全新版大学英语第三册unit2

Questions:
1. Do you know who were Abraham, Martin and John? Tell their stories to your partner. 2. Can you guess what the texts in this unit are going to be about? 3. Have you ever heard the famous speech made by Martin Luther King : I have a Dream? What can you get from it?
Abraham, Martin & John Dion Has anybody here, Seen my old friend Abraham, Can you tell me, where he’s gone, He freed a lotta people, But it seems the good die young, I just looked around, And he’s gone. Has anybody here, Seen my old friend John, Can you tell me, where he’s gone, He freed a lotta people, But it seems the good die young, I just looked around, And he’s gone. Has anybody here, Seen my old friend Martin, Can you tell me, where he’s gone
Ironically, that character has come to symbolize everything Henson was not. A racial sellout unwilling to stand up for himself? Carter gets angry at the thought. “Josiah Henson was a man of principle,” she said firmly. I had traveled here to Henson’s last home--now a historic site that Carter formerly directed---to learn more about a man who was, in many ways, an African-American Moses.
A gentle breeze swept the Canadian plains as I stepped outside the small two-story house. Alongside me was a slender woman in a black dress, my guide back to a time when the surrounding settlement in Dresden, Ontario, was home to a hero in American history. As we walked toward a plain gray church, Barbara Carter spoke proudly of her great-great-grandfather, Josiah Henson. Slender : slim; thin ; not very wide but comparatively long or high e.g. Nowadays the young ladies always go on a diet in order to keep a slender figure.
Part Two: Text A
In 2004 a center in honor of the “underground
railroad” opens in Cincinnati. The railroad was
unusual. It sold no tickets and had no trains. Yet it carried thousands of passengers to the destination of their dreams.
Unit Two
Pre-reading Activities Structure of the Passage Expressions & Patterns After-reading Activities
Part One: Pre-reading
Listen to the recording two or three times.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin: a novel (1852) by the US writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. According to legend, when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 he said, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War!" Basing upon the life in narrative of Josiah Henson, a runaway slave, Uncle Tom‘s Cabin contributed to the outbreak of war because it brought the evils of slavery to the attention of Americans more vividly than any other book had done before. The book had a strong emotional appeal that moved and inspired people in a way that political speeches, tracts(政治或宗教的传单 政治或宗教的传单) 政治或宗教的传单 and newspapers accounts could not duplicate.
In this novel, Tom is a kind slave who is badly treated and finally killed by Simon Legree. The name Uncle Tom is sometimes used asan insult （侮辱）to describe an 侮辱） African-American who has too much respect for white people.
authorize : authority e.g. The city government authorized a large amount of money to rebuild the destroyed school.
For the heroes of the Underground Railroad remain too little remembered, their exploits still largely unsung. I was intent on telling their stories. John Parker tensed when he heard the soft knock. Peering out his door into the night, he recognized the face of a trusted neighbor. “There’s a party of escaped slaved hiding in the woods in Kentucky, twenty miles from the river,” the man whispered urgently. Parker didn’t hesitate. “I’ll go,” he said, pushing a pair of pistols into his pockets. exploit : n. brave or adventurous deed /action vt. 1. to make use of selfishly 2.to employ to the greatest possible advantage e.g. Their heroic exploits will go down in history.
intend : to have in mind; plan(usu. intend to do sth ) e.g. If you intend to get your bachelor’s degree, you must study hard now.
“He was confident that the Creator intended all men to be created equal. And he never gave up struggling for that freedom.” Carter’s devotion to her ancestor is about more than personal pride: it is about family honor. For Josiah Henson has lived on through the character in American fiction that he helped inspire: Uncle Tom, the long-suffering slave in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The Underground Railroad: a secret system used in the US before the Civil War for helping thousands of slaves to escape to the free states or Canada. The slaves were called “passengers”, the people who helped them were “conductors”, and the slaves hid in “stations” (safe houses) along the way.