Learning about Language精品学案

Unit 2 Working the land 教

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Warming up and reading Teaching Aims To help students develop their reading ability. To help students learn about working the land. Teaching Procedures I. Warming up

Warming up by questioning Hello, everyone. We shall read about man who works the land today. Have you ever grown any plants? If not, what kind of plant would you like to grow? How will you grow it? (For reference: Mr. Li, I worked with my father in the rice field last year. We grow hybrid rice and use animal wastes to make the soil rich.) Has anyone of you ever been to the countryside? What did you do there? (For reference: I went to Chuankou the day before yesterday. It is a small mountain village 75 li north of Beijing. I went there to visit my uncle’s family. I like that small beautiful village very much. ) Who are from a farmer’s family? What do you know about farming?

(For reference: Mr. Li, Dou Jun and I are from a farmer’s family in our class. We grow wheat and raise pigs on our farms. And both of our family are going to expand the area of fields this year. )

Warming up seeing and listening Boys and girls, I shall show you some photos of farming first. Look at this one. What are these people doing in the fields? Yes, it is spring and they are planting rice. Lots of people in the world live on rice. I think you like eating rice, too.

Planting rice Here is another photo about farming. The man driving the tractor in the photo is plowing the land to prepare for the planting. He does not grow rice there. What kind

of crop is he going to plant here?

Plowing the land This photo is interesting. The woman farmer from Tibet is harvesting her crops not in the open field but in a plastic house. For generations, the people in Tibet Autonomous Region, have farmed the land using traditional methods. But in recent years, things have begun to change. All the farmers admit the new ways are better.

Indoor harvesting II. Pre-reading Questioning and answering Rice is main food in South China. What do you think would happen if tomorrow there was suddenly no rice to eat? (For reference: Then the south people would have to change their eating habit. They could turn to potatoes, wheat flour, cow and sheep cheese, cabbage, onions and garlic for food. They are the bases of the traditional food in North China. ) If you had the chance to do one thing to help end hunger in the world, what would you do? (For reference: I would try to end hunger by popularizing the advanced farmingtechniques. Modern techniques could be introduced to increase the rice output, and

expand the area of fields.) Giving background information about Professor Yuan Longping Have you ever heard of a man called Professor Yuan Longping? Would anyone of you tell the class something about him? (For reference: Professor Yuan Longping is a Chinese agricultural scientist. Professor Yuan's breakthrough scientific achievement led to the world's first successful and widely grown hybrid rice varieties, revolutionizing rice cultivation in China and tripling production over a generation. His approach to rice breeding then spread internationally throughout Asia and to Africa and the Americas, providing food for tens of millions and leading to his becoming known as the "Father of Hybrid Rice." III. Reading

Reading aloud to the recording Comprehension—understanding what you are reading—is important. To read in thought groups is an easy, yet effective, way of improving reading comprehension. Now turn to page 10 and read aloud to the recording of the text A PIONEER FOR ALL PEOPLE. Pay attention to the thought groups in the sentences while listening and reading aloud.

Reading and underlining Read the text again and underline all the collocations in the passage. You are asked to copy them to your notebook after class as homework.

Collocations from A PIONEER FRO ALL PEOPLE call sb. …, regard sb. …, work the land, do one’s research, for the past five decades, grow hybrid rice, become an agricultural pioneer, have a high output, produce one-third more of the crop, be born into a poor family, graduate from a college, devote one’s life to…, find ways to do sth., see the great need for doing sth., increase the rice output, search for a way to do sth., increase rice harvests, expand the area of fields, produce tons of rice, feed sb. from a piece of farmland, circulate one’s knowledge, thanks to…, rid the world of hunger, be satisfied with…, care little about…, spend money on…, lead a comfortable life, have troubles, equip sb. for sth., care about…, keep one’s time for…, play one’s violin, play mah-jong, ride one’s motorcycle, wish for…, in a dream, an ear of rice, a grain of rice, awake from one’s dream

Reading, identifying and summarizing Attention, please! It is time to skim the text one more time and identify the topic sentence of each paragraph.

(Minutes later) Xue Hongmei, would you read to the class the four topic sentences you identified?

What about the main idea of the passage? Who will volunteer to give the class his summary of the main idea? Bai Jianfang, you’d like to say something? Go ahead!

Understanding difficult sentences

In groups of four, analyze the structure of the difficult sentences. If you have any problems which are too difficult for you to solve do not hesitate to put them to me. Reading and transferring In pairs, read the text, find information to complete the following form.

Facts about Yuan Longping age

Facts about Yuan’s super hybrid rice

capacity application

education

major hobby ideal

contribution

overseas future

IV. Closing down Closing down by doing exercises In the last five minutes let’s do the comprehension exercises on page 10. Check your answers against your neighbour’s when you have finished.

Closing down by having a dictation To end the period you will take a dictation. It is about Yuan Longping, “Father of Super hybrid rice”.

Yuan Longping, China's Most Famous "Farmer" Yuan came up with the idea of hybridizing rice for the first time in the world in 1960s. Since then, 50 percent of China's total rice cultivation fields have grown such rice, which added some 300 billion kilograms to the country's grain output. Furrows grown on his sun-burnt face, a slim figure and coiled-up trousers legs would confuse foreign reporters who came to interview the most famous scientist in China, who would rather be called "a farmer."Indeed, like many Chinese farmers, Yuan in his 70s and has devoted most of his life growing rice in paddy fields, but unlike those farmers, he reaps the seed from experimental fields only for hybridizing rice.