Unit 2 :

1. Unit 2 : The Value of LIfe

2. Unit 2 • Before Reading • Global Reading • Detailed Reading • After Reading

3. Unit 2: Before Reading • Word Web • Read and think • Think and speak • Helen Keller • Helen Keller's Chronology • Helen Keller's Miracle • Helen Keller and Anne

4. Unit 2: Before Reading: Word Web Directions: What types of disabilities do you know? What words will occur to you whenever we mention the word “disability”? Write down as many words as possible. Physical Disability blindness, color blindness, deafness, deaf-muteness, dumbness, paralysis, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, diabetes, brain injury

5. Unit 2: Before Reading: Word Web Mental Disability learning disability, phobia, anxiety disorder, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder Developmental Disability attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, mental retardation Substance Abuse alcoholism, Nicotine addiction, drug abuse

6. Unit 2: Before Reading: Read and think Directions: Read the following introduction to sight diseases. Compared with what you have learned about the diseases before, is this introduction more informative? What new knowledge can you get from it?

7. Unit 2: Before Reading: Read and think What can people with sight problems see? Being blind does not always mean living in total darkness. Forty-nine percent of the blind people and eighty percent of the partially sighted people can recognize a friend at one arm’s length. Other people will be affected by eye diseases in different ways: some will have no central vision or no vision to the sides; others may see a patchwork of blank and defined areas; or everything may be seen as a vague blur.

8. Unit 2: Before Reading: Read and think -----Glaucoma (青光眼) can result in tunnel vision, where all side vision is lost and only central vision remains. -----Diabetic (糖尿病) retinopathy (视网膜眼疾) can cause blurred and patchy vision. -----Macular degeneration can lead to the loss of central vision whilst side vision remains. It should be remembered that people are affected by eye diseases in different ways. You should not assume that you know what someone can see simply because you know what eye diseases they have.

9. Unit 2: Before Reading: Think and speak 1. Imagine you, who used to have good sight, now were told to have only three days to see. How would you spend the last three days with your sight? If I had only three days to see, I would…

10. Unit 2: Before Reading: Think and speak 2. Exchange your ideas with your classmates to see whose decisions are the most impressive.

11. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller Helen Keller: (1880-1968) deaf-blind American author, activist and lecturer

12. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller Helen Keller was born in 1880 in northern Alabama, USA. Nineteen months after she was born, she was extremely ill, and lost both her sight and hearing. When she was seven, her parents hired a tutor named Anne Sullivan. She taught Helen to read and write and how to think. Helen entered Radcliffe College, the women’s branch of Harvard University at the age of 20. Her first book, The Story of My Life, was translated into many languages. She also did research, gave speeches all around the world, and helped raise money for many organizations for the blind. Helen received dozens of awards, such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor that an American civilian can receive. She died in her sleep in 1968.

13. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology She was born at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama. June 27, 1880 She lost both her sight and hearing after being struck by illness. February, 1882 She met Anne Sullivan, her life-long teacher. March 3, 1887

14. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology She received a Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating from Radcliffe College of Harvard University. June 28, 1904 She received an honorary degree from Harvard University, the first woman to be so honored. June,1955 She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. September,1964 June 1, 1968 She passed away in her sleep.

15. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology

16. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology

17. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology

18. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology

19. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's miracle She couldn’t see or hear, but she was a college graduate, a productive writer, a world-famous speaker, and eventually she became a heroine and icon. Helen Keller made herself a miracle. a college graduate: She learnt to read French, German, Greek, and Latin. She was the first deaf and blind person to attend college and graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College of Harvard University. a productive writer: She wrote nearly a dozen books and a lot more articles. Her first book, The Story of My Life, was translated into many languages. One of her most famous books The Teacher was later made into a play called The Miracle Worker.

20. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's miracle a world-famous speaker: She traveled all over the world, visiting many countries on five different continents, to give speeches and help raise money for many organizations for the blind, such as the American Foundation for the Blind and the American Foundation for the Overseas Blind, which is now called Helen Keller Worldwide. a heroine and icon: She inspired many works of art, including two Oscar-winning movies. TIME features her as one of the most influential people of the twentieth century. She is categorized as a Hero and Icon, who exemplifies “courage, selflessness, superhuman ability and amazing grace”.

21. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology

22. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology

23. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology

24. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen Keller's Chronology

25. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen and Anne Anne Sullivan was born on April 14, 1866. She got illness in her eyes at 3, which later caused her to be visually impaired. Anne moved to the Perkins Institution for the Blind at 14. Six years later, in 1886, she graduated from college. When she was only 20 years old, she became Helen’s teacher. She changed Helen from a bad-tempered kid into a gentle child.

26. Unit 2: Before Reading: Helen and Anne Then she taught Helen to read and write, but most importantly, she taught Helen how to think. Anne spent the rest of her life, 49 years, with Helen till she died in 1936. She helped Helen fulfill her life and was considered a miracle worker. April 5, 1887 was a day that both Helen and Anne couldn’t forget, when Anne made the “miracle” breakthrough, teaching Helen that everything had a name by spelling W-A-T-E-R into Helen’s hand as water flew over her palm.

27. Unit 2: Global Reading: Sentence Rearrangement Directions: The following sentences are quoted from the text. Rearrange them into logical order. 1. We should live each day with a gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness of appreciation which are often lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come. 2. Sometimes I have thought it would be an excellent rule to live each day as if we should die tomorrow. 3. There are those, of course, who would adopt the motto of “Eat, drink, and be merry”, but most people would be punished by the certainty of death. 4. Such an attitude would emphasize sharply the value of life. 2-4-1-3

28. Unit 2: Global Reading: Further Understanding Directions: Read Paragraphs 1 - 5 and answer the following questions. 1. Why does Helen Keller think that it would be an excellent rule to live each day as if we should die tomorrow? Because she believes that such an attitude would emphasize sharply the value of life. 2. According to Helen Keller, what is the right way to live each day? According to her, we should live each day with a gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness of appreciation.

29. Unit 2: Global Reading: Further Understanding 3. What does Helen Keller mean by saying that most of us take life for granted? Although we all know that we will die sooner or later, we tend to picture that day as far in the future. So, we go about our petty tasks, hardly aware of our listless attitudes towards life. In other words, we take life for granted. 4. What does Helen Keller think of the attitude that most of us adopt towards our faculties and senses? She thinks that we tend to take our abilities to see and hear for granted and seldom make the fullest use of these blessed faculties. That is why we often fail to make our life fuller and richer.

30. Unit 2: Global Reading: Interview Directions: Work in pairs to perform an interview between a correspondent and Helen Keller. The topic you are talking about is the right attitudes we should hold to our faculties and lives. Your conversation can be based on the text and the interview should cover the following points: 1. How do most of us view life and death? 2. How do most of us view our faculties? 3. How should we live each day? 4. How should we make use of our faculties and senses?

31. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 0-We tend to take what we have for granted, and seldom do we think about the value of life. Yet, Helen Keller, being both blind and deaf, taught us how to make the fullest use of our wonderful senses to appreciate life from a wholly different view — with love and passion.

32. Unit 2: Detailed Reading Three Days to See Helen Keller 1-All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. Sometimes it was as long as a year; sometimes as short as twenty-four hours. But always we were interested in discovering just how the doomed man chose to spendhislast days or his last hours. I speak, of course, of free men who have a choice, not condemned criminals whose sphere of activities is strictly confined.

33. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 2-Such stories set us thinking, wondering what we should do under similar circumstances. What events, what experiences, what associations, should we crowd into those last hours as mortal beings? What happiness should we find in reviewing the past, what regrets?

34. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 3-Sometimes I have thought it would be an excellent rule to live each day as if we should die tomorrow. Such an attitude would emphasize sharply the value of life. We should live each day with a gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness ofappreciation which are often lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come. There are those, of course, who would adopt the motto of “Eat, drink, and be merry”, but most people would be punished by the certainty of death.

35. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 4-Most of us take life for granted. We know that one day we must die, but usually we picture that day as far in the future. When we are in good health, death is all but unimaginable. We seldom think of it. The days stretch out endlessly. So we go about our petty tasks, hardly aware of our listless attitude towards life.

36. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 5-The same listlessness, I am afraid, characterizes the use of all our faculties and senses. Only the deaf appreciate hearing, only the blind realize the blessings that lie in sight. Particularly does this observation apply to those who have lost sight and hearing in adult life. But those who have never suffered lossof sight or hearing damage seldom make the fullest use of these blessed faculties. Their eyes and ears take in all sights and sounds hazily, without concentration, and with little appreciation. It is the same old story of not being grateful for what we have until we lose it, of not being conscious of health until we are ill

37. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 6-I have often thought it would be a blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.

38. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 7-Now and then I have tested my seeing friends to discover what they see. Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. “Nothing in particular,” she replied. I might have shown disbelief had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.

39. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 8-How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep. I feel the delightful texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable folds; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.

40. Unit 2: Detailed Reading Occasionally, if I am very fortunate, I place my hand gently in a small tree and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song. I am delighted to have cool waters of a brook rush through my open fingers. To me a thick carpet of pine needles or soft grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug. To me the colorful seasons are a thrilling and unending drama, the action of which streams through my finger tips.

41. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 9-At times my heart cries out with longing to see all these things. If I can get so much pleasure from mere touch, how much more beauty must be revealed by sight. Yet, those who have eyes apparently see little. The panorama of color and action whichfills the world is taken for granted. It is human, perhaps, to appreciate little that which we have and to long for that which we have not, but it is a great pity that in the world of light the gift of sight is used only as a mere convenience rather than as a means of adding fullness to life.

42. Unit 2: Detailed Reading 10-Oh, the things that I should see if I had the power of sight for three days!

43. All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. What is the usage of “thrilling”, “limited” and “specified” here? They are -ing and -ed forms of verbs used as adjectives. In the -ing case the noun being modified is the doer of the action and in the -ed case the noun being modified is often the receiver of the action.

44. We should live each day with a gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness of appreciation which are often lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come. 1. What does the word “which” refer to here? A gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness of appreciation. 2. Why do most of us lose the gentleness, the vigor and the keenness of appreciation? Because day after day, time seems to be endless in our life. 3. Translate this sentence into Chinese. 每一天我们都应该怀着柔情, 充满活力, 心存感激, 而这些在来日方长时却常被我们所忽视。

45. So we go about our petty tasks, hardly aware of our listless attitude towards life. 1. What does this sentence imply? We spend our life on meaningless things, but never realize that we are so indifferent to the true value of life. 2. Translate the sentence into Chinese. 所以我们忙于琐事， 几乎不曾意识到自己对生活的态度有多么冷漠。

46. Particularly does this observation apply to those who have lost sight and hearing in adult life. What rhetorical device is used in this sentence? Inversion is used in this sentence. This is a partial inversion with the word “particularly” at the beginning of the sentence.

47. I might have shown disbelief had I not been accustomed to such responses, … What can we infer from this part of the sentence? The author has been used to getting responses like this, so such responses don’t seem so unbelievable to her.

48. How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? What do you think may be the answer to the question according to the author? Why? Yes, it is really possible because the people who are able to see always take what they see for granted, and pay little attention to them.

49. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep. Translate this sentence into Chinese. 春天里，我怀着希望触摸着树枝寻找新芽，那是大自然从冬眠中苏醒第一个征象。

50. To me the colorful seasons are a thrilling and unending drama, the action of which streams through my finger tips. Translate this sentence into Chinese. 对我来说，多彩的季节如同一场动人心魄的永无完结的戏剧，剧中情节从我的指尖流过。