Unit7

1. Unit7

2. Cultural information Audiovisual supplement Pre-reading Activities - Audiovisual supplement 1 Watch the video and answer the following questions. 1. What do you think of the boy that the teachers were talking about? What attitudes did the teachers have towards the boy? 2. Do you have any study problem? What’s your teachers’ attitude? The boy had some study problems. Most of the teachers did not believe that the boy could make any progress, but the young lady thought that he could. Open.

3. Cultural information Audiovisual supplement Pre-reading Activities - Audiovisual supplement 2

4. Cultural information Audiovisual supplement Teacher 1: Teacher 2: Teacher 3: Teacher 1: Teacher 3: Teacher 4: Teacher 2: Teacher 4: The big kid’s been here for, what, a month? He’s still not cutting it in my class. Why does Admissions do this? I mean, it’s not fair to us or the boy. They’re just setting him up to fail. I don’t think he has any idea of what I’m teaching. And how would you know if he did? He won’t even talk. He writes. His name. Barely. He threw this in the trash can. “I look and I see white everywhere: white walls, white floors, and a lot of white people. The teachers do not know I Video Script1

5. Cultural information Audiovisual supplement Video Script2 have no idea of anything they are talking about. I do not wanna listen to anyone, especially the teachers. They are giving homework and expecting me to do the problems on my own. I have never done homework in my life. I go to the bathroom, look in the mirror and say: ‘This is not Michael Oher.’” He entitled it “White Walls.” How’s the spelling? Teacher 1:

6. Cultural information Audiovisual supplement Cultural information1 1. Quote Histories make men wise; poems witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. — Francis Bacon

7. Cultural information Audiovisual supplement 2. Grades Grades are standardized measurements of varying levels of comprehension within a subject area. Grades can be assigned in letters (for example, A, B, C, D, or F), as a range (for example 4.0 –1.0), as descriptors (excellent, great, Cultural information2 satisfactory, needs improvement), in percentages, or, as is common in some post-secondary institutions in some countries, as a Grade Point Average (GPA). The GPA can be used by potential employers or further post-secondary institutions to assess

8. Cultural information Audiovisual supplement Cultural information7 and compare applicants. A Cumulative Grade Point Average is the mean GPA from all academic terms within a given academic year, whereas the GPA may only refer to one term.

9. Text analysis Structural analysis Global Reading - Text analysis 1. What issues does the writer of the letter intend to deal with? How should students regard grades, both good and bad? Are grades as important as they are assumed to be? Do good grades necessarily lead to achievements and bad grades result in failure in a student’s later life?

10. Text analysis Structural analysis Global Reading - Text analysis 2. What’s the theme of this piece of writing? It is explicitly stated in the first sentence of the third paragraph: to put a B student’s disappointment in perspective by considering exactly what the grade B means and doesn’t mean.

11. Text analysis Structural analysis Structural analysis 1 1. Divide the text into parts by completing the table. It introduces the topic of the letter. Grades do not mean everything. Getting a B in class does not mean one will always be a B performer in life.

12. Text analysis Structural analysis Structural analysis 2 In a complex society like ours, labels are necessary but they should be kept in perspective.

13. Main idea Structural analysis 2. Apart from the first paragraph, the rest of the text falls clearly into three parts, each of which is marked at the beginning by a key word or words. Try to find these key words. Structural analysis 3 Paragraphs 2–5: Disappointment Paragraphs 6-8: The student as performer; the student as human being. Paragraphs 9-10: Perspective

14. Detailed reading Letter to a B Student Robert Oliphant Detailed reading1 Your final grade for the course is B. A respectable grade. Far superior to the “Gentleman’s C” that served as the norm a couple of generations ago. But in those days A’s were rare: only two out of twenty-five, as I recall. Whatever our norm is, it has shifted upward, with the result that you are probably disappointed at not doing better. I’m certain that nothing I can say will remove that feeling of disappointment, particularly in a climate where grades determine eligibility for graduate school and special programs. 1

