Unit Six The Pace of Life

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Unit Six The Pace of Life

• Text A Old Father Time Becomes a Terror
• Text B Life in the Fast Lane

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Objectives

• Grasp the main idea and structure of the text
• Learn to distinguish supporting facts from
  opinions, and to use both in their own writing
• Master the key language points and grammatical
  structures
• Conduct a series of reading, listening, speaking
  and writing activities related to the theme of
  the unit.

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Contents

• Part ? Pre-reading Activity
• Part ? Text A
• ? New Words
• ? Structure Analysis
• ? Language Points
• Part ? Text B
• ?Useful Expression
• ?Questions Answers
• Part ? Theme-related Task
• Part ? Assignments

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Part ? Pre-reading Activity

• Technology
• The processes by which human beings fashion
  tools and machines to increase their control and
  understanding of the material environment.

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Technology is
Question Will technology really benefits
people or just ruin the civilization on the earth?

• Historians of science
• Ordinary people

• An essential condition of advanced, industrial
  civilization.
• Free us from heavy handy work.

• Arouse unexpected social consequences
• Threaten workers with unemployment
• Industrialization turns people into parts of a
  huge machine, changes their ways of life.

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Old father time becomes a terror ?????????????
We make innovation(??) on technology to save our
time, but paradoxically (????)we find ourselves
are even more busy with those saved time! Do you
know why?
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New Words

• 1. on the go (infml) active or busy
• Examples
• Ive been on the go all week, preparing my
  thesis.
• I was on the go all day and went home at about
  10oclocj in the evening.

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• 2. eat into gradually reduce the amount of
  (sth. Valuable) damage or destroy
• Examples
• All these car expenses are eating into our
  savings.
• Responsibilities at home and work eat into his
  time.
• Acid eats into the metal damaging its surface,

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• 3. multiply increase in number or quantity
  add a number to itself a particular number of
  times
• Examples
• the weeds just multiplied, and before long the
  garden was a jungle.
• Multiplying large quantities in ones head has
  become a lost art since the arrival of the
  calculator.

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• 4. pour ingo into a place quickly and in large
  numbers
• Examples
• Tourists poured onto Shanghai on National Day.
• many football fans poured into the stadium to
  have a look at their favorite football players.

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• 5. a handful of a small number of the amount
  of sth. That you can hold on your hand
• Examples
• Only a handful of graduates have not found jobs
  so far.
• Despite her productivity, only a handful of
  Dickinsons poems were published before her
  death.
• She scooped up a handful of snow and pressed it
  hard to make a ball.
• Ethology is a science concerned with the
  comparative study pf animal behavior.

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• 6. fractionsmall part, bit, amount or
  proportion(of sth.)
• Examples
• Only a small fraction of the population lived in
  that remote area.
• The black miners in South Africa used to earn
  only a fraction of the wages paid to white miners
  doing equivalent work.

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• 7. amount tobe equal to add up to
• Examples
• In 1959 the combined value of U. S. imports and
  exports amounted to less than 9 percent of the
  countrys gross domestic product.
• The tuition fee amounts to ten thousand yuan.

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Text Structure

• Part 1
• Modern people are time stressed(?????)for three
  reasons, they are
• Household appliance
• Laptop-on-the-beach syndrome
• The information explosion.

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Free time in peoples life

• UK rose slightly
• 48 h for working fathers
• 14 h for working mothers

• U.S. fell
• Average 5 h/w
• Singles empty-nesters got most
• Working couples with pre-school children the
  least

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Peoples reactions to time stress

• Reaction 1 Attempt to gain the largest possible
  amount of satisfaction from the smallest possible
  investment of time.
• Reaction 2 Try to buy time
• Reaction 3 Hot debate on the work-life. (early
  retirement and family-friendly working policies)

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A remedy for the time stress

• Fewer Desires

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Post Questions

• 1?Has technology made our life easier or more
  burdensome? Give examples to illustrate your
  view.
• 2?The author makes mention of stress envy in
  para.14.What do you think are the possible
  sociological motivation behind it?

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• 3?Do you agree with the author that all
  time-liberating techniques in relieving the
  widespread sense of time famine are doomed to
  failure? Is cutting back on human desire the
  ultimate solution? Why or why not?

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Words Drill

• Words List
• 1) appliance 2) comparative 3) multiply 4)
  oblige 5) prosperity 6) in reality 7)
  aircraft 8) volunteers 9) famine10) a
  handful of 11) distribution 12) large
  quantities of/a large quantity of 13)
  widespread 14) streamline 115) provoke

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• You can get a loan for essential household
  equipment such as a cooker and a heating (
  ).
• 2. Conventional medicine has concentrated mainly
  on the treatment of chronic and acute illness,
  and until recently years the role of preventive
  medicine has suffered ( ) neglect.
• 3. You should remember that a fridge doesnt kill
  bacteria it only slow down the rate at which
  they ( ).

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4. When asked to do us a favor by showing us
around the city. Jack said he was only too happy
to ( ). 5. The town has been
producing wool, cloth, and blankets since the
13th century and much of its ( ) today
is still founded on those industries. 6.If you
compare a striped object with one that has a
different kind of black and white pattern, they
do not appear to be the same size even if, (
), they are identical.
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7. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for his
role in the hijacking of a United States Trans
World Airlines ( ). 8. Since it
would probably be a highly dangerous mission, the
lieutenant called for ( ) who would like
to delicate themselves to the noble cause. 9. He
got to his feet, leaving ( )
coins for the bill, and them went out of the
restaurant into the night air.
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10. Despite the limitations of the official
figures, they do provides some indication of the
overall trend in the ( ) of
income. 11. To prevent widespread (
) , the report calls for the development of
new crops adjusted to hotter climates and drier
soils, and above all ,a reduction in population
growth. 12. Carrying ( ) cash
could be dangerous and inconvenient. Why not use
a credit card?
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13. Malnutrition in this region is (
) ----affecting up to 78of children under five
years old. 14. The World Bank has decided to
grant Hungary a loan of 66 million dollars to (
) its financial system. 15. Oil
prices have soared to above thirty dollars a
barrel, their highest level in a decade, which is
almost certain to ( ) another round of
petrol price increases.
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Part ? Text B

• comprehension Check
• Choose the best answer for each of the
  following

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• 1. By comparing culture to one stomped anthill
  Robinson and Godbey mean( ).
• a. ants have a culture too
• b. culture is worthless
• c. people keep rushing around like disturbed
  ants
• d. people go about their business in an
  orderly way

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• 2. From the text we can infer that advertisements
  on television have changed as a result of ( ).
• a. it being easer to switch channels
• b. the need to appear to children
• c. shorter commercial breaks
• d. telephone sales

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• 3. From the text we can infer that leaving the
  television on while entertaining guests would be
  judged by the author to be ( ).
• a. an act of rudeness
• b. a sign of our taste for multitasking
• c. a way of displaying our wealth
• d. something everyone does nowadays

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• 4. The main message of the piece is that todays
  pace of life is something most of us ( ) .
• a. hate
• b. enjoy
• c. feel indifferent about
• d, do not notice

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• 5. According to the text, feeling that you have
  too little time is related to your ( ).
• a. sex
• b. age
• c. family size
• d. education

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• 6. The author implies that some questions are
  difficult to answer because ( ).
• a. we do not yet know enough
• b. we are too impatient
• c. the ideas on which they are based are
  confused
• d. they are about very complicated matters

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• The End