every time I saw it in my parents' living room, standing in frontof the bay window, it made me feel proud, as if it were a shiny trophy that I had won back.Last week I sent a tuner over to my parent's apartment and had the piano reconditioned, for purely sentimental reasons. My mother had died a few months before and I had been begetting things in order for my father a little bit at a time. I put the jewelry in special silk pouches. The sweaters I put in mothproof boxes. I found some old Chinese silk dresses, the kind with little slits up the sides. I rubbed the old silk against my skin, and then wrapped them in tissue and decided to take them hoe with me. After I had the piano tuned, I opened the lid and touched the keys. It sounded even richer that I remembered. Really, it was a very good piano. Inside the bench were the same exercise notes with handwritten scales, the same secondhand m usic books with their covers held together with yellow tape. I opened up the Schumann book to the dark little piece I had played at the recital. It was on the left-hand page, "Pleading Child." It looked more difficult than I remembered. I played a few bars, surprised at how easily the notes came back to me. And for the first time, or so it seemed, I noticed the piece on the right-hand side, It was called "PerfectlyContented." I tried to play this one as well. It had a lighter melody but with the same flowing rhythm and turned out to be quite easy. "Pleading Child" was shorter but slower; "Perfectly Contented" was longer but faster. And after I had played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.。
雅思阅读14类题型解题技巧之Summary
雅思阅读14类题型解题技巧之Summary如何备考雅思阅读?下面给大家带来了雅思阅读14类题型解题技巧之Summary(摘要填空)希望能够帮助到大家，下面就和大家分享，来欣赏一下吧。
雅思阅读14类题型解题技巧--Summary(摘要填空)Summary(摘要填空)1. 题型要求：该类题目是一小段文字，是原文或原文中的几个段落主要内容的缩写或改写，我们称之为摘要。
摘要中有几个空白部分要求填空。
摘要可分为两种：全文摘要和部分段落摘要。
全文摘要信息来自全文，题目空格的数目较多。
部分段落摘要信息来自原文某几个连续的段落，题目空格的数目较少。
考试中出现的大部分是部分段落摘要，信息来自原文连续的两到三段，题目空格的数量在5题左右。
对于部分段落摘要，有的在题目要求中会指出它来自原文的哪些段落，但大部分的部分段落摘要只是在题目要求中说它是原文的一个摘要或部分段落摘要，并不指出它来自原文的哪些段落。
按照填空内容，摘要也可分为三种：1. 原文原词2. 从多个选项中选词3. 自己写词。
原文原词的题目要求中常有from the Reading Passage 的字样。
从多个选项中选词，选项的数目常常超过题目空格的数目。
最近考试中，绝大部分是原文原词或从多个选项中选词，很少有自己写词的。
这类题在A类和G类考试中出现的频率一般都是每两次考一次，每次考一组，共五题左右。
2. 解题步骤(1) 仔细读摘要的第一句话，找出它在原文中的出处，通常是和原文某段话的第一句相对应。
如果题目要求中已经指出了摘要的出处，则此步可以略去不做。
(2) 注意空格前后的词，到原文中去找这些词的对应词。
对应词的特点如下：A. 原词B. 词性变化;如空格前的词为threatening, 是形容词，原文中的词为threat, 是名词。
C. 语态变化;一个是主动语态，一个是被动语态。
D. 同义词;如空格前的词为throw away，原文中的词为discard(丢弃，抛弃，遗弃)，它们是同义词。
unit 2 Two kinds
A consultant to programs for disabled
children, later a free-lance writer.
Her works
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
《喜福会》
The Kitchen God's wife (1991) 《灶神之妻》
What is the theme of this story?
Miscommunication between immigrant parents and their American-born children
. . . . .
E. Point of View
Point of view, or p.o.v., is defined as the angle from which the story is told.
The 1st-person narrator addresses the reader directly.
The immediate and compelling quality of the 1st-person narration enables the author to capture the moment as if it were taking place this very instant and right here.
four kinds of conflict
1) Man vs. Man (physical) - The leading character struggles with his physical strength against other men, forces of nature, or animals.
- 1、下载文档前请自行甄别文档内容的完整性，平台不提供额外的编辑、内容补充、找答案等附加服务。
- 2、"仅部分预览"的文档,不可在线预览部分如存在完整性等问题,可反馈申请退款(可完整预览的文档不适用该条件!)。
- 3、如文档侵犯您的权益，请联系客服反馈,我们会尽快为您处理(人工客服工作时间：9:00-18:30)。
《Two Kinds》梗概
Two Kinds by Amy Tan from the Joy Luck Club tells us a story among mothers and their own daughters. It reveals the bittersweet relationships between the mothers and the daughters. This passage mainly focuses on the relationship between Suyan Woo and her daughter Jing-mei.
Although Suyan Woo has become the citizen of America, her mind is still traditional and her thought is rooted in Chinese culture. Consequently, she puts all her hope on her daughter, along with that of those twin babies and wants to change her into obedient child just like the traditional Chinese children. Nevertheless, Jing-mei receives the American-style education. She does n’t like the assignments her mother arranged and often plays tricks, becoming disobedient and having her own mind. She wants to have her own life style. As a result, their conflicts break out. What impresses me most in the passage is Suyan Woo forces Jing-mei to play the piano, hoping her to have achievements in it. While Jing-mei just wants to be herself, so she pays no interest in playing the piano on purpose.After her awful piano performance on the talent show of the China town, she has a fierce quarrel with her mother and refuses to play piano anymore. At last, she wins.
When she grows up, she becomes mature, generally
understanding and realizing her mother’s expectation and deep love to her. She eventually plays the piano again and believes that her mother can hear the melody, though her mother has died.。