1. 了解英国船运业等背景知识；

2. 掌握重要词语和句型用法、parody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. 掌握新闻报道写作特点，并能使用文体分析方法等对新闻报道进行赏析。

1. 课前收集有关英国商船队、铁幕国家、北海油田和作者等方面的资料，通过查阅工具书和参考书，理解课文中的词语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parody、analogy、assonance等修辞方法

掌握news report写作特点

3. 单元难点

新闻报道体裁语言特点的领会和运用

1. Background Information

The Merchant Navy has been in existence for a significant period in British history, owing much of its growth to British imperial expansion. The merchant fleet grew over successive years to become the world’s foremost merchant fleet, benefiting considerably from trade with British possessions in India and the Far East. The lucrative trade in sugar, spices and tea helped to solidify this dominance in the 19th century. Despite maintaining its dominant position for many decades, the decline of the British Empire in the mid-20th century inevitably led to the decline of the merchant fleet. According to the CIA World Fact Book, in 2010 the Merchant Navy consisted of 504 UK registered ships of 1,000 gross register tons or over. In addition, UK merchant marine interests possessed a further 308 ships registered in other countries and 271 foreign-owned ships were registered in the UK. In 2012 British merchant marine interests consisted of 1,504 ships of 100 GRT or over.

2. Text Analysis

This lesson is a news report. The writer presents to his readers the past and the present of Britain’s shipping industry and the detailed analysis of the reasons for the change of its status in national economy. He uses many figures of speech to make the report plain and easy to understand. In addition, journalese devices are widely used to make the report more convincing and objective.

3. Structure of the Text

The text is divided into four parts:

Part1 (paragraph 1-3): brief introduction to the British Merchant Navy

Part 2 (paragraph 4-13): the success story of the British merchant navy

Part3 (paragraph14 - 26): the threat and the countermeasures

Part4 (paragraph 27-29): the problems with domestic policies and the gloomy future

4. Key Words and Expressions

rue, lifeline, balance of payments, deficit, in peril, elbow out, stiff,carve one's way into, undercut, be bent on, the lion’s share, have a stake in, invest big, cash in on, tax concessions, launch, out-throat, cartel, dodgy, make a big killing, scramble, plummet, estuary, moth-ball, doldrums, feel the pinch, entrench, buoyancy, run, inroad, be out to do, throw in the towel, hold on to, up-market, containers, impose, found expression in, bring…into force, counter, justify, undercut, in one’s sense of the word, the name of the same, hard currency, hydrographic policy, monitor, block, ailing, churn out, lure, subsidy.

5. Analysis of Rhetorical Devices

parody; metaphor; allusion; alliteration; analogy; rhetorical question; assonance; personification; parallelism

6. Writing Techniques

1) technical terms making the report formal and specialized: balance of payments, conference, deficit, cartel, grant, tonnage, tax concessions, etc.

2) colloquialisms and idioms making the report plain, simple and easy to understand: feel the pinch, throw in the towel

3) Acronyms making the language concise: P&O, UNCTAD, EEC

4) numbers making the report accurate, objective and convincing: ninety-nine percent of our trade in and out of the country , over ￡1000 million a year in foreign exchange earnings, by the quadrupling of oil prices ,at a rate of over ￡1 million a day, etc.

Paraphrase:

1. carving their way into the international shipping trade by severely undercutting Western shipping companies

2. who are bent on taking over the lion’s share of the trade

3. routes in which Britain has a big stake

4. They make it harder to make a big killing in good times

5. But they make it easier to weather the bad times

Key:

1. cutting their way into the international shipping trade by charging much less freight rate than the Western shipping companies

2. who are determined to take the biggest share of the trade

3. Britain has important interests in these trade routes.

4. They make it more difficult to make a large amount of money when economic conditions are favorable.

5. But they make it easier to survive when economic conditions are unfavorable.

教学模拟：一篇关于本校英语专业英语角等第二课堂活动的新闻报道

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:

1. Write a short paragraph about the threat to British shipping industry.

2. Write a short composition on the topic within 400 words: The Shipping Industry in

China.

