现代大学英语精读第二版第四册unit 6讲稿

Cultural Note:
Communion(p.153 note 3)
Pre-class discussion:
1. can you find out whether there is anything about traditional societies that people living in modern societies miss very much?
2. talk about how technological inventions have brought about great changes in their life. They can use such examples as the invention of wheel, gunpowder or compass, the discovery of the fire, the construction of the first railway, etc. They might also be interested to predict the possible consequences of such new inventions of e-mail, iPhone, etc.
Background:
The United States is known to be a country of immigrants. Wave upon wave, people come to this land from practically all parts of the world in the course of history, to escape religious or political persecution or to seek better living conditions. This is the reason for the popular appeal of immigrant literature in the United States. It satisfies people’s nostalgia about their past and their descendants’ desire to seek their roots. It also interests people of other ethnic origins in the country to find out how their country came to be such a “melting pot”.
Teaching tips: (after class)
From the point of view of language and style, this story deserves our close attention particularly on the following points.
1. the author’s careful and clever choice of examples for bringing out his key ideas.
2. the clever way of hiding significant messages in a seemingly childish narration.
3. the clever humorous touches
4. the skillful uses of figures of speech
5. the clever use of words that give a strong local color
6. the skillful way of repeating words and sentence patterns to achieve the effect of describing a traditional society and life where things happen without any change.
Analysis of the text:
1. Magdaluna: a village that lies in the Lebanon Mountains running parallel to the Mediterranean coastline
East(west, etc) of: at a distance to the east (west, etc.),
Eg. He was born in a small town about 100 kilometers southwest of Hangzhou.
The Browns live 150 miles west of London.
Sidon: a city on Lebanon’s southern coast, approximately 25 miles south of Beirut. It is one of the country’s largest ports and one of the oldest cities in the Middle East.
2. according to this sentence, we can see that the villagers didn’t think time was important until perhaps when they were dying.
3. keep track (of): to keep oneself informed about a person, situation, etc.,
Eg. They try hard to keep track of all the new developments in the IT industry.
The boy has kept track of his favorite sports stars.
Compare:
Lose track (of): to fail to remain informed,
Eg. He loses track of time whenever he surfs the Net.
During World War Two, the Chinese couple lost track of their son who was studying in Britain.
4. the sentence means: the sun was the only clock or watch we needed at that time.
Need: a strong feeling that you want sb/sth or must have sth,
Eg. There was a time in the country when you’d be considered a jerk if you passed by somebody in need. (para. 1, unit 8, book 1)
Have no need of: to not need,
Eg. We have no need of this old desktop now that we’ve bought an up-to-date one.
When he found they had no more need of him, he quit.
Compare:
Need: a situation when sth is necessary or must be done,
Eg. As the helicopter arrived, Katie knew that her desperate need to direct her own rescue was over.
There’s no need to apologize.
5. in the remaining part of the paragraph, the writer summarizes what life was like in his home village when he was a child. The villagers followed the life pattern generation after generation. He uses a series of action verbs to emphasize the unchanging cycle of birth, marriage, toil and death in the small Lebanese village. The paragraph ends with the conclusion that with life as it was, there was no need to keep track of time.
The seasons rolled by: the seasons came and went in steady succession
Roll by: (of time) to pass, esp. quickly,
Eg. The years rolled by, and still they got no news of their son.
Those children who survived: this implies that infant mortality rate was high
To understand this sentence, we should know about some cultural note: Intermarriage among cousins is very common in some countries. The practice has come down from ancient times, when people there were mostly nomadic herdsmen who had no permanent settlements and moved with the animals from place to place. There were very few options open to young people in the choice of spouse. Today, this intermarriage is still common because of economic considerations. For poor families, marriage within an extended family saves the trouble of exchanging dowries. When rich people marry their cousins, they don’t worry about that someday their money and property will pass to another family.
