Unit 7 Things: The Throw-away Society
I. Teaching objectives
1.炭打一成语Get the students acquainted with Alvin Toffler and his studies.
2.Learn something about “future shock” and “futurology”.
3.Learn more about the method of exposition by illustration and exemplification;
4.婚礼英语Learn more about the method of comparison and contrast;
5.Learn to make a clear thesis statement which states both your focus of attention and your stand on the issue under discussion;
6.Know the different positions of the thesis, i.e., pre-position, mid-position, and end-position.
叶酸作用
7.Understand the need to restate the thesis/idea (e.g., to keep the discussion coherent, to make the idea emphatic).
II Teaching time: six class periods
III Teaching Procedure:
Step 1 Warm-up Questions
1.In a piece of expositions / argumentation, there is always a clear controlling idea / the main idea of the writer. This is the message that the author intends to explain /illustrate. We refer to such main idea as the “thesis”. Where can we find the thesis of the prent article?
2.What is the most common position of the thesis statement? Can you find examples from texts we learn?
3.Is there any advantage for the author to put his thesis statement until he has made some introductions?
4.Examine the prent text and e how Toffler prents his thesis (i.e., the affluent mode
rn society is becoming more and more a throw-away society, the underling cau of which is that “man’s relationship with things are increasingly temporary”.).
Step 2 Relevant information
1. Barbie Doll
the best-known / best-lling doll, about 12,000,000; introduced in 1959 by Mattel Inc.; made of plastic; looks like a female teenager (takes the shape of human), about 12 inches tall.
2. Alvin Toffler
Alvin Toffler is best known for his first international best ller, Future Shock, but has written many books since, including The Third Wave, about the massive wave of change we're going through at the moment; unparalleled in human history, according to Toffler. It's a theme which has dominated his thinking for the past 10 or 15 years.
崔秀晶 Alvin Toffler has influenced and advid world leaders. He wrote about the prospects of outsourcing, the communications revolution and corporate restructuring years before anyone el cottoned on. Toffler worked in factories after he went to university, then went into journalism in Washington. But he's really made his mark as a writer and thinker, always in collaboration with his wife.
乾封The term “future shock” was first ud by Alvin Toffler in 1965 in an article published in Horizon. Toffler coined this term to describe a state of stress and disorientation (the loss of n of direction) caud by too quick a succession of changes in society. After that, he spent 5 years visiting scores of universities, rearch centers, laboratories, and government agencies, reading countless articles and scientific papers and interviewing hundreds of experts on different aspects of change, coping behavior, and the future. Then he came to the following two conclusions: First, “future shock is no longer a distantly potential danger, but a real sickness from which increasingly large numbers already suffer.” Second, people know very little about adaptivity. That is to say, “in the most rapidly changing environment to which man has ever been expod, we remain pitif
ully ignorant of how the human animal copes.”
In 1970, Alvin Toffler published the book Future Shock. “This is a book about what happens to people when they are overwhelmed (overcome completely) by change. It is about the ways in which we adapt—or fail to adapt—to the future.” “The purpo of this book is to help us come to terms with the future—to help us cope more effectively with both personal and social change by deepening our understanding of how men respond to it.”
Step 3 Organization of the text
Section 1 (para. 1-3): introductory ction: exemplification (of Barbie Doll in para. 1 & para. 2) to introduce the thesis statement (para.3)
Para. 1: an illustration to point out a phenomenon that exists today in the USA – the widespread popularity of Barbie Doll
材料出库单
Para. 2: more recent news about Barbie Doll – trade-in allowance
Para. 3: clearly states Toffler’s idea: “…that man’s relationships with things are increasingly temporary” (which is the underlying cau for a throw-away society, as will be illustrated below)
Section 2 (para. 4—6): generalization / elaboration on the thesis statement: the profusion of man-made objects, their importance to the individual (i.e., functional utility and psychological impact), and the attitudes induced.
Para. 4: technologically produced environment vs. natural environment (popular materialism)
耶酥Para. 5: functional utility vs. psychological impact on pace of life
Para. 6: contrast in basic value judgments between the new breed of little girls and their mothers and grandmothers (捉蜻蜓comparison and contrast between past and future, between societies bad on permanence and the new society bad on transience – echoing the idea in para. 3: temporary relationships between man and things)
