1. 掌握重点词、短语、句型的含义和用法。

2. 掌握某些难句的英语解释。

3. 熟悉文章后几段的写作手法并理解基本内容。

4. 从总体上了解文章的写作目的、写作手法、文章主题及其之间的关系。

1. 通过课前查阅资料对马克﹒吐温和美国内战有初步了解

2. 通过预习熟悉文章的主题思想、语篇结构

3. 通过教师具体讲解深入理解课文内容，掌握重要词汇、词组及句式的用法

4. 重点掌握personification、hyperbole、antithesis等修辞方法

5. 通过练习、作业、实践和测验巩固所学知识

1. Background information

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, America’s most famous humorist and the author of popular and outstanding autobiographical works, travel books and novels. The first 36 years of Clemens’ life as a boy in a town in Missouri, as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, as a reporter on the far western Fortier and as a traveler abroad supplied him with copious material which he used later for his best and most successful writings, and among his well-known works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). In his novels, he often described people who were innocent, simple, naive, and ignorant as his heroes or heroines. Mark Twain’s humor is based on the humor of the Western in America. He used the artistic style of hyperbole on the basis of the western traditional humor and made his writing full of allegories that lay behind the humor. Some of his other major works are The Gilded Age (1873), The Prince and the Pauper (1882), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), The Innocents Abroad (1869), A Tramp Abroad (1880), Life on the Mississippi (1883).

2. Text Analysis

The text is a piece of objective biography. By giving readers a vivid and detailed introduction to Mark Twain, the author successfully presents his life. The author organizes the text in a chronicle sequence and writes in a neutral and objective way: providing his achievements and at the same time, his personal tragedies. He uses many figures of speech to make the text vivid and likely.

3. Structure of the Text

The text is divided into three parts:

Part1 (paragraph1): a general introduction of Mark Twain ;

Part 2 (paragraph 2 to 20): his main experiences and works;

Part 3 (paragraph 21 to 22): Mark twain’s disappointment in human life in later years.

4. Key words and expressions

idyllic, every bit, patriotic, cynical, become obsessed with, frailty, prospector, a black wall of night, digest, navigable, attest, in print, drain, settled, cosmos, resurface, soak up, phonographic, teem with, flotsam, hustler, thug, halt, succumb to, epidemic, gold and silver fever, broke, dig, strike, pen, pickax, hone, ring, trend setting, sluggish-brained, sloth, get up, rush them through, dash and daring, notation, tedious, debunk, revered, shape, mischievous, ingenuity, innocence, panorama, ultimate, on the shelf, haunt, bitterness, feed on, earthly.

5. Analysis of Rhetorical Devices

metaphor, alliteration, personification, antithesis, euphemism, metonymy.

6. Writing Techniques

1) language usage: concise and exact

Nouns used as attributives to achieve the effect of conciseness: steamboat days, the delta country, steamboat trade

2) the usage of words: flexible and variable

A. compound nouns

n.+ n.: steamboat, pilothouse, waterside, railroad, stagecoach, pickax, gold-fields, notebook, milestone, newspaper

adj./adv./prep.+ n.: flatboat, hotbed, best-seller, rough-country

gerund + n.: mining-camp

B. compound adjectives

adj.+ n. (-ed): starry-eyed, acid-tongued

adv.+ past participle: best-loved

n.+ present participle: energy-sapping

Paraphrase:

1. Mark Twain digested the new American experience before sharing it with the world as writer and lecturer.

2. a man who became obsessed with the frailties of the human race.

3. The cast of characters set before him in his new profession was rich and varied—a

Cosmos.

4. Mark Twain began digging his way to regional fame as a newspaper reporter and

humorist.

5. Bitterness fed on the man who had made the world laugh.

Key:

1. Mark Twain first observed and absorbed the new American experience, and then introduced it to the world in his books or lectures.

2. a man who became constantly preoccupied by the moral weaknesses of mankind.

3. In his new profession he could meet people of all kinds.

4. Mark Twain began working hard to became well known locally as a newspaper reporter and humorist.

5. The man who had made the world laugh was himself consumed by bitterness.

小组讨论：英美国家典型文化特点

要求：根据所学知识，讨论英美国家典型文化特点，时间不少于10分钟，并形成书面讨论稿，在课堂汇报。

Written work:

Write a summary of the life of Mark Twain.