6. this does not meant that we had no way of knowing what year, or season, or day, or hour it was and of remembering when such important events as births, weddings, death, disasters happened.
7. meaning of the sentence: we used natural disasters to keep track of time and of the important events in our lives. This was a natural calendar though it is more accurate to say a diving calendar, for sunrise and sunset, the change of seasons, and earthquakes and droughts and floods and locusts and pestilences were all works of God.
8. the sentence means: … this way of keeping track of time and of the important events in our lives served or purpose well enough.
Fine: adv. (infml) in a way that is acceptable and good enough,
Eg. Don’t worry. He’s doing fine.
Things are fine at school this year.
9. cave in: (of roof or wall) to fall down or inward; to collapse
10. meaning of the sentence: that’s the most accurate answer I could get.
Now: (spoken) used for giving emphasis to a request, order or comment,
Eg. Be careful, now! (order)
Now, what’s going on there? (request)
It’s marvelous, now, isn’t it? (comment)
11. meaning of the sentence: and that’s how we kept track of the important events in our little village for as long as even the oldest people could remember.
Note: here, “as far back as anybody could remember” serves as the object of “for”. 12. meaning of the sentence: … because men who would not lie for any reason or purpose, not even to save their souls …
Save their own souls: to save their own lives
Until it was incorporated into Magdaluna’s calendar: until the event became one of the things by which we kept track of the important events in our lives.
Incorporate sth (into): to add or include sth as part of sth else,
Eg. The company decided to incorporate the new feature into their microcomputer.
A number of courses in public relations have been incorporated into our curriculum.
13. meaning of the sentence: this is a transitional sentence that begins another part of the essay, which extends to para. 10: the year of the drought, one of the best years in the writer’s childhood.
14. the heavens were shut for months: it didn’t rain for months as if the sky were shut tight
Heavens: (literary) the sky
Slowed to a trickle: (the spring) gradually became a slow and thin flow of water
To: used for stating what condition or state sb or sth is after a change,
Eg. The ancient temple has been restored to its former glory.
The disease has reduced the patient to a bag of bones.
15. *What can you infer from these attributive modifiers about these women?
Obviously, because they shouldered much of the household chores, and probably worked in the fields, they were lean and muscular. And they were made to work hard, and because they were barefoot, their heels were cracked and brown.
16. meaning of the sentence: their husbands who were taking a nap and their babies who needed to change their nappies because they were all wet with urine.
Cultural note:
Men in Arab countries, especially in the countryside, usually don’t do any housework.
As we read on, we find the men in the village spent the evening somewhere drinking, chatting, and playing games.
17. *what did the women sometimes argue about? What made them so irritable?
These women hated to be away from home the whole morning and afternoon. They worried about their babies and the household chores waiting for them at home, so they got impatient and argue about who should get her water first. Or course the heat, the flies and the bad smell made them all the more irritable.
18. meaning of the sentence: and sometimes the arguments became so fierce that they developed into long and violent fights.
Full-blown: in the most complete and developed form,
Eg. A full-blown economic crisis
19. meaning of the sentence: … the words they used when they were quarreling were such that we little boys felt uncomfortable…
Call sb names: to abuse sb by insulting words.
20. in the remaining part of the paragraph, the writer, as an adult, recalls and describes humorously the excitement the little boys felt at the chance of seeing the usually unexposed parts of the female body. We smile, as we read this part, at the little boy’s innocent curiosity about what they normally couldn’t see and we find nothing repulsive in the description.
To understand the sentence, we should know sth about culture.
The traditional robe Arab women wear outdoors is a three-piece garment: a long-sleeved black dress reaching to the heels, a large black shawl to hide the hair and to wear over the shoulders and a black, nontransparent veil to cover the face showing only the eyes. In a few Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen, women must wear such a garment when they go out.
