Unit19 Modern Agriculture

Ⅰ.Teaching Goals:

1. Talk about modern agriculture and the effects it has on people’s life.

2. Practise giving advice and making decisions

3. Learn to use “it” for Emphasis.

4. Learn to read statistical graphs.

5. Write a plan for a vegetable garden.

Ⅱ.Teaching Time: eight periods

The First and Second Periods

Warming up，Listening and Speaking

Teaching Aims:

1. Let the students learn to read statistical graphs and .give advice and make decisions

2. Train the student’s listening ability.

3. Improving the students speaking ability by describing.

4. Study the language points concerned.

Teaching Important Points:

Improve the students’ speaking and listening abilities.

Teaching Difficult Points:

How to improve the students’ speaking ability.

Teaching Methods:

1. Listening-and-answering activity to help the students go through with the listening text.

2. Pair work or group work to practise speaking.

Teaching Aids:

1. A tape recorder

Teaching Procedures:

Step 1 Greetings

Step 2 Warming up

. With the time passing by, people’s living standard is becoming higher and higher. As a result their eating habits have changed a lot. Today we are going to know some details about it by watching the graph in Unit19, warming up on page 43. First please read the information in this part and look at the graph. Then discuss the following questions in groups， later ask some students to report the results：

1 How are people’s eating habits changing over the years according to the graph?

2 What do you think caused these changes?

3 What effects do you think the changes in eating habits will have on agriculture or nature?..

Step 3 Listening

Deal with listening part as usual

Step4 Speaking

Read the instruction by yourselves. From this part we know a group of farmers have been given a large piece of land. Together with the village leader, they have to decide how to use the land. The farmers express their opinions about it. At the same time, the village leader should listen carefully to them, ask questions, take notes of their different opinions and finally make a good decision. Now work in groups of five. Each group member will play one of the roles. Do what you should.

Step 5 Summary

Summarize this period and some useful phrases and expressions:

Useful phrases:

have an effect on raise pigs

What do you think caused these changes?

compare …to.. compare…with…

make a decision result in =lead to

make good money

be used as be used for

do what is best for everybody take notes of

Useful expressions:

In my opinion you should…

If I were you…

As far as I can see the best thing would be to…

Wouldn't it be better if …?

I think he is right…

We have to make a choice…

We can’t do both, so…

The other idea sounds better to me

Step 6 Practice

Choose the best answer：

1. He said he was going to ____ a lot of pigs on his farm. (B)

　　A. rise B. keep C. grow D. support

2. My father studies ______ in his spare time. （C）

　　A. farm B. farmer C. farming D. to farm

3. He is ______ interested in English. He often works at it until ______ into the night. (A)

　　A．deeply; deep B．deep; deeply C．deep; deep D．deeply; deeply

4. They ____ chickens, cattle and crops as well on the farm. (A)

　　A. raise B. feed C. kept D. bring up

5. My brother stayed at home studying English ____ going to the cinema. (B)

　　A. instead B. instead of C. without D. didn’t

6. The accident was my fault, so I had to pay for the damage ____ the other car. (C)

　　A. of B. at C. to D. on

7. The old man is still suffering from pain. It seems that the medicine has _____ him. (A)

　　A. no effect on 　　B. is used for

C. some effect in 　 D. a good effect

8. _____ should a man have courage, ______ he should have wisdom and knowledge. (D)

A. Neither…nor B. Both…and

C. Either…or D. Not only …but also

9. He talked about his wonderful ____ in Africa, but he said he didn’t have _____ in dealing with some problems he met there. (A)

A. experiences…much experience

B. experience…many experiences

C. experiences… many experiences 　

D. experience…much more experience

10. A library with five thousand books _____ to the nation as a gift. (A)

A. is offered B. have offered

C. are offered D. has offered

Step6. Record after Teaching

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________The Third and Fourth Periods

Teaching Aims:

1. Language ability: Improving the student’s reading ability, especially their skimming and scanning ability.

2. Enable the students to learn sth about agriculture.

Teaching Important Points:

1.Let the student understand the text better.

2.Let the students know sth about traditional agriculture and modern agriculture.

Teaching Difficult Points:

1.Master some useful expressions and difficult sentences.

2.Understand what the text is about.

Teaching Methods:

1.Listening activity to help the students to get the main idea of each paragraph.

2.Questioning-and-answering activity to help the students to go through with the whole passage.

