现代大学英语精Half-a-Day

Detailed Analysis
Para. 1-7
Main Ideas



How did the boy feel about going to school? Find textual evidence. Why was he feeling so? List the father’s comments about school. What do you think of them? School is a place that makes useful men out of boys. Don’t you want to be useful like your brothers? Put a smile on your face and be a good example to others. Be a man. Today you truly begin life.
There is no/any good in doing
clutching his right hand
street lined with gardens
Language and Details
clutch hold tightly, usu. in fear, anxiety, or pain

Warm up
First day of school …
Warm Up
First day at school …
In 1957, fifteen-year-old Dorothy Geraldine Counts and three other students became the first African American students to attend the previously all white Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Half a Day
Naguib Mahfouz
Objectives
Understand the structure and the general idea of the story Think about how to interpret the story Know something about the author Solve your own questions about the story

What are your questions about? What type of questions are they? What are your suggested answers? How did you get your answers?

Help me!

A story, picture, or play in which this device is used. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are allegories. (寓言体小说，寓意 画，寓言剧运用这种寓言艺术手法而作的小说、绘画或 戏剧。约翰· 班扬的 《天路历程》和赫尔曼· 麦尔维尔的 《白鲸记》都是寓言体作品)
Language and Details
Sentence Pattern
Words
Phrases
Grammar
clutch convince
throw into make out of tear from cling to
The day + that clause
I was to be thrown into
3
Para. 17-20
At the end of school day: Everything has changed!
Underlying Implications
Time? Life? Education? Change? Social reality? …(p.6)

Naguib Mahfouz 1911-2006

Allegory
1.
A literary, dramatic, or pictorial device in which characters and events stand for abstract ideas, principles, or forces, so that the literal sense has or suggests a parallel, deeper symbolic sense. (寓言， 讽喻一种文学、戏剧或绘画的艺术手法，其中人物和事 件代表抽象的观点、原则或支配力，从而使表面含义含 有或表达一种对等的，但更深刻的象征意义)
Warm Up
First day at school …
A five-minute writing task

My First Day at BFSU
Try to write as much as possible about your first impressions and feelings of BFSU

…watching our progress…(Para.2) …that makes useful man out of boys. (Para.4) …there was really any good to be had in …(Para. 5) Today you truly begin life. (Para.7) Those who were able took advantage of the opportunities for success and happiness that presented themselves. (Para.16)
His Works
The Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street (first published 1957)
The Time and Place and Other Stories, 1991
His Influence

Your questions will be collected and redistributed.
Tackle our own questions
Work in groups of 4 and try to solve the 4 questions from your classmates. Be prepared to present to the class:
Lesson 1 – Half a Day
A Short Story
Plot: a little boy’s first time to go to school Setting: on the way to school at school
on the way home
Protagonist/Narrator: “I” –the boy in the story Theme of the story: what do you think?
Lesson 1 – Half a Day
Language and Details
•
They did not make me happy, however, as this was the day I was to be thrown into school for the first time.
Silent and pale, the girl clutched (to/onto) her mother’s chest. 这个苍白安静的小女孩紧紧地靠在母亲胸前 A drowning man will clutch at a straw. 他紧紧地抓着钱，匆忙走向银行 Clutching the money in his hand, he hurried to the bank.

The first Arab Writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature – 1988, The Cairo Trilogy
… through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabian narrative art that apபைடு நூலகம்lies to all mankind
Born in 1911, educated at Cairo University Wrote short stories and historical novels before WWII Turned to write novels of social realism after WWII Later works combined realism & symbolism A prolific writer: no fewer than 30 novels, more than 100 short stories, and more than 200 articles.
Underlying Implications

Do you think the sudden change of the boy’s age symbolizes something? Do you think the boy’s first day at school symbolizes something?
Is this a story about magic?

Work in groups and discuss the meaning of the story at 2 levels:
Superficial meaning Underlying implications


Be prepared to summarize your main idea and present
Superficial Meaning
1
Para. 1-7
The boy’s reluctance to go to school His misgivings about school
2
Para. 8-16
The Boy’s life at school: Rich and colorful Requiring discipline and hard work

Depicts realistically the social and political life in Egypt
"a Dickens of the His classical and lucid style rejuvenated literary Arabic Cairo café s" without recourse to colloquialisms and "the Balzac of Egypt".
2.
The question I most want to ask

Write down one question that you most want to ask on a piece of paper. It can be a question about how to understand a word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, the structure of the story, or any other question related to the text.


Work in groups of 4
Compare your notes with your friends’ and find out the similar impressions and feelings that you all have

Representatives from 2 groups will report to the whole class