Key:

1. The threat comes from two main directions: from the Russians and the Eastern bloc countries who are now in the middle of a massive expansion of their merchant navies, and carving their way into the international shipping trade by severely undercutting Western shipping companies; and from the merchant fleets of the developing nations, who are bent on taking over the lion's share of the trade between Europe and Africa, Asia and the Far East-- routes in which Britain has a bib stake.

2. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China is1949, its shipping industry has witnessed an enormous expansion.

In the last thirty years and more, the shipment of passengers and freight has increased by over 1600%, passenger turnover by over nine times, and freight turnover by round about ninety times. The total tonnage of ships and barges has risen by over fifty times, and the volume of freight handled at ports and harbors both along the coastline and on the Yangtze River has become more than twenty times larger. As for navigational engineering, ships and harbors, machine-production industry, communications navigation, shipment monitoring, succoring and salvaging, and the research and education involved, all these sectors have developed at a rapid rate. In the total volume of freight turnover of all means of transportation, the shipping industry accounts for over 40% in the early 1980s, which is high above its share of less than 20% in the 1950s. As for the foreign trade freight, the shipping industry is also playing a more and more important role.

At present, China’s merchant navy is capable of arriving at more than 400 ports in the world. China has built up a relatively massive shipping system.

Analysis of the writing skills in the following text

Xiaomi’s Smartphone Tap into the US Market

2014-12-08 00:29:33 GMT2014-12-08 08:29:33(Beijing Time)

Xiaomi Corp, the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer, will launch its new smartphone in Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that falls in January 2015 in Las Vegas, the first-ever appearance of the fast-growing Chinese IT company in the US market.

According to the Economic Daily News in China, Xiaomi might launch its newest flagship smartphone Mi5 their newest flagship that has high-end specifications but with a low-end price, like most of the smartphones that have come out of China.

It was reported that the new smartphone will pack a Quad 5.7-inch HD display, a powerful Qualcomm chipset as well as fingerprint scanning tech by default.

According to a report from International Data Corporation (IDC), Xiaomi’s smartphone shipment in the third quarter 2014 ranked the third after Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

Lei Jun, Xiaomi’s founder and CEO, dubbed as “China’s Steve Jobs”, said the company might become the world’s largest smartphone maker in the next five to ten years during a forum of World Internet Conference held in November in China.

Xiaomi stepped into global market by entering 10 new markets India, Brazil and Russia this year. It also set a goal of increasing sales to 100 million phones in 2015, according to an April 23 report from Bloomberg News.

The company recently has been making a series of aggressive investments for entering the global and US market. Analysts point out that Lei has started to make Xiaomi’s own ecosystem to challenge Apple.

On Dec 1, the company announced its participation in the $40 million fundraising for Misfit, a Silicon Valley-based start-up. It is the first time that Xiaomi has taken a stake in a US mobile-device maker.

Misfit, which claims to make the biggest-selling activity and sleep tracker in China, said on Tuesday it had raised new financing from Xiaomi, e-commerce company JD.com Inc., and venture-capital firms GGV Capital and Shunwei, a VC firm set up by Xiaomi.

Xiaomi Corp, and Kingsoft Corp., announced on Dec 4 that the two companies will invest $1 billion for cloud services in next three to five years.

Lei, co-founder of both companies, revealed details of the first-round $222 million investment in the NASDAQ-listed 21Vianet Group Inc., the largest carrier-neutral Internet data center service provider in China. Temasek Holdings of Singapore also agreed to inject $74 million into 21Vianet.

“Cloud service will become one of the prime costs of IT companies in the future,” said Lei on Dec 3.

“For instance, at the current data upload speed, Xiaomi after next year will have to pay an annual $488 million fee for the data storage, most of which are the pictures and videos from users of Xiaomi’s smartphones and other mobile technology products,” said Lei.

“Sixty-eight million Xiaomi users are uploading 90 million pictures and 2 million videos every day,” said Lei.

On Nov 19, Xiaomi also made a $294 million investment in online video provider iQiyi, a unit of search giant Baidu Inc.

1. Why is shipping the essential lifeline for the nation’s economy?

2. Why do the ship owners fear?

Key:

1. Because ninety-nine percent of our trade in and out of the country goes by ship — and over half of it in British ships.

2. Ship owners fear that saving jobs in Britain’s ailing shipyards comes well before saving its merchant fleet, which means a gloomy future will probably lie ahead.