Unit 13

1. Unit 13 A mgic circle of friends

2. Contents • Pre-reading questions • Background information • Structural analysis of the text • Comprehensive questions • Language points • Exercises • Comprehension questions of Text II • Oral activities • Writing practice

3. Pre-reading questions • What is your understanding of “friends”? • do you have many friends? Can you describe the relationship between you and your friends?

4. Background information (1)How to win friends • 1.Don't criticize ,condemn or complain. • 不要挑剔、谴责或抱怨。 • 2.Give honest,sincere appreciation. • 诚实真挚地欣赏他人。[很难做到！] • 3.Arouse in the other person an eager want. • 唤起对方内心的热切渴望。 • 4.Become genuinely interested in other people. • 真诚地表现出对他人的兴趣。

5. Background information (2) • 5.Smile! • 微笑[太重要了！] • 6.Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest most important sound in any language. • 记住：一个人的名字对他来说是任何一种语言中最甜美、最重要的语音。 • 7.Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. • 做一名好的倾听者。鼓励他人讲述自己。

6. Background information (3) • 8.Talk in terms of the other person's interests. • 多谈论对方感兴趣的话题。 • 9.Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely. • 使他人感到自己重要而且要真诚的去做。

7. Background information (4) A poem : Circlesoffriends • Many people will walk in and out of your life,But only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.To handle yourself, use your head;To handle others, use your heart.Anger is only one letter short of danger.If someone betrays you once, it is his fault;If he betrays you twice, it is your fault.Great minds discuss ideas;Average minds discuss events;

8. Background information (5) • Small minds discuss people.He who loses money, loses much;He who loses a friend, loses much more;He who loses faith, loses all.Beautiful young people are accidents of nature,But beautiful old people are works of art.Learn from the mistakes of others.You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.Friends, you and me….And then there were three….

9. Background information (6) • We started our group….Our circle of friends….And like that circle….There is no beginning or end….Yesterday is history.Tomorrow is mystery.Today is a gift—that’s why it’s called, Present.

10. Structural analysis of the text (1) • This text can be divided into three parts. Part I (paragraph1) is the opening remarks in which the author reveals to us her opinion of herself, that is, she thinks she is quite different form others.

11. Structural analysis of the text (2) • Part II (paragraph 2-14) is the body of this article in which the author elaborates on the kinds of friends she has, the effect of their friendship on her life, her attitude toward people, and her world-view.

12. Structural analysis of the text (3) • Part III (paragraph 15) is the closing remarks in which the author reiterates the effects of having friends, that is, you can become really different from other people even when you are old.

13. Comprehensive questions • What is the author and her friends’ attitude toward the woman under thirty in their group? • “while we were quite far from orthopedic shoes, bifocals were prominent”, what does the author mean by this sentence ? • “the process is in itself an achievement”. What does the author mean by this sentence ?

14. Language points (1) • from scratch : from the very beginning, especially without utilizing or relying on any previous work for assistance : • He built his own computer company from scratch • After their house was destroyed in the war , they had to built a new one from scratch.

15. Language points (2) Out of one’s shell: becoming less shy and more confident and willing to talk to people . • Derek has really come out of his shell since he started working here.

16. Language points (2) • end up : to finally be in a particular place or situation • They’re traveling across Europe by train and are planning to end up in Moscow. • Much of this meat will probably end up as dog food. • She’ll end up penniless if she goes on spending like that. • After working her way around the world, she ended up teaching English as a foreign language.

17. Language points (3) • pick up the slack: to do the work which somebody else has stopped doing but which still needs to be done • If Sue gets a job, Mick will have to pick up the slack at home. • shot: an attempt to do or achieve something that you have not done before • I thought I’d have a shot at making my own wine. • I’ve never tried bowling before, but I thought I’d give It a shot.

18. Language points (4) • turn out: to be known or discovered finally and surprisingly • The truth turned out to be stranger than we had expected. • It turns out that she had known him when they were children.

19. Language points (5) • late bloomer: somebody who becomes good at something after people usually become good at it. • At school she was a late bloomer, and it wasn’t until she went to university that her talents became apparent.

20. Language points (6) • thanks to: because of somebody or something • It’s thanks to Sandy that I heard about the job. • The baby is awake thanks to your shouting.

21. Language points (7) not to mention: used when you want to emphasize something that you are adding to a list • He is one of the kindest and most intelligent, not to mention handsome, men I know..

22. Language points (8) • pang: a sudden sharp feeling, especially of painful emotion • A pang of jealousy • We hadn’t eaten and the hunger pangs were getting harder to ignore.

23. Language points (9) • streaked: having long thin noticeable lines of a different color • Doesn’t Chris look good with his hair streaked? • Her clothes were streaked its mud. • White marble is frequently streaked with greedy, black or green.

