Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's lesson. Today we're going to learn Book 2, Unit 3, "The Internet", Reading and Thinking. In today's class, you'll be able to:
Know the features of news headlines in terms of content, form, and aim.
Divide the whole passage into two parts and summarize the main idea with the help of the headline.
Analyze the role the internet has played with the help of mind maps.
Reflect on how we've been changed by the internet during the Covid - 19 pandemic.
Now, let's begin our lesson. As we all know, we're now in 2021. So, let's look back at 2020. What was the biggest news event in 2020? I think most of you will say it was Covid - 19. Exactly. Actually, on the internet, we have a lot of news headlines related to this topic.
Now, let's look at some of the news headlines on the screen. We have two here. Number 1, "Live Updates on Containing Covid - 19 in Hubei". Number 2, "Pinkerton Academy to Stay in Remote Learning Because of Covid - 19 Clusters".
Now, let's read these two headlines and talk about their content, form, and aim. First, the content. Do headlines usually include key ideas or details? Right, they usually include key ideas.
Second, let's talk about the form. Do headlines follow very strict grammar rules? Of course not. As you can see, the first one is just "updates", only a noun. The second one, "to stay in remote learning", is just a "to - do" form rather than a complete sentence. So, they usually contain a few words. Third, what's the aim of news headlines? Think about it. Yes, the aim of news headlines is often to catch the reader's attention.
Now, let's go to the passage in this unit. Please turn to page 28. Let's first look at the headline in our textbook. In our textbook, the headline is "Stronger Together: How We Have Been Changed by the Internet". This is a special headline. Why? Because it contains two parts.
Number 1, we have "Stronger Together". That's the main title. And we also have "How We Have Been Changed by the Internet", which is called the subtitle. Let's talk about the content, form, and aim again. Can we know the key ideas? Yes, especially from the subtitle "How We Have Been Changed by the Internet". What about the form?
Let's pay attention to the main title, only two words. It doesn't follow very strict grammar rules. Combining the main title and the subtitle, this headline really attracts me because I want to know how the internet has made us stronger together.
Also, judging from this headline, how do you think the writer feels about the topic? Positive or negative? Right, positive because of "Stronger Together", which has a very positive meaning. So, from reading the headlines, sometimes we can know the author's attitude towards the topic. This is a very important reading technique.
Okay, now let's look at this passage. In this passage, we have five paragraphs. First, please number them from 1 to 5. Now, I'll give you three minutes to go through this passage and divide these five paragraphs into two parts. Start.
Okay, time's up. Let's check the answers. Which paragraph or paragraphs belong to Part 1? Right, Paragraph 1 belongs to Part 1. It's very obvious. Part 2 includes the rest four paragraphs, Paragraphs 2 to 5. Okay, as we mentioned before, this is a special headline with two parts, the main title and the subtitle. So, if we want to summarize the main idea of each part using these two parts of the headline, which one will you choose for each part? Good.
For Part 1, we choose the subtitle "How We Have Been Changed by the Internet". Can you find some sentences in this part to show the main idea is about how we've been changed by the internet? Great. In this part, we have sentences like "The internet has made our lives more convenient." And also at the end of this part, we have "The internet has done much more for people than simply making life more convenient." From these two sentences, we can learn that the keyword for this part is "convenience". We can say this part is about the convenience of the internet.