Unit 5 Language

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Unit 5 Language
Teaching Objectives In this unit students are
required to 1. Practice listening skills 2. Get
to know some useful information concerning the
topic of this unit 3. Do some preparation
activities such as discussion, group work to
enhance their spoken English and communicative
skills 4. Learn new words and phrases to further
broaden students scope of vocabulary 5. Read
the in-class reading passage within limited time
for a general idea of the passage and then do
detailed reading for a command of useful
expressions 6. Do post-reading exercises and
some after-class reading to test how far they
have gone in grasping reading skills and language
points 7. Translate some key sentences in the
unit to upgrade students translation
abilities Teaching Methodology Communicative
approach Multi-media teaching Teaching process
Pre-task------Task cycle------Post-task Time
Distribution Listening Speaking 2 periods
In-class Reading 2 periods Exercise
After-class Reading 2 periods Further
Development Writing 2 periods.
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Period 1 2 Listening and Speaking
I?Teaching Focus 1.Background information
introduction 2.Preparation 3.Listening to tapes
II?Teaching steps 1. Background Information
The term language normally refers to human
speech, spoken or written. Language forms the
basis of communication between all human beings.
About 95 the worlds population speak one of the
100 most widely used languages. English and
French both have more second-language speakers
than native-speakers as a result of the imperial
expansion of Britain and France. Partly due to
the British and American pop culture, English is
fast becoming the universal foreign language of
Europeans. Like all languages, English has many
dialects which reflect social changes and
settlement patterns that have occurred over many
centuries. Although specialists disagree on the
exact meaning of dialect, generally it refers to
a socially or regionally restricted variety of a
language. A dialect usually has its own
distinctive grammatical (grammar, syntax),
lexical (vocabulary) and phonetic (accent)
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• features. In many cases, it is impossible for
  people speaking different dialects to understand
  each other. Someone speaking Cockney (English
  spoken in a certain area of London) might have
  great difficulty in understanding the English
  spoken by innercity Afro-Americans in Chicago,
  for example. An accent is the distinctive manner
  of pronunciation and intonation typical of a
  given region or social group. There are many
  different accents in England, Wales, Scotland,
  Ireland, Canada, and the United States. Accents
  in the southern hemisphere (Australia, New
  Zealand, south Africa) are close to British
  accents and are all rather similar because they
  emerged less than 200 years ago and are
  predominantly a blend of accents from
  southeastern England. The accents in the United
  States and Canada are much older and more
  different from British accents. Traveling across
  North America, one can hear a wide variety of
  accents ranging from the southern drawl to the
  Brooklyn accent. In very isolated rural areas
  like the mountains of North Carolina, accents
  tend to be very strong and often difficult to
  understand.
• An accent shows where a person comes from and, to
  an extent, what class he or she belongs to.
  Received Pronunciation (RP) or BBC English (so
  called because it is used by BBC announcers) is
  the accent of the southeast England. It has been
  associated with power and upper class since the
  fourteenth century. At that time the King, the
  royal court and the government settled in London,
  and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge,
  both in the southeast, provided higher education
  for the whole country. People who wanted to be
  part of this powerful world had to use the same
  accent and language. In the nineteenth century RP
  was used in public schools, universities, the
  government, and the army to form small groups who
  would run the Empire. It was often impossible to
  get any kind of high position if you did not
  speak in the right way. Attitudes in Britain have
  changed and regional accents are now more
  acceptable. PR accent is still important and will
  help people to get jobs and a position in society
  which might be denied to them if they spoke in a
  different way.
• British and American English are varieties of the
  same language. However, they differ to some
  extent in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and
  grammar. In American speech, sounds are given
  greater length than in British English. Because
  of this the British tend to criticize the
  American drawl while the American may mock the
  clipped sound of British speech. Everyday
  idiomatic expressions frequently differ.
  Americans may talk about a

