Step1: Lead-in

Nowadays, internet is playing an increasingly significant role in our society. Since its appearance, it has brought enormous changes to our lives. It seems that no one can escape from the influence of it. As to whether it is a blessing or a curse, there is a long-running controversial debate. Some people think that increased use of the Internet leads to social isolation and depression. People who spend more time on the Internet spend less time socializing with peers, communicate less within the family and fell more lonely and depressed.

Have a discussion about the good and bad effects of the Internet in group. Try to fill in the table below:

The effects of the Internet

Advantages 1. _________________________________________________________

2. _________________________________________________________

3. __________________________________________________________

4. __________________________________________________________

Disadvantages 1. _________________________________________________________

2. _________________________________________________________

3. __________________________________________________________

4. __________________________________________________________

Step 2: Fast reading for general ideas

Go through the passage as quickly as possible and try to find answers to the three questions in part A. Just focus on and identify the information needed to answer these questions.

Answers

A 1 They are about different effects of the Internet on our lives.

2 Two.

3 Uncontrolled information and the change in the way people spend their time.

Step 3: Detailed reading for important information

1. Let’s read the passage a second time and complete Parts C1 and C2.

Answers

C1 1 against 2 for 3 against 4 for 5 for 6 against

C2

Arguments

The Internet is a great help to people who are in need of various information.

People use the Internet to build social ties.

The amount of false information on the Internet becomes more of a problem every day.

Spending too much time building relationships on the Internet can damage people’s abilities to live normal lives.

2. Read the text again and choose the best answers according to the text:

⑴ According to the survey, children use the Internet mostly to __________.

A. chat B. play games

C. help with their studies D. advance knowledge about hobbies

⑵ What is the most important thing in building a friendship?

A. common interests B. appearance

C. age D. popularity

⑶ What is the worst problem of eBay?

A. false information

B. people don’t know how to use a computer

C. things selling on the Internet don’t exist

D. people are used to the traditional ways of buying

⑷ The clinic was opened to____________.

A. help people surf the Internet

B. be an Internet café

C. make people spend their time with their family

D. help people who are addicted to computer games

Keys:

(1)-(4) CAAD

Now, read the Reading strategy on page 35. Pay attention to how to read an argument, especially, how to find each side’s view, how to find a list of points, and what each side believes. Read the passage again and try to fill in the table below.

Debaters Main points Supporting facts Conclusions

Zhu

Zhenfei the Internet’s value for people who are looking for information A recent survey done in the USA showed that 80 percent of frequent users use it mainly to search for answers to questions, and that 79 percent said their second most common use of the Internet is to advance their knowledge about hobbies; The Internet remains a positive tool that helps make our lives better.

the Internet’s ability to build online groups and form friendships which the Internet gives us 1.Internet friendships are based on common interests, rather than appearance, age or popularity;

2. People who are disabled and must stay in their homes can communicate with the outside world and meet others with similar interests;

Lin Lei uncontrolled information 1. In 2003, eBay said that 70 percent of their problems were with people who sold things that did not exist, or who lied about the products they were selling;

2. University professors around the world complain that students are handing in papers using false information they found on the Internet; It remains important for us either to limit our use of the Internet, or to learn how to handle the problems it has caused.

the change in the way people spend their time 1. Some families spend their time apart, because one or more members are using the computer, or are at an Internet café;

2. One university did a study about the students who had stopped their studies before completing a diploma course, and found that 43 percent of them were heavy computer users;

Step 4: Practice:

1. Now let’s complete Parts D on page 36.

Answers

D 1 f 2 b 3 a 4 g 5 c 6 d 7 h 8 e

2. A university student sent an e-mail to his mother. Read it in Part E and fill in the blanks with words given in the box.

Answers

E (1) Internet (2) debate (3) speakers (4) experts

(5) social ties (6) heavy (7) aspect (8) up-to-date

(9) disabled (10) statistics

Step 5: Post-reading activities

1. Pair work:

What do you know about the Internet? Try to find as much information as you can, and report your information to your partner.

For reference

The Internet is a giant network of computers located all over the world that communicate with each other.

The Internet is an international collection of computer networks that all understand a standard system of addresses and commands, connected together through backbone systems. It was started in 1969, when the U.S. Department of Defence established a nationwide network to connect a handful of universities and contractors. The original idea was to increase computing capacity that could be shared by users in many locations and to find out what it would take for computer networks to survive a nuclear war or other disaster by providing multiple paths between users. People on the ARPNET (as this nationwide network was originally called) quickly discovered that they could exchange messages and conduct electronic “conferences” with distant colleagues for purposes that had nothing to do with the military industrial complex. If somebody else had something interesting stored on their computer, it was a simple matter to obtain a copy (assuming the owner did not protect it).

