Unit 10

Text I “Keep Class 2 Under Your Thumb”

Objectives:

• 1. The use of similes• 2. The use of metaphors• 3. The use of striking contrast

Teaching Tasks and Process

• I. Pre-reading questions

Pre-reading Questions

• What is meant by keep somebody under your thumb?

• What relationships does the phrase usually apply to?

• What contradictions are there generally between the governing and the governed?

• Is it right for anybody to keep somebody under his thumb? Would you like to be kept under somebody’s thumb?

Background Information

• Edward Blishen (1920 -1996 ), British novelist, autobiographer, writer of children's fiction, and writer in the field of education.

About Geoffrey Chaucer

• Geoffrey Chaucer (1342/43 - 1400)

• an English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat

• He is best remembered The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales

• The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the rest in verse).

The Main Ideas

• An inexperienced teacher failed to deal with an unruly class of top year boys.

Teacher---inexperienced, timid, incompetent

1) apologized to boy who broke the rule

2) felt invisible

3) absolutely helpless in maintaining class discipline

4) spoke pleadingly to pupils

5) was hurt and shocked to the core

6) wanted to punish the boys, but did not know how

Class 2---unruly and defiant to the teacher

1) frightened away one teacher after another

2) had no respect for school discipline---ran illegally in the hall

3) were very noisy

4) did indefensible things---handled the furniture roughly, desk and chalk wars

5) were defiant to the teacher---skeptically silent, laughing, mocking, taunting

Language points

• cudgel: a short thick heavy stick or similar object used as a weapon （短而重的）棍棒

• take up the cudgels (for): to begin to take part in argument or struggle, esp. in support of a person, principle, etc. 尽力捍卫…；为…辩护

• He took up the cudgels on behalf of the political prisoners.

• cross the cudgels: 不参加争论或斗争

a succession of startled substitutes

• teachers who took the place of their own teachers and who got shocked came one after another. Succession meaning “the coming of one person/thing after another in time or order” may refer to both people and events.

• A succession of unexpected visitors came to our Department on the first day of school.

• Last summer there was a succession of uncomfortably hot days.

It was plain the headmaster thought they had got nowhere.

• plain: easy to see; clear• was a plain impostor.

• plain: nothing less than, out-and-out• The words in italics in the two

sentences are homonyms.

• The boy cannot tear his eyes away from the teddy bear.

• Why didn’t the apple tree in the Longs’ garden bear any fruit?

all white flag

• all white flag---accepting defeat completely

couldn’t be nailed down

• these improprieties couldn’t be nailed down --- it was impossible to say exactly what the inexcusable things they did were. Nail down means literally “fix something firmly”, and figuratively “establish clearly and unmistakably”.

• Let’s nail down the lid of the wooden box.

• An agreement has been nailed down by the partners of the firm.

make out

• make out---see or understand with difficulty.

• Can you make out his handwriting?• She spoke in such a soft voice that I

could hardly make out what she said.

Too negligently or maliciously treated, …

• be negligent in one’s work • 工作马虎• be negligent of one’s duties • 玩忽职守

in cold blood

• in cold blood --- deliberately; (thinking things over) carefully

• But in cold blood I could think of no practical substitute for these dramatic punishments.

• On second thoughts / When I began to think seriously, I could not think of any punishment that could take the place of these exciting punishments and that could really be given to the pupils.

Comments on the Text

• The text is a short narrative piece of writing which vividly and amusingly relates how a young inexperienced stand-in teacher attempts to control a class that has frightened away a succession of substitutes for their own teachers.

• The writer is particularly successful in his effective use of comic exaggeration.

The use of vivid similes

• To make this clear, he showed me his own thumb, a huge thing, like a pocket cudgel.

• There was, for a time, pandemonium, like a big scene in an opera being played backwards on a gramophone.

The use of appropriate metaphors

• I was inwardly all white flag.

• I managed to make out that mixed up with these giants was a certain amount of furniture.

The use of striking contrast

• Enormous boys were everywhere, … Was I really so puny…

• … mixed up with these giants was a certain amount of furniture…desks; doll’s house things…

The use of parallelisms

• … a succession of startled substitutes had stood before them, ducked, winced and fled.

• I was toying inwardly with ideas of thunderbolts, earthquakes, and mass executions.

TEXT II

An Exeter School Boy

Questions:

• 1. When and where did the story take place?

• 2. Why was Colin Lockwood bored and tired?

• 3. What mood was the teacher in when he found his pupil sleeping in class?

• 4. What do you know about the boy sharing the same desk with Colin?

• 5. If you were a teacher, what would you do when you found a student in your class sleeping?

Discussion/Exercises

• Role-play

• Arguing About Examinations

Assignments

•Exercises on the Work Book