3.Pair work or group work to make every student work in class.

Teaching Aids:

1.A tape recorder

Teaching Procedures:

Step1 Greetings

Greet the whole class as usual.

Step 2: Pre-reading and presentation:

In the last period you discussed how to use a big piece of land. Most of you gave us very good advice about it. Today we’ll still talk about agriculture. First I’ll show you some pictures of traditional farming and modern farming.

1. Look carefully and tell the advantages and disadvantages of each way. Some examples as follows:

Raising chickens

Small scale

The chickens are big and fat.

The eggs and meat do not taste good.

The chickens are not free.

It costs a lot of money to keep them

Large scale

Keep thousands of chickens

The chickens are big and fat.

The eggs and meat do not taste good.

The chickens are not free.

It costs a lot of money to keep them

Horsepower

handcraft

It is hard work.

It needs more time to work all day long.

People need to rest sometimes.

Machines(tractor)

They are expensive.

They need oil which is expensive.

It can help people to save the time.

It can help people to do whatever people can not do on the farm.

Climate control

Open air

If the weather conditions are bad you can loose the crops.

The landscape is more beautiful.

The land must be good for farming.

Greenhouse

The weather cannot damage crops.

It is expensive to build and operate a greenhouse.

Greenhouses can be built where the land is not suitable for farming.

2. T sum up in a few words: “ With the development of the new technique, the agricultural production has increased. The farmers can use chemical fertilization to make crop stronger and better and they can use advanced machines to irrigate or cultivate the farmland. ”

Now we have known some advantages and disadvantages about traditional farming and modern farming. Let’s know more about agriculture-----Modern Agriculture of reading part

Step 3 Listening

Listen to the tape and tell the main idea of the whole passage:

The passage mainly tells us about___________.

A: farmers in China

B: the development of agriculture in China

C: advanced technology in China

D: genetically modified plants in China

Step4: Reading

1.Skimming

Questions：

(1).How much land can be used for faming in China?

(Seven percent of the land.)

(2).What is the advantage and disadvantage of chemical fertilization?

(it helps to produce better crops. But is harmful to the environment.)

(3). What is the biggest problem of Chinese farmers?

(The shortage of arable land.):

2. Skipping

Questions:

(1)What does “GM” stand for?

(“G” stands for “genetically” from the word “genes”. “M” stands for “modified”, which means “changed”.)

(2)What is the advantage of tomatoes which were using technique known as “GM”?

(The tomatoes are bigger and healthier. They can grow without danger from diseases. They also need much less time to get ripe.)

3. Intensive reading

　Fill in the table:

1950s---1980s 1980s--present

The use of machines e.g. tractors

The use of electric pumps for irrigation

The use of chemical fertilizers

The use of insect killers

The use of special seedbeds The use of greenhouses

To make vegetables bigger or better

To change vegetables so they can grow on poor soil

Knowledge from abroad

Innovations Problems Advantages

Chemical fertilizers Shortage of arable land Bigger and better crops

Pumps for irrigation Weather conditions Bigger and better crops

Special seedbeds Shortage of arable land More crops in one year

Machines e.g. tractors How to make production cheaper (not in the text) Bigger crops on more land by fewer hands

International exchange Lack of knowledge Learn from other people

Greenhouses Weather condition Bigger and better crops

Greenhouses (roots in water tanks) Shortage of arable land More crops in one year

GM technique (can grow in poor soil) Shortage of arable land Can grow in poor soil; bigger & healthier; less time to ripe

4. Discussion

　　① Let Ss work in groups and imagine what other changes have happened on farms in the last 100 years.

　�、� Let Ss discuss the following questions

At the beginning of the passage, why does the writer say “It is on the arable land that the farmers produce food for the whole population of China”?

What does the writer want to tell us by saying, “Not only food production is important but

also taking care of the environment.”?

What can we infer from the sentence “In China about one hundred research stations are now doing GM research to make better tomatoes, cotton…?”

What can you imagine about the future of food production?

Step 5 Post-reading

　　1.Finish the exercises in Students Book , page 46, Exercise 1-2

　　2. If possible, teacher can get Ss read a new text in Workbook, page111 , and finish all the exercises.

Step6 Language points

1. 強調句的結構通常是：It + be + 強調部分+ that (人物可用who/whom)加句子其他部分，特征：把It is / was ……that….結構去掉，剩下部分能整理成完整的一句話，則為強調句．

Lucy went to China last year.