　　Over the years, additional networks joined which added access to more and more computers. The first international connections, to Norway and England, were added in 1973. Today thousands of networks and millions of computers are connected to the Internet. It is growing so quickly that nobody can say exactly how many users “On the Net”.

　　The Internet is the largest repository of information which can provide very large network resources. The network resources can be divided into network facilities resources and network information resources. The network facilities resources provide us the ability of remote computation and communication. The network information resources provide us all kinds of information services, such as science, education, business, history, law, art, and entertainment, etc.

　　The goal of your use of the Internet is exchanging messages or obtaining information. What you need to know is that you can exchange message with other computers on the Internet and use your computer as a remote terminal on distant computers. But the internal details of the link are less important, as long as it works. If you connect computers together on a network, each computer must have a unique address, which could be either a word or a number. For example, the address of Sam’s computer could be Sam, or a number.

　　The Internet is a huge interconnected system, but it uses just a handful of method to move data around. Until the recent explosion of public interest in the Internet, the vast majority of the computers on the Net use the Unix operating system. As a result, the standard Unix commands for certain Internet services have entered the online community's languages as both nouns and verbs to describe the services themselves. Some of the services that the Internet can provide are: Mail, Remote use of another computer (Telnet), File Transfer (FTP), News, and Live conversation.

　　The most commonly used network service is electronic mail (E-mail), or simply as mail. Mail permits network users to send textual messages to each other. Computers and networks handle delivering the mail, so that communicating mail users do not have to handle details of delivery, and do not have to be present at the same time or place.

　　The simplest way to access a file on another host is to copy it across the network to your local host. FTP can do this.

　　Presently, a user with an account on any Internet machine can establish a live connection to any other machine on the Net from the terminal in his own office or laboratory. It is only necessary to use the Unix command that sets up a remote terminal connection (Telnet), followed by the address of the distant machine.

　　Before you can use the Internet, you must choose a way to move data between the Internet and your PC. This link may be a high-speed data communication circuit, a local area network (LAN), a telephone live or a radio channel. Most likely, you will use a Modem attached to your telephone line to talk to the Internet. Naturally, the quality of your Internet connection and service, like many other things in life, is dictated by the amount of money that you are willing to spend.

Although all these services can well satisfy the needs of the users for information exchange, a definite requirement is needed for the users. Not only should the users know where the resources locates, but also he should know some operating commands concerned to ease the searching burden of the users, recently some convenient searching tools appears, such as Gopher, WWW and Netscape.

　　World wide web (www) is a networked hypertext protocol and user interface. It provides access to multiple services and documents like Gopher does but is more ambitious in its method. A jump to other Internet service can be triggered by a mouse click on a "hotlinked" word, image, or icon on the Web page.

　　As more and more systems join the Internet, and as more and more forms of information can be converted to digital form, the amount of stuff available to Internet users continues to grow. At some points very soon after the nationwide (and later worldwide) Internet started to grow, people began to treat the Net as a community, with its own tradition and customs. For example, somebody would ask a question in a conference, and a complete stranger would send back an answer: after the same question were repeated several time by people who hadn’t seen the original answers, somebody else gathered list of "frequently asked questions" and placed it where newcomers could find it.

　　So we can say that the Internet is your PC’s window to the rest of the world.

2. Group work:

Undoubtedly, in the future, the Internet will still play a very important role in human’s life. But they’ll certainly be advanced than those of today. Let’s work in groups and guess how we can use the Internet in the future. .

3. Let’s come to Part F. Work in pairs and share your opinions with each other.

4. Discussion: Does the Internet do us good or bad?

Step 6: Language points:

Vocabulary Words positive, analysis, value, affair, forecast, package, click, acquire, downtown, sort, leader, skeptical, frequent, advance, statistics, tie, common, appearance, popularity, background, lifelong moreover, remain, drawback, address, accurate, advantage, disadvantage, judge, false, troublesome, occur, private, gain, addicted, diploma, course, heavy, handle, present, dynamic, evident, explicit, alarm, relevant, dull, appreciation

Useful expressions speak for, that is to say, have an effect on, in need of, current affairs, travel package, turn to, focus on, rather than, all sorts of, such as, pros and cons, be accustomed to, worn out, keep…in mind,

Sentence patterns 1 With the touch of a button or the click of a mouse, a student can acquire knowledge from the information held in the largest libraries and museums in the world, whether he or she lives in a small village or downtown in a big city.

2 The second most common use of the Internet, according to 79 per cent of the survey respondents, is to advance knowledge about hobbies.

3 Without the Internet, these people would have fewer chances of meeting people.

4 I feel it remains important for us either to limit our use of the Internet, or to learn how to handle the problems it has caused.

Step 7: Homework:

1. Read the text again and again. Try to memorize the language points.

2. Do Parts A1 and A2 on pages 118 of the Workbook.