Unit 19　Modern agriculture

(teacher and the students learn the new words and expressions together.teacher corrects students' mistakes in pronunciation and gives simple explanations of some words if necessary.)
t:are there any students coming from the countryside in our class?
ss:yes.a lot of us students are from peasant family.
t:have you ever worked in the fields,wang fei?
wang:yes.i often work in the field with my parents.i can do a lot of farm work.
t:have you ever heard of anything about farming in the past?
ss:yes,i have.
t:now turn to page 34.let's do pre-reading.discuss the questions.group work.write your answers on a piece of paper.
(after a few minutes.)
t:are you ready?(ss:yes.)who would tell us something about traditional and modern farming?
sa:in the past,farmers grow crops in the traditional way:use cattle to plough the field;farmers work in the field most of the day all year round,but they could not produce enough food for the whole population.now they grow crops in the modern way.they use modern techniques in their fields,such as chemical fertilizers,greenhouses and so on.
t:who would answer the second question?
sb:i'll try.the advantages are:chemical fertilizers,electronic pumps and other advanced technology are used.farmers can spend less time on farms and much more grain is produced.the disadvantages are:the air,the water and the soil round us are more or less polluted.
sc:i'll say something about other changes that have taken place on farms in the last 100 years.in the past,we depended on heaven and we could do little when natural disasters happened.now,we can do artificial rainfall.gm makes better seeds possible.in the same fields,better seeds can give us much more grain.besides,all kinds of scientific ways of farming are used in farming.farmers in our country are becoming richer and richer day by day.
t:very good.
step ⅲ.fast reading
t:now read the text fast and then answer the questions on the screen.
1.when was more advanced technical information was brought in from abroad?
2.what is important for future agriculture?
what should future agriculture depend on?
3.what does“which”refer to in the last two lines?
(after a few minutes.)
t:are you ready?
ss:yes.
t:please give us the answers to the questions.
sd:in the 1980s,more advanced technical information was brought in from abroad.
se:both food production and taking care of the environment are important.and future agriculture should depend on high technology as well as traditional methods.
sf:i think taking care of the environment is more important.because we have only one earth.