新视野大学英语读写教程第一单元.docx

NHCE Book IVReading and WritingStudent's BookUnit 1PreviewA person's reputation is one of the most important things he possesses and it deserves protecting. The key to building a good name is to be consistent. You will not win the favor of the public or the people around you overnight. In fact, it will take many years of efforts before you establish your proper place in society. Once you have earned a good name, be careful to maintain it through civility, integrity and humility.•—1™Section APre-reading ActivitiesFirst ListeningListen to a passage about Oscar Wilde and quotations from him.Oscar Wilde was famous not only for his plays and offensive public behavior, but also for his cynical quotations. Here are two quotes and their meanings. The first quote is, “No man is rich enough to buy back his past." It means that a person should be careful about the choices he or she makes in life, because some mistakes can never be corrected later The second quote is, "Men become old, but they never become good." It means that while men may get older, they never learn to be good. Wilde seemed to have very little faith in himself or his fellow man.Second ListeningListen to the passage again and answer the following questions according to what you hear. The last question is open-ended and may have different answers.1. For what was Oscar Wilde famous?Oscar Wilde was famous for his plays, offensive public behavior and his cynical quotations.2. What does the quote "Men become old, but they never become good" mean?It means that while men gradually become older, they never learn how to be good.3. Here is another quote from Wilde: "Life is never fair... And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." How do you understand this quote?• Background Information1. Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was an American writer whose plays are mainly about people with emotional problems and are set in the Southern State. As a playwright Williams began his career while studying at the University of Missouri and Washington University, St. Louis. The first critical triumph came in 1945 with The Glass Menagerie. The Glass Menagerie ran on Broadway for over a year and received the New York Drama Critics9 Circle Award. Williams9 next major play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), won the Pulitzer Prize, and established him as a major American dramatist. Williams also received the Pulitzer Prize for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), about the moral decay of a Southern family, and for The Night of the Iguana (1961). For more information about Williams, visit httj)://.2. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the most famous American novelists, short story writers and essayists, whose deceptively simple prose style has influenced a wide range of writers. Hemingway was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for literature.Hemingway9s first books, Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923) and In Our Time (1924), were published in Paris. The Torrents of Spring appeared in 1926 and Hemingway9s first serious novel, The Sun Also Rises, in the same year. The novel deals with a group of expatriates in France and Spain, members of the disillusioned post-World War I Lost Generation. Hemingway wrote and rewrote the novel in various parts of Spain and France between 1924 and 1926. It became his first great success as a novelist. Although the novel9s language is simple, Hemingway used understatement and omission, which make the text multilayered and rich in allusions.After the publication of Men Without Women (1927), Hemingway returned to the United States, settling in Key West, Florida. In Florida he wrote A Farewell to Arms, which was published in 1929. In 1937 Hemingway observed the Spanish Civil war firsthand. As many writers did, he supported the cause of the Loyalists. In Madrid he met Martha Gellhorn, a writer and war correspondent, who became his third wife in 1940. In For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) Hemingway returned again in Spain. He dedicated the book to Gellhorn - Maria in the story was partly modeled after her. They divorced in 1945.The Old Man and the Sea, published first in Life magazine in 1952, again restored his fame. The 27,000 word novella told a story of an old Cuban fisherman named Santiago, who finally catches a giant marlin after weeks of not catching anything. As he returns to the harbor, the sharks eat the fish lashed to his boat.On July 2, 1961, Hemingway committed suicide with his favorite shotgun at his home.For more information about Hemingway, visit http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/heminswa.thm and http://www.ernest.heminK Robert Frost (1874-1963) was one of America's leading 20th-century pOejs an() a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. An essentially pastoral poet often associated with rural New England, Frost wrote poems whose philosophical dimensions transcend any region. His poetry is thus both traditional and experimental, regional and universal.He 。