It was Lucy who/that went to China last year.

It was China that Lucy went to last year.

It was last year that Lucy went to China.

2.as …… as possible 盡可能……

as much / many / early / soon/ cheap … as possible

e.g. Stay here as long as possible.

3. where possible 是 where ( it is) possible 的省略結構

e.g. Go to places where necessary.

Come to see me when possible.

We will go there next week if possible.

4. bring in 引進

e.g. We should bring in new technology.

5. be friendly to 對…..友善／有利

e.g. He is very friendly to me.

It is friendly to our work.

be friendly to 與 be harmful to / be bad for 相對應，與be good for 相一致

6. depend on 取決于，依靠

e.g. Whether you can study English well depends on how hard you study.

7. not only …but also

如果將not only 放在句首，這時not only 所在的分句需要部分倒裝

Not only do we learn Chinese but also we learn English.

由not only… but also 連接的并列主語，謂語動詞的單復數形式按就近一致原則，與貼近它的主語一致．

8.protect … from…保護……免受…

She wears sunglasses to protect her eyes from sun.

9. no matter 不管，無論，常與副詞when, where, how, who, what, which等特殊疑問詞連用，引導讓步狀語從句．可與 whatever, whenever, wherever, however 等替換，但wh-ever還可以引導名詞性從句．

e.g. No matter where (wherever) you are , I will be right here waiting for you.

You can choose whatever you like.

Whoever leaves last must close the door.

10. in other words 換句話說，用語插入語，常對前面所說的話進行解釋

e.g. The doctor succeeded in her operation, in other words, he gave her a second life.

11. a variety of 多種多樣的，各種各樣的＝various

e.g. She sells a variety of flower.= She sells various flower.

Step7 Practice:

Fill in the blanks with proper words:

1. The biggest problem of Chinese farmers is the ___ of ___ land. Using the ___ technologies, Chinese scientists grow vegetables in _____. The ____ of these vegetables are not planted in earth but ____ in water that ___all the nutrients they ___ to grow. A kind of tomato was ___ that was very different from any ___ before. It was developed ___ a technique known as GM.

Keys：

1. shortage ， arable， latest ，greenhouses， roots， hang ，contains ，need ,developed, grown, using

Step8 Summary

Step9 Record after Teaching

____________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________

The Fifth and Sixth Periods

Teaching Aims:

1. Learn to use some words correctly.

2. Learn some rules about the use of “it” for emphasis.

Teaching Important Points:

Master the use of “it” for emphasis.

Teaching Difficult Points:

How to use word formation correctly.

Teaching Methods:

Practising and writing

Teaching Aids:

A computer

Teaching Procedures:

Step 1. Greetings

Greet the whole class as usual.

Step 2.Revision and Presentation

In the last period from the reading passage we learned a passage Modern Agriculture. What’s it mainly about? What should modern agriculture be like?( It should increase agricultural production but also be friendly to the environment. ) How many new techniques for modern agriculture are mentioned in this passage? What are they? So much for the revision. In this period we’ll come to word study and the grammar.

Step 3 Word study

Please open your books on page47. Let’s come to word study first. At the same time explain some words to the students.

Step 4 Grammar

1. Now let’s talk about the use of “it” for emphasis.

Show the two sentences from the text:

It is on this arable land that the farmers produce food for the whole population of China.

It was from the early 1990s that scientists started to develop new techniques to increase agricultural production without harming the environment

These are the pattern: It is/was + 被強調部分+ that/who +其它.

要點點拔

用于強調句型，即“It is/was＋被強調部分＋that/who/whom+其它”句型之中。

使用該句型有以下幾點請注意：

① 強調句的謂語is或was永遠用單數，例如： 　　　　

It was yesterday that I met your father in the street．

②不管被強調部分是哪種狀語，只能用that連接，不得使用where、when等連詞。　例如：

It was in the street that I met your father yesterday．

③被強調部分為人時，可用who(主格或賓格)和whom(賓格)代替that，用that也行。例如：

1) It was your father that/whom /who I met in the street yesterday．

2) It was I that/who met your father in the street yesterday．

④強調句中 也要注意主謂一致、人稱一致和否定轉移的問題。　　例如：

1) It is they who are our friends．

2) It was not until ten o'clock that we got home last night．

⑤注意不要混淆強調句和其他從句。It is / was…that…為強調句標志，去掉后仍可組成一個完整的句子，只是沒被強調,而其他從句一般不具備這一特征。

比較：

1) It was ten o'clock when we got home last night．我們昨晚到家時已十點了。

2) It was at ten o'clock that we got home last night．我們昨晚是在十點到家的。

Next let’s do some exercises to practice.

