Unit 7 Learning about English
Learning Objectives:
Students will be able to:
1. grasp the main idea that English has become a great language becau of its tolerance for outside influences;
2. understand some idiomatic English usages mentioned in the unit;
3. master the key language points and rhetorical devices in the text, such as oxymoron, metaphor, parallelism and so on;
4. conduct a ries of reading, listening, speaking and writing activities related to the theme of the unit.
grayscalePre-reading task:
1. How do you understand the title of Text A－The Glorious Messiness of English? And try to find out some examples from Text A.
2. Do the exercis in Text Organization.guifu
The First Two Periods (90 m)
Part one: Listening task (15 m)
Listen to the passage and answer the following questions:
Chine Language -- Our Mother Tongue
The Chine language usually refers to the standard language and its dialects ud by the Han nationality which makes up 93.3% of the total population. Most of the minority nationalities in China have their own languages. Both numerically (从数量上来讲) and in the extent of its distribution, Chine is the most important language in China and also one of the five official working languages of the United Nations. It is also one of the richest and highly developed languages in the world.
Chine is also spoken by many overas Chine: it is the common language of more than 10 million overas Chine and persons of Chine descent in Southeast Asia alone. At prent, more than one billion people, approximately 1/5 of the world’s population, speak Chine as their mother tongue.
A written form of the language was developed as early as 6,000 years ago. From the point of view of its origin, it belongs to the Sino-Tibetan languages family(汉藏语系,包括汉语、西藏语、缅甸语等).
Questions:
1. What does the Chine language usually refer to? (It refers to the standard language and its dialects.)
2. What is the percentage of the Han nationality in the total population? (93.3 %)
3. Why do we say the Chine language is very important in the world? (Becau it is one of the five working languages in the United Nations.)
4. How many overas Chine and persons of Chine decent in Southeast Asia speak the Chine language? (More than 10 million.)
5. According to this passage, what was the world’s population when the passage was written? (About 5 billion.)
6. How long has the Chine language been spoken? (More than 6,000 years.)
Part two: Cultural Notes (20m)
1. History of English rpm是什么单位
The Root of English
English began as a west Germanic language which was brought to England by the Saxons around 400 A.D. Old English was the spoken and written language of England between 400 and 1100 A.D. Many words ud today come from Old English, including man, woman, king, mother, etc. But Old English was very different from modern English a
nd only a few words can be easily recognized. In the 9th and 10th centuries, when Vikings invaded England, Old Nor words, e.g. sky, take and get and many place names, entered the language. From the Norman Conquest (1066) until the late 12th century English was replaced as the official language by Norman French, though English was still ud by the lower class. English from about 1300 to 1500 is known as Middle English. It was influenced by French and also Latin in vocabulary and pronunciation. French brought many words connected with government, e.g. sovereign, royal, court, legal and governmentread me itlf. Latin was the language of religion and learning and gave to English words such as minister, angel, master, school and grammar. Literature began again to be written in English during this period. One of the most famous Middle English works is Chaucer高一英语必修1单词’s The Canterbury Tales.
vmlThe Development of Modern English
Modern English developed from the Middle English dialect of the East Midlands and was influenced by the English ud in London, where a printing press was t up by William C
axton in 1476. English changed a great deal from this time until the end of the 18th century. During the Renaissance, many words were introduced from Greek and Latin to express new ideas, especially in science, medicine and philosophy. They included physics, species, architecture, encyclopedia and hypothesis. In the 16th century veral versions of the Bible helped bring written English to ordinary people. The Elizabethan period is also famous for its drama, and Shakespearetopdog’s plays were en by many people. The development of printing helped establish standards of spelling and grammar, but there remained a lot of variation. Samuel Johnson’上海徐汇翻译公司s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) was the first authoritative treatment of English. It defined about 40,000 words and gave examples of their u.
By the 18th century American English was established and developing independently from British English. After colonists arrived in the US new words began to be added from Native American languages, and from French and Spanish. In 1783, soon after Johnson’s dictionary was published, Noah Webster’s The Elementary Spelling Bookthought怎么读 was published in the US. At first it ud Johnson’s spellings, but later editions contained many of what h
ave come to be known as American spellings, e.g. harbor and favoritesos信号.
20th Century English
During the 19th and early 20th centuries many dictionaries and books about language were published. New words are still being added to English from other languages, including Chine (feng shui) and Japane (karaoke). Existing words gain new ns, and new expressions spread quickly through television and the Internet.
