Unit1 Good Friends

step 4 reading listen to tape and finish the following items
chuck’s ffriend
background information on the reading :the film cast away, starring tom hanks, depicts a man’s struggle with solitude and his journey towards self-knowledge. the film shows us how chuck, a busy manager who never has “enough time,” ends up on an island with nothing but time. he manages to survive on the island and he realizes the importance of friends and friendship. the text, summarized below, describes his experience and the lessons he learns from his unusual friend, a volleyball he calls wilson.
guess the meaning of a word or phrase in the text, tell them to mark the word or phrase. ask the students to list words or phrases that they don’t know. explain important ones if necessary, but try offering more context of certain words until the students can guess the meaning. don’t spend too much time going through the new words.
suggestion for teaching some of the vocabulary of the reading text:
item  strategy what it means
what is the text about? clues the picture shows a man who lives like a wild man, alone. he has to take care of himself. the title says that the text is about chuck’s friend.
what is the text about? world knowledge if i look at the picture and read the story, i may recall other stories about a man living alone on an island, e.g. robinson crusoe. in those stories, the man has to learn to find water and food and take care of himself.
what kind of words will be used? genre the reading passage is a sort of film review, so i can guess the text will use words about stories, characters, acting and perhaps unusual things that do not exist in the real world.
cast away clues form) + skip + clues (context) +look up the words are in italics, so i know that it must be the name of a film or a book. i can probably skip the word and look it up in the dictionary later. if i read the text i will learn that the film is about a man who has to live alone on an island, away from his friends, because of an accident, so i can guess that “cast away” refers to the man in the story and his situation. the dictionary says to be left alone on an island after your ship has sunk.
play genre +
context tom hanks is a famous actor. he “plays” a man named chuck noland in the film cast away. i can guess that plays means acts.
survive context +worldknowledge when airplanes crash (fall down), most people die. if, like chuck, they don’t die, they go on living, so i can guess that to survive means to go on living.