middle-of-the-road(中庸的)music

1、Unit 1 Read A Letter for You and then you can know something about the aims of this unit. It will help you learn this unit well.A Letter for YouAims of this unit1. Understand the lyrics and the theme of Yesterday.2. Develop students four skills, mainly listening and speaking.3. Develop pronunciation

2、 skills through the song. 4. Be able to use some vocabulary and sentence structures in the song.5. Get familiar with the use of synecdoche.6. Learn to sing the song. What kind of things will hit your mind first when you look back on yesterday？YesterdayMy kindergarten years. Cartoons.My old friends.M

3、y past teachers.My toys.My primary school years.My junior middle school year.Some old songs.The mistakes that I made.The shining moment when I achieved success.Something important to my family.The road to my school.The most successful joke I made.The secret that Ive kept for a long time.My parents l

4、ooks several years ago.When you see the word “yesterday”, which of the following will first jump into your mind? Tick off ( ) your choices.When I look back on the past, I feel sad.Why, my friend. I wonder what has happened to you.Three years ago, I failed the college entrance exam. I broke my parent

5、s heart. At the same time, I lost my friends. No one wants to play football along with me. And all of them began to leave me. Its terrible. Background KnowledgeBackground Knowledge1. Who are the Carpenters? The Carpenters are the most successful brother/sister act of all time. With their gentle melo

6、dies and the amazing voice of Karen Carpenter, their middle-of-the-road（中庸的）music has universal appeal, and is enjoyed by many different generations. They rapidly rose to fame in the early 1970s and wooed（招来）millions of fans with their clean image. As part of a close family, sheltered in each others

7、 company, the Carpenters were seen as extremely young Americans, role models for a generation. Perhaps the pressure of maintaining this image was too much, for towards the end of the 70s both Richard and Karen were in poor health. Where Richard was addicted to a form of sleeping pills, Karen was suf

8、fering from the eating disorder, known as anorexia nervosa(厌食症), which eventually took her life. But with a catalogue as rich as the Carpenters their music lives on. The beauty of their sound and the sadness of their story combine to make them truly worth the status they hold.2. More About the Carpe

9、nters A single is a good test of recording artists ability to be both concise and compelling(令人佩服的). The performers has just a few minutes to grab and hold the listeners attention; to communicate something so powerful that people cant wait to hear it again. Few artists in pop history have passed thi

10、s test as consistently as the Carpenters. From “Close to You” in 1970 to |Only Yesterday” in 1975, Karen and Richard never missed the Top 15. The Carpenters were #1 American-born hit-makers of the 1970s. And Karen and Richards success went far beyond their homeland: They topped the charts from Holla

11、nd to Hong Kong. Karens vocal style combined the most attractive traits of several other legendary American singer. She had the warm, pure tones of Nat “King” Cole, the seeming effortlessness of Perry Como, the clarity and precision of Barbra Streisand, and the vulnerability(脆弱) of Judy Garden. It w

12、as this quality that most impressed the late Henry Mancini. “Karen had a quality about her that was so vulnerable, so exposed, that she just demanded attention,” she said. “Whatever she sang came right from the heart.”3. About Yesterday Once More Richard and John Bettis wrote “Yesterday Once More” i

13、n response to nostalgia（怀旧）craze of the early 70s. The wistful(沉思) ballad, which set up the oldies medley on the Now And Then（有时）album, became a smash（大成功） in its own right(因本身条件) in the summer of 1973. The song went gold and reached #2 in both the U.S. and the U.K. It did even better in Japan, wher

14、e it became one of the best-selling singles of all time. More songs from the Carpenters: 1. Top of the World 2. Jambalaya 3. Sing 4. Close to You 5. A Kind of Hush 6. Superstar 7. Please Mr. Postman 8. I Need to Be in Love2. What does “Yesterday Once More” mean? a. something that happens today feels

15、 like some past experiencesb. something that happened yesterday is happening again nowc. something from the past comes into my mindWhat do you think of the style of this song? I think the song is_.a. Encouragingb.cheerfulc. very sad d. slightly blueFocus on music1. Listen to the song again. Choose f

16、rom the boxes the statement that can best describe the song. The song is about an old story that h a p p e n e d yesterday. The song is the o n e t h a t t h e singer usually sang when she was still a little girl. The song is about the worry that the singer has about her future. The song is about t

17、h e s i n g e r s yearning (怀念怀念) for the past. The song shows the singers fear and hatred of the present life.Focus on comprehension 1. listen to the radio 听收音机2. sing along 随收音机唱 along (adv.): 一同，一道 3. Those were such happy times, And not so long ago=Those were such happy times of not so long ago.

18、 Those指“随收音机唱”的幸福时刻。 4. a long lost friend: a long-lost friend 失散已久的 朋友 long lost: 丢失或失散很久的 5. they are starting to sing so fine中的so fine是so well的意思。6. break ones heart: 伤某人的心7. look back on: 回顾 When I look back on my child, I think I was very happy.8. songs of love 歌唱爱情的歌9. sing to: 对唱 Dont sing to

19、 a cow.10. Come back clearly to me. 又清清楚楚地回到我身旁。 1) Listen to the first part again and fill in the blanks with the words in the box. (Page 3) 2) “my favorite songs” means _ (Line 3) a) the songs that I wrote myself b) the songs that I loved most c) the songs that I remember well 3) “a long-lost frie

20、nd” means _ (Line 10) a) a friend who has disappeared for a long time b) a friend who I havent seen for years c) a friend who I lost touch with2. Listen carefully and try to understand the song with the help of the activities designed for you.Part A4) “How I wondered where they had gone” means _ (Li

21、ne 8) a. How I wanted to know where my old friends had gone! b. How I wanted to know where to find the old songs! c. How I missed the past days!5) From “when they her heart” we know that the girl must be listening to _. (Line 1819) a. a love song b. a song of nature c. a song of peace6) What do “sha

22、-la-la-la”, “wo-o-wo-o” and “shing-a-ling-a-ling” refer to? (Line1215) a. They refer to the song that the girl is listening to. b. They refer to all her favorite old songs. c. They are the names of three old songs.Follow your teacher and read these sentences aloud. Pay attention to the pronunciation

23、 skills such as Liaison( )and incomplete plosion( ).When I was young Id listen to the radio waiting for my favorite songs.When they play Id sing along.But they are back again just like a long lost friend.Looking back on how it was in years gone by and the good time that I had makes today seem rather

24、 sad.It was songs of love that I would sing to then and Id memorize each word.Those old melodies still sound so good to me.Some can even make me cry. Living in the Present to Make the Most of Yourself Is there a secret to being happy in life? A young man who is disappointed with his career begins a

25、tireless search for a magicalgift that holds the key to success and happiness. This is the story of “The Present, another best seller from American writer Spencer Johnson, the author of “Who Moved My Cheese”. The story is as simple as the message it is trying to tell us: Live in the present and make

26、 the most of what you have now. If you put all your faith in things that happened in the past or things that you think will take place in the future, you can never enjoy life to the full. “The most precious (珍贵的) present is not something that someone gives to you. It is something that you give to yourself,” the