NOT ONE LESS

Brief Statements Based on the Unit

The topic of this unit is silver screen, including film stars, famous directors, introductions to popular films, simple comments of films and so on. The whole language and exercises are designed for this topic.

Listening is about a radio interview between a programme maker and an actor. Questions in the material help the students get information about Mr. Langland’s life and career.

Speaking gives the students two short biographies. The students are asked to act the roles of an interviewer and a famous film star and make dialogues so as to improve their abilities to listen, speak and write.

Pre-reading serves as a warm-up to the next reading part, and it is helpful for the students to develop their imaginations. The reading passage offers some biographical information about a famous director-Spielberg and talks about some of his major motion pictures. Post-reading checks the students’ understanding of the passage and train the students’ ability to write brief introductions to films.

Language study helps the students further learn some new words in certain situations and master the Attributive Clause introduced by when, where, why and prep. +which/whom.

Integrating skills ask the students to write a film comment after reading a passage, about a film by one of China’s most successful film directors, Zhang Yimou.

Teaching aims:

1. Do some reading.

2. Practise making comments and giving opinions.

3. Do some writing.

Teaching Important Point:

1. How to make comments and give opinions.

2. How to train the students’ writing ability.

Teaching Difficult Point:

How to improve the students’ integrating skills.

Teaching Methods:

1. Asking-and-answering activity to go through the reading material.

2. Individual or group work to train the students’ writing ability.

Learn Methods:

Exploration study.

Teaching Aids:

1. a computer

2. the blackboard

teaching Procedures:

Step 1 greetings

Greet the whole class as usual.

Step 2 Lead-in

T lead in the reading by asking a questionnaire.

1. Will you have a discussion with your friends when you have seen a film?

2. If yes, what will you talk about?

3. it you think highly of the film, will you encourage other friends to go and see it?

4. If you really like the film, will you collect the relative information about it?

5. Will you see other films directed by this director or played by this actor or actress?

6. Do you often read some film reviews?

7. Have you ever written film reviews?

Step 3 Reading

(Teacher shows a picture on the screen and say the following.)

T: Look at the picture on the screen. It’s taken from a film directed by the famous director Zhang Yimou. Do you know the name of the film? Have you seen it?

Yes. The film is called “Not one less”. I saw it several years ago.

Today we’ll read a passage about this film. Please look at the text on page 34. While you are reading, please find out the words, expressions and sentence patterns that you don’t understand. And the ones you think important.

(After a while, teacher asks students to say the language points and writes them on the blackboard.)

(Bb: stay away, take sb’s place, keep sb./sth. +adj./prep.-phrase, lock sb. up, run after, (can/could/be able to) afford to do sth., live, on the air, not just … but also …)

(Then teacher asks students to say the meanings of the useful expressions and explains the difficult points to the students with the help of the screen.)

1. take sb’s place=take the place of sb./sth.

e.g. She couldn’t attend the meeting so her assistant took her place.

Nothing could take the place of the family he had lost.

2. keep sb./sth.+adj./prep.-phrase.

e.g. Please keep the classroom clean.

She likes to keep everything in good order.

3. afford

e.g. I can’t afford(to buy) such an expensive car.

4. live

e.g. The football game was broadcast live.

5. on the air

e.g. We will be on the air in five minutes.

This programme comes on the air at the same time every day.

6. not just … but also …=not only … but also …

7. determine to do =decide to do =make up one’s mind to do

Step 4 Post-reading

T: Now read the passage once again and complete the table on Page 35 with the information from the text.

(Teacher gives students some minutes to prepare, then asks some of them to give the answers.)

Title: Not One Less Director: Zhang Yimou

What is the film about?

Tell the story in your own words. The film is about a 13-year-old girl, called Wei Minzhi, who takes care of the village school when the teacher, Mr. Gao, is away for a month. She has to make sure that all the students stay in the school. When one of them runs away to the big city, she follows him and brings him back.

Does the film have a happy ending? How? Yes. The film has a happy ending. Minzhi finds Huike and brings him back to the school, together with the people from the TV station.

What do you think about the story of the film? Why? I think the story gives us hope. The film shows us that people care for each other. Even people in the city will take care of people in the village when they know about their problems.

How do you feel about the ending of the film? Why? I like this film because it is so moving. I think the ending of the film is happy, but you almost have to cry.

Step 5 Summary and Homework

T: In this class, we’ve done some reading and writing. We’ve learnt how to make comments and give opinions. We’ve also reviewed the useful expressions and the grammar in this unit. After class, go over all the important points we’ve learnt in this unit and do the exercises for Integrating skills on Page 112 and Page 113. That’s all for today.