15. Detailed reading Disappointment. It’s the stuff bad dreams are made of: dreams of failure, inadequacy, loss of position and good repute. The essence of success is that there’s never enough of it to go round in a zero-sum game where one person’s winning must be offset by another’s losing, one person’s joy offset by another’s disappointment. You’ve grown up in a society where winning is not the most important thing — it’s the only thing. To lose, to fail, to go under, to go broke — these are deadly sins in a world where prosperity in the present is seen as a sure sign of salvation in the future. In a different society, your disappointment might be something you could shrug away. But not in ours. 2 Detailed reading2

16. Detailed reading Detailed reading3 My purpose in writing you is to put your disappointment in perspective by considering exactly what your grade means and doesn’t mean. I do not propose to argue here that grades are unimportant. Rather, I hope to show you that your grade, taken at face value, is apt to be dangerously misleading, both to you and to others. 3

17. Detailed reading As a symbol on your college transcript, your grade simply means that you have successfully completed a specific course of study, doing so at a certain level of proficiency. The level of your proficiency has been determined by your performance of rather conventional tasks: taking tests, writing papers and reports, and so forth. Your performance is generally assumed to correspond to the knowledge you have acquired and will retain. But this assumption, as we both know, is questionable; it may well be that you’ve actually gotten much more out of the course than your grade indicates — or less. 4 Detailed reading4

18. Detailed reading Lacking more precise measurement tools, we must interpret your B as a rather fuzzy symbol at best, representing a questionable judgment of your mastery of the subject. Detailed reading5 Your grade does not represent a judgment of your basic ability or of your character. Courage, kindness, wisdom, good humor — these are the important characteristics of our species. Unfortunately they are not part of our curriculum. But they are important: crucially so, because they are always in short supply. 5

19. Detailed reading If you value these characteristics in yourself, you will be valued — and far more so than those whose identities are measured only by little marks on a piece of paper. Your B is a price tag on a garment that is quite separate from the living, breathing human being underneath. Detailed reading6 The student as performer; the student as human being. The distinction is one we should always keep in mind. I first learned it years ago when I got out of the service and went back to college. There were a lot of us then: older than the norm, in a hurry to get our degrees and move on, impatient with the tests and rituals of academic life. Not an easy group to handle. 6

20. Detailed reading One instructor handled us very wisely, it seems to me. On Sunday evenings in particular, he would make a point of stopping in at a local bar frequented by many of the GI-Bill students. There he would sit and drink, joke, and swap stories with men in his class, men who had but recently put away their uniforms and identities: former platoon sergeants, bomber pilots, corporals, captains, lieutenants, commanders, majors — even a lieutenant colonel, as I recall. They enjoyed his company greatly, as he theirs. The next morning he would walk into class and give these same men a test. A hard test. A test on which he usually flunked about half of them. 7 Detailed reading7

21. Detailed reading Oddly enough, the men whom he flunked did not resent it. Nor did they resent him for shifting suddenly from a friendly gear to a coercive one. Rather, they loved him, worked harder and harder at his course as the semester moved along, and ended up with a good grasp of his subject — economics. The technique is still rather difficult for me to explain; but I believe it can be described as one in which a clear distinction was made between the student as classroom performer and the student as human being. A good distinction to make. A distinction that should put your B in perspective — and your disappointment. 8 Detailed reading8

22. Detailed reading Perspective. It is important to recognize that human beings, despite differences in class and educational labeling, are fundamentally hewn from the same material and knit together by common bonds of fear and joy, suffering and achievement. Warfare, sickness, disasters public and private — these are the larger coordinates of life. To recognize them is to recognize that social labels are basically irrelevant and misleading. It is true that these labels are necessary in the functioning of a complex society as a way of letting us know who should be trusted to do what, with the result that we need to make distinctions on the basis of grades, degrees, ranks, and responsibility. 9 Detailed reading9

23. Detailed reading But these distinctions should never be taken seriously in human terms, either in the way we look at others or in the way we look at ourselves. Detailed reading10 Even in achievement terms, your B label does not mean that you are permanently defined as a B achievement person. I’m well aware that B students tend to get B’s in the courses they take later on, just as A students tend to get A’s. But academic work is a narrow, neatly defined highway compared to the unmapped rolling country your will encounter after you leave school. 10

24. Detailed reading What you have learned may help you find your way about at first; later on you will have to shift to yourself, locating goals and opportunities in the same fog that hampers us all as we move toward the future. Detailed reading10

25. Detailed reading 1. What change about grades has the author mentioned briefly? Detailed reading1--Quesion 1.1 The author has mentioned briefly the change in the way grades are regarded, i.e. the norm has shifted upward. 2. What, according to the author, has caused the feeling of disappointment? It has to do with the general social climate where grades determine eligibility for graduate school and special programs. This is why the author says there is nothing he can do to remove the feeling of disappointment.

