Unit 10 American literature
t: you really have deep thought about the author. that’s valuable. anyone else?
ss: (the group four) we want to say something about lin yutang, who’s the only chinese among the authors given.
a: do you know about lin yutang?
b: certainly! he was a famous writer and learner in the early twentieth century in china. he once taught in qinghua university and then went to study in america and germany. in the 1920s he came back to teach in beijing university and he was a supporter of the patriotic student movement.
c: lin yutang wrote a lot of articles and books and created many kinds of magazines. he wrote more than 30 books in english, of which my country and my people was the most popular.
a: what is it about?
d: it describes temperament, heart, dream, life, honesty, society and culture of chinese and contrasts them with those of westerners. he was a chinese writer with a great influence on western understanding of the chinese.
a: but why don’t i know these? perhaps i read less than you did? or he seems not to be so popular?
t: that’s very good!
ask some more groups of the students to act out their dialogues. there may be a variety of possible ideas to come up with.
step v homework
t: you have done very well in the class. that’s all for this period. homework for today:
find out some good english little poems to read aloud, you can do that with music. and if possible, you can make some slides on powerpoint to show your poems to the class while you are reading aloud. prepare for the work carefully and you’ll get a lot of fun with it. goodbye, everyone!
ss: goodbye, sir/madam.