2. let Ss find out some sentences with ‘it’ in the text ‘Modern Agriculture’.

It is on this arable land that the farmers produce food for the whole population of China. (paragraph 1)

It was from the early 1990s that scientists started to develop new techniques to increase agricultural production without harming the environment. (paragraph 2)

It was developed using a technique know as GM. (paragraph 4) (it is not for Emphasis)

3. Deal with exercises

Step 5 Summary

Summarize the use of “it” for emphasis

Step6 Practice

Translate the following sentences into English.

1. _____ （眾所周知）that the Olympic game will the held in Beijing in five years.

2. The officer stared at the soldier and then left the room ____（一言不發）.

3. The servant ____（忠實于）his master and ____ his wishes.

4. ____ （為了）help the children in the poor areas, the government set up the fund.

5. ____ （最有效的方法）to protect the wild animals from dying out is to forbid hunting.

6. “GM”_____ （代表）genetically modified.

Keys:

1. It is well known 2. without any words 3. was devoted to, carried out 4. In order to 5. The most effective way 7. stands for

Step7 Record after Teaching

_______________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________

The Seventh and Eighth Periods

Teaching Aims:

1.Do some reading.

2.Do some writing.

3.Review the grammatical points and useful expressions in this unit.

Teaching Important Points:

1.How to read a passage.

2.How to write a 評論.

Teaching Difficult Points:

How to improve the students’ integrating skills.

Teaching Methods:

1.Some exercises to review the grammar in the last period.

2.Explanation to go through the reading material.

3.Individual work or pair work to train the students’ writing ability.

Teaching Aids:

A computer

Teaching Procedures:

Step 1. Greetings

Greet the whole class as usual.

Step 2.Presentation

How many seasons are there in a year? What are they? What should farmers do in each season? Now let’s read a passage Farming and Gardening on page48.

Step3 Listening

Listen to the first two paragraphs to get some information about Jia Sixie and his book.

Name:

Jia Sixie

Time:

6th century AD

Place of birth:

Shandong

Contribution:

doing research into agriculture

Book:

Time:

Qimin Yaoshu

Around 540AD

Content farming and gardening

advice on many subjects and instructions for making wine

Step 4 Reading

１．Read the last paragraph quickly and fill in the table:

２．Read the text carefully and　do True or False　EXX:

（1）China was the earliest research center for agriculture. ( T )

（2）JiaSixie was born in Gaoyang in Shandong Province. ( F )

（3）.Qi Min Yao Shu includes advice on the following subjects:　growing green vegetables and fruit trees,　keeping cows and sheep,　and there are also instructions for making metals. ( F )

（4）The spring ploughing should be deeper than the autumn ploughing. ( F )

（5）We should plant rice in the same field year after year. ( F )

（6）We’d better grow different plants next to each other in the same field. ( T )

Step 5 Language points

1. Explain the language points in the text.

(1). go against 違背，不利于

e.g. We should not go against school rules.

(2). raise, keep, support, feed

這四者均有“撫養，養家，贍養”之意

Ａ. raise, keep 撫養人；飼養動物；種植、栽培農作物

e.g. He made a living by keeping / raising pigs.

B. support 養活人口，不用于飼養動物

e.g. You should support your parents.

C. feed喂養、飼養，指具體的喂養動作

e.g. He fed meat to his dog.

(3) year after year 年復一年，主要強調動作的重復性，不發生變化

e.g. We go to Shanghai year after year.

year by year 年年，每年，主要強調動作的漸變過程，要發生變化

e.g. The number of students is increasing year by year.

(4) close ,adj. 相近的、知心的

She is my close friend.

Close, adv. 接近，靠近

They sat down close together.

Close to….靠近…..（地方）

I sat close to the door.

(5). Next to 在…..旁邊，緊挨著

e.g. I sat next to him.+

(6). At the right time of the year.

At the correct time of the year

At the wrong time of the year

Step 6 Practice

Deal with Exx in Wb

.Step 7 Writing

Help the students with the writing.

Step８ Record after Teaching