26. Detailed reading Detailed reading1--Quesion 1.3 3. Has the author stated his purpose of writing in this paragraph? If yes, what is it? If not, where is it stated in the text? The purpose of writing the letter is not stated in this paragraph. It is not specifically mentioned until the third paragraph.

27. Detailed reading Detailed reading1--Quesion 2.1 1. How does the author explain the notion of disappointment? Refer to Paragraph 2. Disappointment is a negative feeling. It is the stuff bad dreams are made of. What deserves our attention here is that the author explains disappointment in relation to success.

28. Detailed reading Detailed reading1--Quesion 2.2 2. How do you interpret the second sentence in Paragraph 2 “The essence of success is that …”? There does not exist the situation in which all those who are involved will turn out successful and no one feels disappointed. Wherever there are winners, there are losers. When someone feels happy about his success, someone else may feel disappointed at his failure. In a highly competitive society where the importance of winning is emphasized so much, it is inevitable that those who fail in the competition will feel disappointed.

29. Detailed reading Detailed reading1--Quesion 3 What does the phrase “put sth. in perspective” mean? It means “judge the importance of sth. correctly.” So what the author wants to do is to show the students how they should regard / view their disappointment correctly.

30. Detailed reading Detailed reading1--Quesion 5 Try to find out what a grade means and what it does not mean. It means the successful completion of a specific course at a certain level of proficiency. It is an indication of the student’s performance of some conventional tasks. However, it may not be a truthful indication of the student’s knowledge. It does not represent a judgment of the student’s basic ability or of his character.

31. Detailed reading Detailed reading1--Quesion 9 1. What is the author’s view concerning social labels? Social labels are on the one hand irrelevant and misleading and on the other hand necessary in a complex society.

32. Detailed reading Detailed reading1--Quesion 9 2. How do you interpret the sentence “To recognize them is to recognize that social labels are basically irrelevant and misleading”? If we are aware that human beings, despite their apparent differences, are basically identical physically and emotionally, we would think definitely that the social labels used to distinguish them are irrelevant, i.e. meaningless, and misleading, i.e. distorting the fact.

33. Detailed reading Detailed reading1--Quesion 10 How does the author relate a student’s academic performance with his future life? While a student’s performance at school may be quite consistent throughout his school years and what he has learned at school may help him after he leaves school, in the long run he will depend much more on himself, i.e. he will have to learn to find his way when traveling in his life path. A grade B student may turn out to be a grade A life achiever.

34. Detailed reading normn. 1) an accepted standard or a way of behaving or doing things that most people agree with Detailed reading1– norm e.g. You must adapt to the norms of the society you live in. 2) the norm = a situation or type of behavior that is expected and considered to be typical e.g. One child per family is fast becoming the norm in some countries. Derivation: normal a. normally ad. normalize v. normalization n.

35. Detailed reading shiftvt.& vi. 1) to (cause something or someone to) move or change from one position or direction to another, especially slightly Detailed reading1– shift 1 She shifted (her weight) uneasily from one foot to the other. The wind is expected to shift (to the east) tomorrow. e.g. 2) transfer sth. e.g. This simply shifts the cost of medical insurance from the employer to the employee.

36. Detailed reading Detailed reading1– shift 2 Collocation: shift sth. (from A to / onto B)转移或转换某事物 shift (your) ground（辩论中）改变立场或方法 e.g. He’s annoying to argue with because he keeps shifting his ground. Derivation: shift n. shiftless a.

