Integrated Course of College English The First Two Periods Unit Ten Book Three Designed by SHAO Hong-wan.

Integrated Course of College English

The First Two Periods

Unit Ten Book Three

Designed by SHAO Hong-wan

Listening and Speaking

A Clip Review Group Discussion Background Information New Words Listen to the Text Talk about the Pictures

Warming-up Questions

1. To what extend do you think technology will develop ?

2. Do you think that the development of techonology will bring us more benefits than threats, or threats than benefits?

Review-----Words and phrasesDirection: Fill the blanks with the appropriate prepositions or adverbs.

1.With the coming of the Internet, young people have access ____ the most recent events that happen in the world.

2. The violin is not quite _____tune _____ the piano.

3. The visitors were wealthy and glamorous, ____ contrast ___ the poverty –striken locals.

4. There will be ceremony ______ honor_____ those killed in battle.

5. I told Granpa that we were going away, but I don’t think he took it _____.

to

in with

into

in of

in

6. The planes bound ____ African countries carry food and medical supplies.

7. These dishonest people will have to pay the price ______ what they have done.

8. After the summer holiday, all the students come back to school and throw themselves _____ study.

9. ______ warm applause the honoured guests mounted the rostrum.

10. He lived _________ both world wars.

for

for

into

Amid

through

Group Discussion

1. Speaking of modern technology what images come first into your mind?

2. What is the fastest means of transport today? How fast is it?

3. What cvhanges may new inventions bring to our lives in the next twenty years?

Direction: Please have a discussion with your partners about the following questions for 5 minutes. Then one out of each group will be singled out to share your discussion with the whole class for 1 minutes.

Outline 1Please talk about the advantages of the rapid development o

f science and technology according to the outline given below:

Advantagesconvenience (mobile phone; e-mail ; MSN; DCD)efficiency ( computer; airplane)agreeable working conditions (quiet; clean; comfortable)

Discussion and Debate

As we all know, science and technology today are developing at an astonishing speed. Now let us discuss this topic in small groups. Each group will be given two outlines of the advantages and disadvantages of the rapid development of science and technology.

Directions:

Outline 2Please talk about the disadvantages of the rapid development of

science and technology according to the outline given below:

Disadvantagesdifficulty (operation; knowledge)expensiveness ( computer; upgrade; surf online)unhealthy ( mobile phone; radiation)environment (air pollution; water pollution)

Word Web

Directions: What words will occur to you whenever we mention the word “technology”? Write down as many words as possible.

About the Author

Alvin Toffler (1928~ ): a well-known American futurologist

Birth

Education

being born in New York in 1928

Working Experiences

1. a former Associate Editor of Fortune magazine

2. a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation

3. a visiting professor at Cornell University

4. a professor teaching one of the first courses devoted entirely to the future at the New School for Social Research in 1966

5. the editor of The Futurists and Learning for Tomorrow

graduating from New York University in 1949

His Works

1. The Culture Consumers (1964)

2. Future Shock (1970)

3. The Third Wave (1980)

4. Previews and Premises (1983)

1) Concept of “future shock”:

Future Shock and FUTURE SHOCK

2) The book Future Shock:

A state of stress and disorientation (the loss of sense of direction) caused by too quick a succession of changes in society.

The book was written by Alvin Toffler. “This is a book about what happens to people when they are overwhelmed (overcome completely) by change. It is about the ways in which we adapt — or fail to adapt — to the future.” “The purpose of this book is to help us come to terms with the future — to help us cope more effectively with both personal and social change by deepening our understanding of how men respond to it.”

Founder of Ford Motor Company and maker of the Model T (“ the machine that changed the world”), Henry Ford became one of the world’s most famous automobile manufacturers. He began his career as a machinist apprentice, but at the age of 30, he demonstrated his mechanical inventiveness with the construction of a single-cylinder gasoline-powered vehicle. Ten years later, in 1903, he founded the Ford Motor Company and began to develop assembly-line techniques to produce an affordable automobile. The result was the four-cylinder Model T Ford, and by 1914 it had captured nearly half the U. S. automobile market. Ford’s early reputation as a good employer, who introduced a $ 5 minimum wage, was subsequently hurt during the 1920’s and 1930’s when he began to employ labor spies at his plants and sanctioned violence against union organizers. His enduring achievement was, within his own lifetime, to make automobile ownership possible for millions around the world.

