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Electronic Teaching Portfolio Book Four
Unit Seven: Reading and Reflection
Part I Get Started
Section A Discussion
▇ Sit in pairs or groups and discuss the following questions. 1 Why do you think we need to read?
2 What do you prefer to read — poems, novels or plays?
3 What role do you think literary works play in our lives?
▆ Answers for reference: 1 Hints:
? Reading broadens our horizons. ? Reading enriches our knowledge.
? Reading puts us in contact with the best minds of human history. ? Reading enriches our experience.
? Reading empowers us with knowledge. ? Reading improves our character and taste. ? Reading is a good pastime.
2 Some hints:
a) Different people read literature for different reasons and purposes because of their different
backgrounds, tastes, experiences and educational background.
b) Those who prefer reading novels may think novels are more interesting and easier to read probably
because novels usually have plots. They can take readers to other places and times, real or imaginary, allowing them to meet people and experience life in many different ways. A good novel makes readers think, laugh, cry or wonder.
3 Reference:
Literary works play an important role in our life. They can broaden our horizons. They help us experience a kind of life which we cannot have in real life. They help us see the things which we tend to ignore in our daily life. They can also help us escape from reality.
Section B Quotes
▇ Study the following quotes about reading and reflection and discuss in pairs what you can learn from them.
Francis Bacon
⊙Some books are to be tasted; others to be swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested.
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— Francis Bacon
Interpretation:
There are different ways of reading books. To taste a book, one can read it in a state of relaxation. To swallow a book one can glide his eyes across the lines of a book. To chew or digest a book one should read it actively. And when he has finished reading a book, the pages are filled with his notes. Only when good books are chewed and digested can they have a lasting influence on one’s life.
About Francis Bacon (1561-1626): an English politician, philosopher, and writer. Francis Bacon graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge. He was the founder of English materialist philosophy, as well as of modern science in England. He is especially famous for his Essays, in which his practical wisdom is shown through his reflections and comments on rather abstract subjects.
Benjamin Franklin
◎ Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.
— Benjamin Franklin
Interpretation:
Reading broadens our horizons, molds our temperament and enlightens our minds. Reading provides us with the possibility of opening ourselves up to the world, which helps us to become learned and knowledgeable persons. Thinking deeply helps us gain an insight into human life. Having scholarly conversations with others helps us become wiser.
About Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790): a US politician, writer, and scientist. He was involved in writing two historically significant documents, the Declaration of Independence (《独立宣言》) and the Constitution of the United States (《美国宪法》). He is famous for proving that lightning is a form of electricity by doing a scientific test in which he flew a kite during a storm, and he invented the lightning conductor. He is also well known for his literary works such as Poor Richard’s Almanac (《穷理查德年鉴》1732-1757；亦译作《格言历书》、《穷理查历书》) and Autobiography (《自传》1790).
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Denis Parsons Burkitt
◎ It is better to read a little and ponder a lot than to read a lot and ponder a little.
— Denis Parsons Burkitt
Interpretation:
What really counts is not how many books we have read but whether we spend time thinking over what we have read. So we should read selectively and reflectively.
About Denis Parsons Burkitt (1911–1993): an accomplished British surgeon. His major contribution to medical science was the description, distribution, and ultimately, the etiology (病因学；病源论) of a pediatric (小儿科的) cancer that bears his name Burkitt’s lymphoma (伯基特氏淋巴瘤).
Louisa May Alcott
◎ Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.
— Louisa May Alcott
Interpretation:
Books and friends should be few but good. We should be highly selective in reading books, and our greatest pleasure in reading comes from the best books.
About Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888): an American novelist best known as author of the novel Little Women (《小妇人》）.
Section C Watching and Discussion
▇ Watch the following video clip “Reading Really Matters” and do the tasks that follow. Introduction of the video:
Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, is talking about arts education.
First he mentions a problem in the United States: People are reading less and employers are facing a serious problem that their new employees can’t read and can’t write.
According to Dana Gioia, those people who read do exercise more and do more volunteering charity work. 实用文案
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Then he comes to talk about how reading actually matters to a person. 1 Now fill in the note form according to what you hear.
Topic: Reading Awakens Something inside the Reader 1) reading increases your sense of your own personal destiny. 2) reading makes the lives of other people more real to you.
In summary, reading makes you understand that other people have an inner life as complicated as your own.
Reading builds a society with not only imaginative capability, intellectual capability, but compassion, and humanity.
2 Discuss the following questions.
Do you agree that Chinese people are reading less?
Do you think modern technology has influenced the way people read? Open.
▇ Script：
Americans are reading less. Because they read less, they read less well. Because they read less well, they do less well in the educational system. We are in the process in the United States of producing the first generation in our history that’s less well-educated than their parents. Now, I mean, to me, this is, you know a…an abandonment of the whole American misroutes of self improvement. Because they do less well in school, they do less well in the job market and economically. The number one problems for new employers in the United States: new employees can’t read, new employees can’t write. And in fact, for those people who can’t even read above the basic level, 55% of those people end up unemployed.
And even on a further level, they overwhelmingly are like, you know, are more likely to end up in the criminal justice system. Only 3% of the people in U.S. prisons read at a proficiency level. Because they read less well, you know, because in a sense they don’t develop these things, they are also less likely to be engaged in personal positive behavior however you wanna measure it.
We can measure it many different ways. You would not think it, but it is overwhelmingly demonstrable: that people that read exercise more; people that read join, play sports more. They belong to civic organizations more. They do volunteering charity work nearly 4 times the level of non-readers.
Well, when I saw these data, I said, well, wait. We have to be measuring something else. We’re measuring income, and we’re measuring education. If you take the poorest people in the United States who read, they do volunteering charity work at twice the level of people who don’t read. So what does it say to us? It says something we know, each of us knows this: when you read, when you’re engaged in the arts, it awakens something inside of you. That does two things: the first is that it increases your sense of your own personal destiny. But, secondly, it makes the lives of other people more real to you. It creates a heightened sense of yourself as an individual, but it also brings you, maybe, especially when you’re reading novels or imagining the literature in which you follow the stories, the lives of the people in the dailiness of their existence, socially, economically. Maybe understanding, a man understanding how a woman thinks, and a man understanding how a man thinks, a person understanding how somebody from a different country, from a different race thinks and feels. This imaginative exercises, this meditative exercise, makes you understand that other people have an inner life as complicated as your own. And so, if you have a society, in which tens of millions of people guided by pleasure no less, undertake these types of contemplations and meditations, you have a society which builds… not only it’s imaginative capability, it’s intellectual capability, but it’s compassion, and it’s humanity.
Part II Listen and Respond
Section A Word Bank contend vt. claim; say or state strongly〖正式〗声称，断言，主张 purchase n. fml the act of buying 〖正式〗购买，采购 prelude n. sth. that is followed by sth. larger or more important 开端，序幕，前奏 实用文案