Mr. Doherty Builds His Ideal Life Jim Doherty

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Mr. Doherty Builds His Ideal Life
Jim Doherty

• by Group One

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Teaching Plan

• Warm-up and Preview
• Background information
• Text Analysis
• Discussion and Review
• Exercises and A mini-quiz

one hour
three hours
one and a half
half an hour
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Warm-up Activities

• Group work
• What is your ideal life?
• 2. Please compare the country life and the city
  life.

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Comparisons between country life and city life

• Country life
• A pastoral life
• Friendly
• Live harmoniously
• Clean air and green trees
• Good environment
• Inconvenient
• Not many activities
• Dirty
• Can only buy the second best

• City life
• Keep up with the fashion
• Convenient
• Earn a lot of money
• Have a lot of opportunities
• Can buy the best things
• A quick pace of life
• Polluted
• Lonely and cold, like strangers

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Preview

• 1 Guess work Give the Chinese meanings of these
  following words
• frustration canoe
• overdue spray
• orchard virtuous
• squash self-reliant
• be busy with manage to do sth.
• be involved in

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Preview

• 2 Questions concerning the text
• 1) What kind of life does the author live?
• 2) What does the author do in summer?
• 3) Why does the author come to the
  countryside?
• 4) Are they satisfied with their life?

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Background Information

• In America many people have a romantic idea of
  life in the countryside. Many living in towns
  dream of starting up their own farm, of living
  off the land. Few get round to putting their
  dreams into practice.

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Background Information

• This is perhaps just as well, as the life of a
  farmer is far from easy, as Jim Doherty
  discovered when he set out to combine being a
  writer with running a farm. Nevertheless, as he
  explains, he has no regrets and remains
  enthusiastic about his decision to change his way
  of life.

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Text Analysis

• The structure of this text
• 1. a general introduction (part 1 Para.1)
  
• 2. the general nature of his life (part 2 Para.
  2-3)
• 3. elaboration (part 3 the rest of the text)

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Text Analysis

• Part One
• Ask one student to read the text
• Ask the students questions
• Explain the text
• 1) get by
• 2) frustration
• 3) suburban
• 4) contentment

Translation Gap-filling Synonyms
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Key Sentences

• 1.Whites class as a writer or in my neighbors
  class as a farmer, but Im getting by.
• 2.We love the smell of the earth warming and the
  sound of cattle lowing.
• 3.Besides the usual household routine, she
  oversees the garden and beehives, bakes bread,
  cans and freezes, ..
• 4.There is, as the old saying goes, no rest for
  the wicked on a place like this --- and not much
  for the virtuous either.

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• 5. Will there ever be a better time? The answer,
  decidedly, was no, and so, off I went.
• 6. .but on the whole, things have gone much
  better than we had any right to expect
• 7. we could just about double that if we sold
  today.

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• Discussion and Review
• Discussion questions
• 1. What kind of life do you like? City life
  or country life?
• 2. Nowadays a lot of Chinese decide to
  live in city, please list the reason.
• 3. What is the authors character?
• 4. What do you think the quality of your
  life?

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Review

• Key Words
• frustration, suburban, contentment,
  self-reliant, canoe, long-overdue, spray,
  rounds(n), virtuous, wicked, blast, wave upon,
  wave of, produce, quit, freelance, timing,
  mortgage, lower(v), dine, budget, entertain,
  makeprofit

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Review

• Phrases and sentence structures
• 1.Whites class as a writer or in my neighbors
  class as a farmer, but Im getting by.
• 2.We love the smell of the earth warming and the
  sound of cattle lowing.
• 3.Besides the usual household routine, she
  oversees the garden and beehives, bakes bread,
  cans and freezes, ..
• 4.There is, as the old saying goes, no rest for
  the wicked on a place like this --- and not much
  for the virtuous either.

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Review

• Phrases and sentence structures
• 5. Will there ever be a better time? The answer,
  decidedly, was no, and so, off I went.
• 6. .but on the whole, things have gone much
  better than we had any right to expect
• 7. we could just about double that if we sold
  today.

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Exercises and a mini-quiz

• Match work
• 2. Translation
• 3. Gap-filling

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Thanks for your attention and welcome your
suggestions!