Henry Ford (1863~1947): American automobile designer and manufacturer

1. A Brief Introduction to Henry Ford

Henry Ford

Date Event

1888

July 30, 1863

1879

2. Ford’s Chronology

Being born on a farm near Dearborn, Michigan, U.S.A.

Obtaining his first job, as an apprentice machinist

Marrying Clara Bryant of Greenfield Township and moving to the 80-acre farm in what is today Dearborn

Date Event

1896

October 7, 1913

June 16, 1903

Completing his first working model of an automobile, the Quadricycle, and driving it through the streets of Detroit

Founding the Ford Motor Company in Detroit

Introducing the assembly line method of manufacturing autos

Date Event

1914

By 1915

April 7, 1947

Announcing his plan to share the Ford Motor Company’s profits with workers, paying them $5.00 for an eight-hour day

His company selling almost half of all the automobiles produced in the U.S.A.

He died in Dearborn, Michigan, U.S.A..

Charlie Chaplin (1889~1977): motion-picture actor, director, and producer

1. A Brief Introduction to Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin was a superstar of silent comedies and one of the greatest icons of the 20th-century film. He was born on 16 April,1889 in London and died on 25 December,1977 in Corsier-sur-Vevey in Switzerland. Chaplin had a rotten childhood and an early start on stage, performing even as a child in vaudeville ( 歌舞杂耍 ). He went to Hollywood in 1914 and began acting in silent comedies for Mack Sennett. By 1915 he controlled most aspects of his films, in which he usually appeared as a character called simply “The Little Tramp”: a lovably shabby dreamer with a small moustache, a derby hat , baggy trousers and outsize, shapeless shoes. Chaplin was one of the founders of United Artists Studios (along with actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford and director D. W. Griffith) and was one of the first movie makers to have complete control over his features.

Charlie Chaplin

■

His best-known films include The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), Limelight (1952 ) and A King in New York (1957). Famously outspoken and sympathetic to communism, Chaplin left the United States in 1952 because of increased political pressure. He settled in Switzerland, where he and his wife Oona raised eight children, including actress Geraldine Chaplin. In 1972 he returned to the United States to accept a special Oscar, and in 1975 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

Date Event

April 16, 1889 Chaplin was born in London.

April 1915 His First masterpiece, “The Tramp”, was released.

October 23, 1918

He married Mildred Harris (he was laterTo marry Lita Grey in 1924, PauletteGoddard in 1933, and Oona O’Neill in1943).

April 17, 1919He founded United Artists Corporation together with Mary Pickford, Douflas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith.

Date Event

He released “The Gold Rush”.

June 26, 1925

1952He left the United States because he was criticized for his leftist political views in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s.

He published his life story, My Autobiography.

September 30, 1964

Date Event

He returned to the United States to receive several tributes.

1972

He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. March 4, 1975

He died in his sleep, in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland.December 25,1977

New Words----Spelling Practice

1.Please listen to the tape and try to write down the words you hear.

2. Then open your books and have a check, try to find out the spelling mistakes.

3. Analyses the spelling mistakes and try to improve your spelling ability.

Listen to the Text

• Listen to the text• pay attention to the pictures• Underline the difficult sentences• After listening to the text, please discuss with

your partner about the picture. Try to describe the picture based on the text.

Alvin Toffler writes about the fact that technology is advancing much faster today than ever before in history. The symbols of technology are no longer the factory smokestack or the assembly line. As we head into the future, the pace will quicken still further.