37. Detailed reading Translation: Detailed reading1– shift 3 1. 教师让学生们挪动了教室里的椅子，以便小组成员坐在一起开展讨论。 2. 最近，媒体的注意力转移到了环境方面的问题。 The teacher asked the students to shift the chairs around in the classroom so that the group members could sit together for the discussion. _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Media attention has shifted recently into environmental issues. _______________________________________________________________________

38. Detailed reading Detailed reading1-- eligibility 1 eligibilityn. the qualifications or abilities required for doing something e.g. I’ll have to check her eligibility to take part in this competition. Derivation: eligible a. eligible (for sth. / to do sth.)

39. Detailed reading Translation: Detailed reading1– eligibility 2 1. Her qualifications and experience confirm her eligibility for the job. 2. 只有在公司工作三年以上的人才能得到住房补贴。 她的资历和经验确定她适合做这项工作。 _______________________________________________________ Only those who have worked in this company for at least three years are eligible for housing allowance. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

40. Detailed reading I’m certain that nothing I can say will remove that feeling of disappointment, particularly in a climate where grades determine eligibility for graduate school and special program. Detailed reading1-- I’m certain that nothing Translation: 我肯定无论我说什么都不会消除你的沮丧心情，特别是在我们生活的环境中，考试分数直接决定你是否有资格读研究生和申请一些特别的学习项目。

41. Detailed reading inadequacyn. 1) being too low in quality or too small in amount Detailed reading1-- inadequacy 1 e.g. The inadequacy of water supply for city people has already been a problem no government can take lightly. 2) fault or failing; weakness e.g. I always suffer from feelings of inadequacy when I’m with him. e.g. The poet lay down and gazed at the bright moon, missing his hometown.

42. Detailed reading Derivation: Detailed reading1– inadequacy 2 inadequate a. inadequately ad. Antonym: adequacy

43. Detailed reading Exercise: Use the following words to fill in the blanks. Detailed reading1– inadequacy 3 inadequacy inadequately adequacy adequate adequately 1. Unemployment can often cause feelings of and low self-esteem. 2. He doubted her for the job. 3. Will future oil supplies be to meet world needs? 4. While some patients can be cared for at home, others are best served by care in a hospital. 5. Our scientific research is funded. inadequacy ____________ adequacy ___________ adequate ___________ adequately _____________ inadequately ______________

44. Detailed reading essence n. the most basic and important idea or quality Detailed reading1-- essence e.g. The essence of his argument was that education should continue throughout life. Yet change is the very essence of life. Collocation: in essence本质上，大体上 e.g. In essence, both sides agree on the issue. of the essence非常重要的，不可缺少的 e.g. In any of these discussions, of course, honesty is of the essence.

45. Detailed reading Detailed reading1– essence Derivation: essential a. & n. essentially ad.

46. Detailed reading offset vt. to counterbalance or compensate for Detailed reading1– offset 1 e.g. In basketball, he offsets his small size by his cleverness and speed. Forests can help offset human-caused climate warming, and scientists want to know how big a role these particular forests will play. Collocation: offset sth. by sth. / doing sth.

47. Detailed reading Translation: Detailed reading1– offset 2 1. The extra cost of travelling to work is offset by the lower price of houses here. 2. He put up his prices to offset the increased cost of materials. 此处的低房价可以抵消从这里去上班时交通方面的额外支出。 _______________________________________________________ _____________ 他提高了售价以补偿材料成本的增加。 ________________________________________________________

48. Detailed reading go under to fail; to be overwhelmed Detailed reading1– go under e.g. His business went under because of competition from the large corporations. Poor Donaldson had no head for business, and it was not long before he went under.

49. Detailed reading go / be broke to become penniless; to go bankrupt Detailed reading1– go / be broke e.g. The business kept losing money and finally went broke. I can’t afford to go on holiday this year — I’m broke. A lot of small businesses went broke during the recession. 经济不景气，很多小公司都倒闭了。

50. Detailed reading perspective n. a way of regarding situations, facts, etc. Detailed reading1– perspective1 e.g. His father’s death gave him a whole new perspective on life. The novel is written from the perspective of a child. Collocation: in / out of perspective e.g. The background of this picture is all out of perspective. e.g. He sees things in their right perspective.