21. meaning of the sentence: this scene has never been erased from my memory. Some women were fighting so furiously that dust clouds were created. The sun (meaning sunlight) was moving quickly on the dust when a young woman’s dress was torn open and her breast exposed. We little boys would rush to steal a glance before it was hidden again. I still remember the excitement I felt at such moments.
22. this is another transitional sentence that begins the main part of the essay: How the telephone changed the way of life of the villagers and marked a turning point in the writer’s life. All the first ten paragraphs serve as an introduction: what life was like before the telephone came along. Note how the writer opens this section. After concluding that the year of the drought will always be one of the best years of his childhood, he goes on to describe the year as one of the worst in his life, of course, from a child’s point of view, or in the short run. Surely in the long run, the year of the drought would be one of the most important in his life.
Decide in this sentence means to conclude.
23. meaing of the sentence: … and Magdaluna wouldn’t achieve any success without
a telephone.
Get anywhere/somewhere/nowhere: to make some/no progress or have some/no success
Eg. Have you got anywhere in your project?
You’ll surely get somewhere if you persist in it.
Compare:
Not to get sb anywhere: will not help sb to succeed,
Eg. Losing your temper won’t get you anywhere with them.
24. meaning of the sentence: a few men… tried hard to persuade Abu Raja to give up the idea of having a telephone installed in the village.
Talk sb into/out of (doing) sth: to persuade sb to do/not to do sth,
Eg. Finally he talked Xiao Chen into accepting the job.
If she wants to do something, no one can talk her out of it.
25. outshout: a word made up by the writer, combining the prefix “out” with the verb “shout”, meaning “those for the telephone spoke louder (or more strongly) than the others in their arguments”.
Meaning of the sentence: but the majority of the villagers were for the telephone, and they wouldn’t listen to those few people and finally avoided them for resisting progress.
26. meaning of the sentence: … the sound of sb shouting informed people that …
The usual idiom is “the word went out”, but here, obviously, the news was shouted across the fields.
Go out: to be told to people.
27. at sb’s elbow: very close to or beside sb
Meaning of the sentence: the paragraph tells us how the whole village gathered at the store to watch the installation of the telephone: the rich stood right beside the men from the telephone company, the not-so-poor people stood in the doorway, the poorer villagers stood outside. This shows that the people in the village were status-conscious.
28. when the telephone first came to the village, the boy was curious about it and marveled at the wonderful machine through which people could talk to relatives far away. But later it proved to be a misfortune for the village and for the boy personally. (this is what the boy thought at that time.)
29. Para. 19 centers around Im Kaleem, the village whore: her appearance, her character and the role she played in the village. Elicit from the students what they can learn or infer about her from the paragraph.
Her appearance: short, middle-aged, black-haired, and speaking in a loud voice which was not very pleasant.
*And when we read about her appearance, we may answer the questions: What kind of woman was she? Did she depend on her looks to attract the men in the village? Wherein did her attraction lie? Why doesn’t the writer think, now in retrospect, that the women objected to their men going to Im Kaleem’s house?
Her character: generous, understanding, and sensible
Her role: a kind of confessor, a good listener, a pressure-reliever, and a troubleshooter 黎巴嫩人口主要由阿拉伯人构成（95%），大部分信仰穆斯林，其余为基督徒。

30. in the street below: the men probably met in an upper room on the second floor. In para. 22 we are told that the boy “used to hang around Im Kaleem’s courtyard …waiting for some man to call down from a window …”
A reassuring, homey sound: a sound that makes you feel less worried and that is in a way pleasant and reminds you of home. This noun phrase is in apposition to the “loud voices of the men talking, laughing, and arguing”.
31. exhausted from having so little to do: exhausted because the men had so little to do (for recreation). This is a paradox (a statement consisting of two parts that seem to mean the opposite of each other), which is frequently used in writing to achieve rhetorical effect.
Meaning of the sentence: her house was a place where the village men could find comfort, just as an oasis is for weary travelers in the desert. The men sought pleasure because life in this mountain village was monotonous and boring.