To most people the term technology conjures up images of smoky steel mills or noisy machines. Perhaps the classic representation of technology is still the assembly line created by Henry Ford half a century ago and made into a social symbol by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. This symbol, however, has always been inadequate and misleading, for technology has always been more than factories and machines. The invention of

A. Toffler The Fantastic Spurt in Technology

the horse collar in the middle ages led to major changes in agricultural methods and was as much a technological advance as the invention of the Bessemer furnace centuries later. Moreover, technology includes techniques, or ways to do things, as well as the machines that may or may not be necessary to apply them. It includes ways to make chemical reactions occur, ways to breed fish, plant forests, light theaters, count votes or teach history.

The old symbols of technology are even more misleading today, when the most advanced technological processes are carried out far from assembly lines or blast furnaces. Indeed, in electronics, in space technology, in most of the new industries, quiet and clean surroundings are characteristic — even sometimes essential. And the assembly line — the organization of large numbers of men to carry out simple repetitive functions — is outdated. It is time for our symbols of technology to change — to catch up with the quickening changes in technology itself.

This acceleration is frequently dramatized by a brief account of the progress in transportation. It has been pointed out, for example, that in 6000 BC the fastest transportation available to man over long distances was the camel caravan, averaging eight miles per hour (mph). It was not until about 1600 BC when the chariot was invented that the maximum speed was raised to roughly twenty miles per hour.

So impressive was this invention, so difficult was it to exceed this speed limit, that nearly 3,500 years later, when the first mail coach began operating in England in 1784, it averaged a mere ten mph. The first steam locomotive, introduced in 1825, could have a top speed of only thirteen mph and the great sailing ships of the time labored along at less than half that speed. It was probably not until the 1880’s that man, with the help of a more advanced steam locomotive, managed to reach a speed of one hundred mph. It took the human race millions of years to attain that record.It took only fifty-eight years, however, to go four

times that fast, so that by 1938 men in airplanes were traveling at better than 400 mph. It took a mere twenty-year flick of time to double the limit again. And by the 1960’s rocket planes approached speeds of 4,000 mph. and men in space capsules were circling the earth at 18,000 mph.

Whether we examine distances traveled, altitudes reached, or minerals mined, the same accelerative trend is obvious. The pattern, here and in a thousand other statistical series, is absolutely clear and unmistakable. Thousands of years go by, and then, in our own times, a sudden bursting of the limits, a fantastic spurt forward.

The reason for this is that technology feeds on itself. Technology makes more technology possible, as we can see if we look for a moment at the process of innovation. Technological innovation consists of three stages, linked together into a self-reinforcing cycle. First, there is the creative, feasible idea. Second, its practical application. Third, its diffusion through society.

The process is completed, the loop closed, when the diffusion of technology embodying the new idea, in turn, helps generate new creative ideas. Today there is evidence that the time between each of the steps in this cycle has been shortened.

Thus it is not merely true, as frequently noted, that 90 percent of all the scientists who ever lived are now alive, and that new scientific discoveries are being made every day. These new ideas are put to work much more quickly than ever before. The time between the first and second stages of the cycle — between idea and application — has been radically reduced. This is a striking difference between ourselves and our ancestors. It is not that we are more eager or less lazy than our ancestors, but we have, with the passage of time, invented all sorts of social devices to hasten the process.

But if it takes less time to bring a new idea to the marketplace, it also takes less time for it to sweep through the society. For example, the refrigerator was introduced in the United States before 1920, yet its peak production did not come until more than thirty years later. However, by 1950 — in only a few years — television had grown from a laboratory novelty to the biggest part of show business. So the interval between the second and third stages of the cycle — between application and diffusion — has likewise been cut, and the pace of diffusion is rising with astonishing speed.

The stepped-up pace of invention, application and diffusion, in turn, accelerates the whole cycle still further. For new machines or techniques are not merely a product, but a source, of fresh creative ideas.

Talking about Pictures

Assignments

• Read the new words again and again after class.

• Read the text and try to find the difficult sentences or phrases.

• Do Ex.4. enrich your word power, usage and structure.