1. 了解纽约市经济、金融、娱乐等背景知识；

2. 掌握重要词语和句型用法、personification等修辞方法；

3. 理解课文内容，熟悉文章主题思想和语篇结构；

4. 掌握说明文写作特点，并能使用文体分析方法等对说明文进行赏析。

1. 课前收集有关纽约地理、经济、金融、娱乐等方面的资料，通过查阅工具书和参考书，理解课文中的语词和并熟悉课文主旨内容；通过教师课上讲解和操练，理解课文中的长难句，掌握文章写作技巧和修辞方法，熟悉课文语篇结构；完成教师指定的课后练习和知识拓展练习。

2. 单元重点

掌握metaphor、personification、hyperbole修辞方法

掌握exposition写作特点

3. 单元难点

通过细节描写调动读者感官的写作方法

1. Background Information

New York City(officially the City of New York) is the largest city in the United States and one of the world's major global cities. The city has a population of over 8.2 million within an area of 321 square miles, making it the most densely populated major city in North America.

New York City is an international center for business, finance, fashion, medicine, entertainment, media, and culture, with an extraordinary collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations, and financial markets. The city is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations, and to many of the world's most famous skyscrapers.

Popularly known as the "Big Apple" and the "City That Never Sleeps", the city attracts people from all over the globe who come for New York City's economic opportunity, culture, and fast-paced cosmopolitan lifestyle. The city is also currently distinguished for having the lowest crime rate among major American cities.

2. Text Analysis

This is an exposition. By giving readers a vivid and detailed introduction to New York City, the author gives his idea about the city.

1) New York didn’t have to assert how special it was ;

2) Its deficiencies as a pacesetter are more and more evident;

3) New York was never a good convention city;

4) New York is about energy, contention, and striving;

5) New York was never Mecca to me;

6) Nature’s pleasures are much qualified in New York;

7) The diversity gives endless color to the city;

8) Loving and hating New York becomes a matter of alternating moods

3. Structure of the Text

The text is divided into three parts:

Part1 (paragraph1-5): general introduction of New York ;

Part 2 (paragraph 6 to 21): detailed description of N.Y. City;

Part 3 (paragraph 22): repetition of the theme---loving and hating New York

4. Key words and expressions

bush, beget, deficiency, pacesetter, sitcom, preempt, casino, nightspot, bilk, dynamism, put—down, jagged, skyline, gamely, encroach, pristine, vivacity, carnival, glamour, beckon, breed, banal, inaccessible, plush, grubby, precincts, fringe, subculture, boutique, estrange, ratify, deplore, catchy, jingle, ,brittle, condescending,, malleable turnstile, hype, scruple, adjoining, amenity, succumb, tawdry, astir, strew, brusque, cabana, antiseptic, enclave, hassle, congenial, bracing, rigor, taunt, mongrel, metropolis, tumultuous, hybrid, turf, admixture, juxtaposition ,fortitude, forbear, exhilarate

5. Analysis of Rhetorical Devices

metaphor  personification  metonymy  transferred epithet  alliteration  simile synecdoche euphemism rhetorical question

6. Writing Techniques

1) Full of American English terms, phrases and constructions.

T-shirt; holdout; comeback; put-down; expense-account; adman; high-rise; measure up

2) Use of various rhetorical devices

Paraphrase:

1. New York City used to leave the bragging to others, for bragging was “bush”.

2. Nowadays New York is out of phase with American taste as often as it is out of step with American politics.

3. No longer so looked up to or copied, New York even prides itself on being a holdout from prevailing American trends, a place to escape Common Denominator Land.

4. He will price the item high, and yield little in the bargaining.

5. Tin Pan Alley has moved to Nashville and Hollywood.

Key:

1. In the past New York never boasted of its greatness, though other cities often did so, for bragging was done only by small provincial towns.

2. Nowadays New York can’t understand nor follow the taste of American people and is often in disagreement with American politics.

3. Since New York is no longer looked up to or copied as the undisputed fashion authority, it now boasts that it is a city that resists the prevailing trends (styles, fashion) of America, that it is a place where people can escape from uniformity and commonness.

4. The things that New York lacks to make it a leading or model city are more and more apparent now.

5. The center of popular music has moved from Tin Pan Alley in N.Y. to Nashville and Hollywood( in California, the center of U.S. movie industry).

教学模拟：介绍世界其他知名大都市

要求：使用PPT辅助陈述，时间不少于8分钟；就陈述内容设定2~3个问题，陈述结束后随机选择班级中的同学予以回答

Written work:

Write a short composition describing a Chinese city.

Key:

Xiamen is a beautiful coastal city in south China. The whole city is set among the picturesque setting with mountains at foot and the seashore within minutes’ walk. With the entry to WTO, Xiamen has developed from a small town into a big cosmopolitan city.

In recent years, Xiamen City has made great progress with marked achievements in terms of harnessing the ecological and natural environment in a comprehensive way. With the approval of the State Council, a special economic zone (SEZ) was established in an area of 2.5 square kilometers in the northwest of Xiamen City in October, 1980. in March, 1984, the SEZ was enlarged to the whole island of Xiamen (including Gulangyu Island), covering an area of 131 square kilometers and the policy of free port was gradually introduced into the SEZ.

Xiamen was recently voted China’s cleanest city, and has many attractions for the tourist. Xiamen and its surrounding countryside provides spectacular scenery and pleasant tree-lined beaches. Xiamen is a beautiful “seaside garden”. “A city in the sea and sea in the city” is a vivid description of Xiamen.

Analysis of the method in developing the main idea.

Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated, when Byron calls Rome “the Niobe of nations”, or says of Venice, “She looks a Sea-cybele fresh from the ocean,” he calls up to the mind of one familiar with our subject, illustrations more vivid and striking than the pencil could furnish, but which are lost to the readers ignorant of mythology. Milton abounds in similar allusions. The short poem “Comus” contains more than 30 such, and the ode “On the Morning of the Nativity” half as many. Through “Paradise Lost” they are scattered profusely. This is one reason why we often hear persons by no means say that they cannot enjoy Milton.

Key:

The paragraph is taken from The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch. The main idea is expressed in the opening topic sentence “Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated”. The write uses multiple examples to develop and illustrate this view.

1. What is the nature of exposition?

— Exposition organizes its subject not in time or space but by logic.

—Exposition is often formal and academic. The writer is likely to appeal to our reason by using evidence and logic.

—The content of the thesis statement dictates the pattern of organization suitable to that development.

2. What are methods for writing a piece of exposition?

—The writer of an exposition generally makes a statement of the central thought or of his purpose first. The thesis can be supported and developed in a variety of ways: definition, identification, illustration, comparison, contrast, analysis, etc.