Key:

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was born in the small village of Florida, Missourian on November 30, 1835. His family moved to Hannibal when Samuel was 4, where he spent his boyhood, fascinated by the romance and impressed by the violence of river life. Sam had relatively little schooling. He left school at 13, and became a full-time apprentice to a printer. At 18, he became a tramp printer and went to New York, then to Philadelphia and Washington, and finally to Iowa to set type for his brother’s local paper. At 22, he became a steamboat pilot’s apprentice. About two years later, he became a pilot himself. He worked on the Mississippi River till 1861, learning a lot about human nature. In 1861 when the Civil War broke out, he became a Confederate guerrilla but retired after two weeks. Then he went to the West, and worked as a prospector, miner, and speculator, but failed. And then he did reporting for local papers. In February, 1863, he began to use the pen name Mark Twain, a river man’s term for water that was just barely safe for navigation. In 1865, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was published and he became famous. He married in 1870, and moved to Hartford, Conn., where he lived his most productive years (till 1891), during which he wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Besides these two children’s classics, he wrote many other important works in his life, among which were Roughing It, The Gilded Age, The Prince and Pauper, The One Million, Bank-Note and Other Stories, The Man that Corrupted Hadleybury and Other Stories and Sketches. He died in 1910.

Analysis of the writing skills in the following text

Finally, for the first time in my life,I was going to move into brand-new house and it was an absolute beauty. I spent hours upon hours walking up and down the hallway just looking at that sunken living room. I had never actually seen one of those before and always thought they were only for rich people. It sure made me proud to now have one for my very own. I smiled real big and then put a foot down onto the first step, which led down onto the beautifully carpeted living room. Then I carefully looked to make sure I did not get any dirt on the golden colored carpet. Then I removed my shoes and walked all around the living room, feeling the soft, new, thick carpet beneath my feet. I met the real estate agent for the last time, signed the final papers and he handed me the keys. I jumped into my car and rushed as fast as I could to my rented mobile home to get the family and start the moving-in process. That was a very good day in my life, because no one in my family would ever have to live on the streets like I did as a young boy when running away from that abusive Florida orphanage. This house would be kept in brand-new condition, and would last forever and ever—so that all my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren would always have a nice, new looking place to live, no matter what.

That held true year after year and about five years later, we sold that immaculate house for top dollar. There was not a spot or smear or hole anywhere in that beautiful house. Not even on the walls could you find a small nail hole that would have held a picture. I was supposed to meet with the real estate agent who was selling our house later that evening and when I arrived, I was surprised to find the new owners of the house standing in the driveway. I parked my car, walked up and began talking with the older couple. “This house is in perfect condition,” said the old man. “Perfect in every way. Not even a nail hole in any of the wall” I told him proudly. “It’s really too bad that nobody lived here,” said the old woman. “I lived here for five whole years” I said with a great big smile on my face. “No. You didn’t live here for five years. You just stayed here for five years” said the old lady. All the way home I thought about what she said. What did she mean? How could they not be happy about buying a house in perfect condition and without any holes in the walls? I was very puzzled. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I quickly pulled over to the side of the road and just sat there thinking. The old lady was absolutely right.

Just because you stay in a house, it doesn’t mean you really lived in it. Not unless you put your heart into it, enjoy it and do the things that make you happy while you are there—like walking into the living room and seeing pictures of the kids and the smiling faces of the grandchildren or watching them yelling their little lungs out under the sprinkler in your front yard, and yes maybe even a picture of the old dog who decided to go to the bathroom on that beautiful carpet. I sat there alone biting my bottom lip and feeling very much ashamed of what I had done by having lost five years of my life, not to mention what I had taken from my family without even realizing it. Living really is much more than just remembering yesterday with only your mind. It is walking into your home and living for today with your heart and your eyes. Those holes in the wall, when all the furniture is gone and the house is completely bare, are memory holes and without any memory “You didn’t really live there. You just stayed there.” Today, our home in Brunswick, Georgia has so many darn pictures of kid grandkid friends and dogs on the walls that it might collapse one day. And if it does that will be very sad for me.

Key:

1. Loose sentences, periodic sentences and balanced sentences combined together make the writing richer and more forceful.

2. The portrait of the character’s inner world and the description of minute details show the character’s deep feelings and thoughts.

3. Use dialogue to reveal personality, intensify the action, add suspense and make the narration more “real”.

1. Why is Mark Twain one of America’s best-loved authors?

2. Why did the author adopt “Mark Twain” as his pen name?

Key:

1. Because his literary works such as two novels about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer are loved by Americans, who imagine he was adventurous, patriotic, romantic, and humorous．

2. He adopted his pen name from the cry heard in his steamboat days, signaling two fathoms of water.