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line on the sidewalk whereas the British will
say there is a queue on the pavement. American
spelling often seems simpler than British
version. The British write humour and
programme, but Americans write humor and
program. There are even some differences in
grammatical usage. The American can say I have
gotten and different than. On the other hand
the British insist on I have got and different
from. However, in the worldwide use of English
as an academic language these differences are
incidental and insignificant. The language of
animals has always fascinated human beings.
Through the age, people have speculated on how
animals communicate among themselves. Yet most of
the ways that animals communicate have only been
discovered in recent years. Many animals make
sounds that humans can neither recognize nor
hear. Some animals communicate and make their
territory with their scents which humans are
incapable of detecting. Considerable research has
been carried out on the sounds whales use to
talk to each other. The song of the blue whale
is the loudest sound made by any living creature
but it can only be felt as vibrations by humans.
Scientists now estimate that whale can
communicate with each other from one side of the
Pacific Ocean to the other. Various attempts have
been made to teach apes to talk with sign
language. Some of these apes appear to be able to
hold conversation. However, there is considerable
debate as to whether these animals are really
talking, or merely responding to unconscious
cues of their trainers.
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2. Preparation 1. How Do People Communicate?
STEP ONE Ways of communication include
language (spoken or written), signs, gesture,
facial expression, body language, Braille,
pictures, code, beacon, flag signals. STEP TWO
The following ways of expressing yourself are
four reference. ?? As an alternative of Step
Two, the teacher can also ask students to act out
some words like old, fat, tired, frown, slim by
means of non-verbal communication. Only the
actor knows what exactly the word is. Before
the student acts, the teacher can tell the class
the part of speech of the word to be acted out.
The other students are asked to guess the
word. 3. Listening to tapes
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Period 34 Reading

• 1) . I stood on the porch, dumb, expectant.( l.5
  )
• I left the well-house eager to learn.(l.56)
• ??????dumb, expectant ? eager to learn
  ??????,??????I?
• e.g. During his lifetime, he patented 1,093
  inventions, yet he departed from the world
  penniless.
• He watched horrified by the terrible
  accident.
• She sat dumbfounded by what she had heard.
• She left the room angry and frustrated.
• She looked sad and discouraged.
• 2). Subject (l.38) n.
• 1. the thing which is being discussed,
  considered or studied
• e.g. Our subject for discussion is homelessness.
• 2. branch or knowledge studied in a school,
  etc.
• e.g. English is one of my favorite subject.
• 3. person or thing being treated in a certain
  way or being experimented on
• e.g. He was willing to be the subject of a
  psychology experiment.
• 4. word(s) in a sentence about which something
  is predicated (??)
• e.g. What is the subject of this sentence?

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• 3). In time (l.55)
• 1. sooner or later, eventually
• e.g. In time youll forget him.
• 2. not late
• e.g. We got to the station just in time to catch
  the bus.
• Do you think we can get there in time for the
  first act?
• 4). On entering the door I remembered the doll I
  had broken. (l.59)
• ?? on ???????????,?????????????????
• e.g. On his stepping out of the taxi he was
  seized by two men.
• One of the first things that he did on
  getting home was to have a good sleep.
• The boys stood up on the entrance of the
  headmaster.
• On investigation some curious facts came to
  light.
• 3.Exercises

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Period 56 Post-reading and Exercise

• I?Teaching focus
• Test students reading skills the their command
  of new words and phrases.
• II?Teaching steps
• 1.Fast reading for exercises
• 2.Questions for discussions

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Period 78 Further Development and Writing

• I. Teaching Content
• Further enhance students communicative abilities
  and writing abilities
• II. Teaching Steps
• English or Englishes?
• 1) neighbour 2) centre 3) sceptics
  4) tyre 5) catalogue
• 6) cheque 7) analyses 8) plough
  9) programme 10) travelling
• 2. Exchanging Experience in Learning English
• Success
• I love leaning English, I try to memorize 15 new
  words every day.
• I think my speaking skill is good because I try
  my best to participate in class activities. I
  also go to the English corner.
• I am doing an exchange with a foreign student,
  which has helped me with my speaking and
  pronunciation.
• Failure
• I couldnt understand the listening passages at
  all.
• I had a lot of difficulty in reading the in-class
  reading passages.
• I feel discouraged about my spoken English. I go
  to the English corner but I am too frightened to
  speak.
• My grammar is not so good.
• 3. Associated Words
• 1) letters, vowels, consonants 2)
  Intonation 3) syllables, stress
• 4) mother tongue 5) sounds,
  pronounce, repeat