32. meaning of the sentence: … this showed that now they were ready to exchange the latest news.
The that-clause is in apposition to “the signal”.
33. their aimless existence: this is the kind of life the writer thought the people in his home village was leading: meaningless and purposeless.
Existence: a way of living, especially if this is difficult or boring,
Eg. The refugees have a miserable existence.
The family depended on what their land could produce for their very existence. Notice the difference between “existence(生存)” and “life(生活)”.
The sentence tells us why the center of the village shifted from Im Kaleem’s house to the store. On the face of it, the men were now flocking to the store to do the same sort of things. However, while drinking, talking and playing games, from time to time they lifted their heads to look quickly at the phone. The new machine had ignited an unspoken hope – to escape from their present life, which the writer describes as “aimless existence”. So they were waiting by the telephone, hungry for news from the outside world.
34. from para. 21 on, the text begins to focus on the changes that the telephone brought about. This part of the sentence shows that even before the arrival of the telephone, such American beverages had secretly entered the daily life of this secluded mountain village.
35. much-needed income: the phrase is used humorously to exaggerate the boy’s disappointment at his loss. Judging from what the writer says in the last paragraph, his father definitely didn’t belong to “the poorer” section of the village. His family probably were “the-not-so-poor people”. Unlike many young villagers who left to become ditch diggers, or butcher-shop boys, his father got a job when an oil company needed interpreters and instructors.
36. meaning of the sentence: I always got paid for the errands I ran for the men: from ten to twenty-five-piasters.
37. assure (sth): to make sth certain to happen,
Eg. Strength and good tactics assured his success at the Asian Games.
Meaning of the sentence: when I was lucky, I got nine or ten errands to run in a day. With the money I earned I could buy new marbles so that I always had an adequate number to play with, although I usually lost them to other boys. (Now we know why running errands was so important for the boy. It was a source of much-needed income: to buy marbles for games which he seldom won.)
38. fewer and fewer: continuing to become smaller in number
More and more: continuing to become larger in number or amount or degree
More examples:
As winter progressed, the weather became colder and colder.
After the balcony scene, the audience became more and more interested.
Meaning of the sentence: but as the days went by, the men gradually deserted Im Kaleem’s house, and they began to gather together at Abu Raja’s store to wait by the telephone.
39. trail off/away: (of sb’s voice, speech, etc.) to become gradually quieter and then stop
Compare:
Die down: to become gradually less strong, loud, noticeable, etc,
Eg. The storm seems to be dying down.
A solid three minutes passed before the applause died down.
40. finally news came over the telephone from relatives or friends that there were jobs open to the villagers, people began to leave the village, first one by one, then in small numbers, then in large groups.
41. meaning of the sentence: the army enlisted them.
Cultural note:
Since achieving independence in 1943, Lebanon’s history has been marked with political turmoil and bloodshed: civil wars and conflicts with Israel. Probably that was why the country maintained a comparatively large army.
42. with the healthy, the young, and the able-bodied all gone, Magdaluna was not what it had been. The houses, the streets and the store were there, but hey were no longer alive with laughter and the loud voices of the men talking, laughing, and arguing. It became a much-deserted place, a place to escape from, a graveyard or cemetery.
43. the writer is Presbyterian, which is mentioned in a paragraph we have cut out.
“Kmeel believed in Jesus and Mary, and wanted to be a priest when he grew up. He always crossed himself when Habeeb, who was irreverent, and I, who was Presbyterian, were around, even when we were not bearing bad news.”
44. *what does this sentence imply? What can you infer from this sentence?
he is now an American professor or writer, and his living conditions must have been greatly improved. But had he realized his dream and found the happy life he had in mind? The author said no. he was implying that there were many things he was not happy about in this new world. That’s why he was still looking for that better life. And this is why he becomes so nostalgic. This feeling is probably shared by many immigrants.。