The Future of the English J . B. Priestley

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The Future of the English
J . B. Priestley
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Aims

• 1) Improving students ability to read between
  lines and understand the text properly
• 2)  Cultivating students ability to make a
  creative reading
• 3) Enhancing students ability to appreciate the
  text from different perspectives

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Aims

• 4) Helping students to understand some difficult
  words and expressions
• 5) Helping students to understanding rhetorical
  devices
• 6) Encouraging students to voice their own
  viewpoint fluently and accurately.

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Teaching Contents

• Background Knowledge
• Exposition and Argument
• Detailed Study of The Essay
• Organization Pattern
• Style and Language Features

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Time Allocation

• 1) Background knowledge (15 min.)
• 2) Detailed study of the text (180 min.)
• 3) Structure analysis (15 min.)
• 4) Language appreciation (15 min.)
• 5) Free talk (30 min)

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Exposition and Argument

• 1) Type of literature part exposition and part
  persuasion or argument
• http//teachnetlab.org/santab/jeff/sbargue_index.h
  tml
• http//homepages.iol.ie/laoistec/LENGLISH/lpers.h
  tml

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• Difference between exposition and argument
• Difference between persuasion and argument
• Honest persuasion and dishonest persuasion
• Formal argument and informal argument

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Background Knowledge

• 1) About the Author and His Works
• 1)   A brief introduction to the author,
  Priestley www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jpriestle
  y.htm

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• 2)     Admass
• The whole system of an increasing productivity,
  plus inflation, plus a rising standard of
  material living, plus high-pressure advertising
  and salesmanship, plus mass communications, plus
  cultural democracy and the creation of the mass
  mind, the mass man the part of society that can
  be influenced by advertising or publicity

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• Detailed Study of the Essay

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Pre-class work

• 1. What do you think the author is going to focus
  on the future of the English as an international
  language, the future of the English as a nation
  or the future of the English people?
• 2. You are supposed to figure out the type of the
  essay from the title. Its an imaginary fiction
  forecasting the future of the English or not?
• 3. What do you think the future of your own
  country and people would be like?

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The English are Different

• 1. The dominant intention or the controversial
  topic of his argument is stated early in
  paragraph one in one unambiguous sentence The
  English are different.

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• 1) The English can soon feel bored and thats why
  they gamble and booze so much and enjoy any
  dramatic change in public life.
• 2)  The English have a sense of community, decent
  fellow feeling, fairness.
• 3)  The English are at heart and at root an
  imaginative people immediately responsive to any
  suggestion of drama in their lives.

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• 4)   It is instinctive feeling and not rational
  thought that shapes and colours actual events in
  England.
• 5) The English do not feel at home in the
  contemporary world, representing the accelerated
  development of our whole age. They are suspicious
  of largeness, severe efficiency and admass.
• 6) The English are also deeply suspicious of
  change for changes sake.

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The Future of the English Hangs on

• The Future of the English hangs on
• 1) The final result of a battle between Admass
  and Englishness.

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• The striking contrast between admass and
  Englishness to show how inevitable the battle is.

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• Admass
• 1. Already conquered most of the western
  world
• 2.receive vast subsidies of dollars, francs,
  Deutschmarks and the rest for public relations
  and advertising campaigns

• Englishness
• 1.ailing and impoverished
• 2.in no position to receive vast subsidies of
  dollars,francs, Deutschmarks and the rest for
  public relations and advertising campaigns

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• 3.offers more and more things for more and more
  money, creates the so-called Good Life
• 4.operates in the outer visible world
• 5.a poster in full colour

• 3. offers states of mind in place of that rich
  variety of thins
• 4.belong to the invisible inner world
• 5. a poor shadowy show, a faint pencil sketch

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• The conflict between Admass and Englishness.

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• Admass
• What is central to Admass is the production and
  consumption of goods.
• Dissatisfaction is embedded in Admass
• Ruthless competitiveness
• Take man only as a producer and consumer
• Dependence upon dissatisfaction, greed and envy

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• Englishness
• With its relation to the unconscious
• Dependence upon instinct and intuition
• Adherence to the past and deep long roots
• Not hostile to change and deeply suspicious of
  change for changes sake
• Rejecting being committed to some inevitable
  mechanical progress

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• While Englishness can still fight on, Admass
  could be winning.

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• Reason
• Not all the English hold fast to Englishness
• Some important and influential men carefully
  train themselves out of it
• A horde of others, shallow and foolish, wander
  away form it
• The spirits of age is working for Admass
• Most of what we read and what we hear is working
  for Admass
• Inflation proved that we need more and not less
  Admass

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• 2) The Future of the English rests upon the
  decision made by English workers together with
  the people on the management side who will have
  to put an end to the conflict between Admass and
  Englishness.

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• 3) The Future of the English hangs upon men and
  women who are strong-minded enough to hold the
  Englishness and reject Admass

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• 4) The Future of the English depends upon the
  quieter young, who under the influence of one or
  two of those professional men and women,
  far-sighted enough to think what life would be
  like in the future.

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• 5) The Future of the English can not depends on
  the SLOOPY PEOPLE

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Boredom is a MENACE

• . Heavily industrially society
• ?
• offer boring work
• shatter slow rhythms, traditional skills, closely
  knit communities of rural societies
• crowd and excite people by promises that cannot
  be kept
• ?
• Boredom
  

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• Boredom
• ?
• idiot vandalism, frustration, ferocious
  robbery with violence, vicious criminality

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English is Still With Us

• 4.English is still with us. But it needs
  reinforcement, extra nourishment.
• 1) On a hidden level, there remains of a
  characteristically English sense of community,
  decent fellow feeling, fairness.

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• 2) Englishness cannot be fed with the east wind
  of a narrow rationality, the latest figures of
  profit and loss, a constant appeal to
  self-interest.
• 3) English are at heart and at root an
  imaginative people immediately responsive to any
  suggestion of drama in their lives.

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• Question
• And this is true, whether they are wearing
  bowler hats or ungovernable mops of hair.
• The rhetorical device used in this sentence is
  __________.
• bowler hats is standing for ___________.
• ungovernable mops of hair is standing for
  ___________.

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The writers voice

• To face the future properly they need both a
  direction and a treat life of the heart. A rather
  poorer and harder way of life will not defeat
  them so long as it is not harder and poorer in
  spirit, so long as it still refuses to reject
  Englishness- for so many centuries the secret of
  the islanders oddity and irrationality, their
  many weaknesses, their creative strength.

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Organization Pattern

• 1) The thesis stated in the title of the essay
• 2) The structural organization of this essay
  loose
• 3) A quite informal piece of argument which
  appeals more to the emotion of his English
  readers
• 4) Weakness   insufficient evidence to support
  the writers position, and his reasoning on some
  points not logically sound

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Style and Language Features

• 1) Smooth and polished
• 2) Readable and informal
• 3) It is the instinctive and intuitive feelings
  not rational reasoning that shape and colors the
  style of the essay.

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• 4) Use of various rhetorical devices
• http//www.megabrands.com/carroll/faq3.htmlto
• Metaphor
• Simile
• Ellipsis
• Transferred epithet
• Metonymy
• Euphemism

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Special Difficulties

• 1) Identifying and understanding British English
  in this essay
• 2) Understanding some colloquialism
• 3)  Paraphrasing some sentences
• 4)  Identifying figures of speech
• 5)  Understanding some important terms