24. Language points (10) • make a (big) difference / make all the difference: to improve a situation (greatly) • Exercise can make a big difference to your state of health. • Putting up some new wallpaper has made all the difference to the place.

25. Exercises(1) • Translation exercises • 1. We stayed up (late) to watch a film last might. • 2. I’d rather you don’t mention it when we’re in company. • 3. Most women feel sick in the mornings during their first months of pregnancy. • 4. I love the job, and it’s a bonus that is so close to home.

26. Exercises(2) • 5. I thought I have a shot at making my own wine. • 6. At school she was a late bloomer, and it wasn’t until she went to university that her talents became apparent.

27. Exercises(3) • Fill in the blank in each sentence with a word or phrase taken from the box in its appropriate form From scratch strike out of one’s shell Not to mention in spite of turn out Company make all the difference

28. Exercises(4) • 1. their home was destroyed during the war, so they had to build a new one ______. • 2. the truth _______ to be stranger than we had expected. • 3. putting up some new wallpaper ______ to the place. • 4. doesn’t it ______ you as rather odd that he never talks about his family From scratch turned out Makes all the difference strike

29. Exercises(5) • 5. ________ his injury, Ricardo will play in Saturday’s match. • 6. Margot came to stay for a week as _______ for my mother while I was away. • 7.Derek has really come ______ since he started working here. • 8. he’s one of the kindest and most intelligent , _______ handsome, men I know. In spite of company Out of his shell Not to mention

30. Comprehension questions of Text II • 1. Why do people give in to peer pressure? • 2. How can one walk away from peer pressure ? • 3. Can peer pressure have any positive influence? If so , what positive influence can it have ?

31. Oral activities • Discuss with one of your classmates on the following topics. • 1. Do you think people with too much age differences can be very good friends? Why or why not? • 2. What kinds of people will you choose as your friends? And why?

32. Writing practice (1) • A Friend • He wasn't a guy of big words, and he seemed to live entirely in his own world. I remember that during the days he worked with us none of us exactly knew who he was, where he came from or what he was looking for, and afterwards he disappeared. Nobody knew where he had gone, what he was doing or if he had friends or a family to stay with. I guess, we didn't even know his name----and even if we did, I've forgotten it anyway.

33. Writing practice (2) • Those days were more than hard for all of us. There seemed to be no escape from the grayness of our everyday life which was the only color that surrounded us. The huge concrete blocks we lived in was grey, the grey of the factory dust, even the color of our clothes, that once might have been white was grey. It must have been a bright and shining white... and I can't exactly recall how much time I spent trying to imagine the kind of white it might have been.

34. Writing practice (3) • Since white was the color of the kind of paradise I so much longed to live in someday, grey left behind nothing more than a bitter taste of emptiness and depression. I can remember how I noticed once, that any other color must be a symbol for something, a feeling or whatever. Only grey seemed to stand for absolutely nothing. This was the world I lived in, and so did he.

35. Writing practice (4) • Having our job in the factory was still luxury though, considering the fact that most of us had families to feed. And not long after he started to work there, I would always find him working at the machine next to mine. We'd work for hours next to each other, staying quiet, with our thoughts drifting away to a different place but still aware of our hands doing the same movements over and over again. We were doing that until the bell would ring to end the work for the day. I used to work in a mechanical way, following the same rhythm over and over again, and so did he.

36. Writing practice (5) • But every time I was about to give up, he would lift his head and give me a little smile, as if he could guess my thoughts. I think it was actually his eyes that impressed me most. They were so dark and straight, and though they seem to be hiding anything, I couldn't get rid of the impression that somehow he must be hiding something.

37. Writing practice (6) • Since I first saw him, he had always been around, and every time he gave me one of those smiles, he would spread a bit of warmth into my heart, a bit of friendliness. I guess, at the end of the day it must have been him who gave me the strength to go on somehow, just by being there. • Well, to make a long story short, he died only a year after he started working with us. It was a car accident and he didn't have to suffer very long. I must have been his only friend in town, at least that was what I thought when I went to his funeral. The only person I met there was an old lady, maybe his mother.

38. Writing practice (7) • She told me that he had lost his family just the year before and after that he didn't speak any more. He hadn't said a single word. First I didn't believe her. I just thought that he was a fairly quiet person; besides there was nothing much to say anyway. But suddenly I realized that I couldn't recall ever having heard his voice at all. Only then did I realize it!. • He gave me so much and I knew so little about him. He had been my friend and now I had lost him without having had the chance to give anything back. He had been so strong that he was able to give whatever had happened.I felt weak in those days. And guilty. But after that I started to care for the people around me. I think I started to live.

39. that is the end of this unit! Bye