Then I let them know what books we are going to use this semester and what lessons in Book 6 we are going to cover in class.
After that I told them what Ya-han said in yesterday's interview about preparation for the UEE, emphasizing the importance of extensive reading.
Later we talked about the writing task on the SAT. We brainstormed some words which can be used to describe an earthquake and its aftermath. Of course, about the picture they saw on the test, they could write something else. One student told me after class that he wrote about a war-shattered area. Good too.
Finally, we read two articles together, one was an excerpt of an article from TIME, "Rising from the Rubble of Sichuan Quake," and the other was the letter American President Barack Obama wrote to his two daughters on Jan. 16. I already posted the latter on my blog. So here I would post the former as follows:
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Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008
Rising From the Rubble of the Sichuan Quake
By Austin Ramzy/Beichuan
Piles of red bricks clutter the roadsides. Stacks of concrete drainage pipes fill parking lots, while stores do a brisk trade in paint and window frames. Like countless other places in China, this corner of central Sichuan province is undergoing a building boom. But this is no typical growth story….
The Son
On May 14, Deng Zhuyuan Sat with his family outside a foot-massage parlor in the devastated town of Hanwang, resigned to the fact that he would soon find his mother's corpse. As rescuers moved debris with a crane, Deng, 18, told me in nearly flawless English about life in his mountain town, about how he was preparing for his college-entrance exams before the quake struck. Eventually I left to walk through the wreckage of Hanwang. When I returned to where Deng was waiting, two covered corpses were lying outside the massage parlor. A family member identified Deng's mother. Deng called me over. In a voice cracking with emotion, he offered me a final few words. "You must cherish life," he said. "You must cherish every moment you are alive."
Deng has done just that. When we met six months later, it was at the new campus of Sichuan University, where he studies electrical engineering. The head of the university had asked him to give a speech commemorating the new school year. "If you're still alive, then there is no reason to despair," he told his classmates and teachers. "I am living, and my life is hopeful." Of the 36 students in his junior high school class, four died in the earthquake. "When we get together, we talk about those four," he says. "But we look to the future, not to the past."
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The main reason for me to let them read this article is that I'd like them to "cherish life," as suggested by Deng Zhuyuan, who lost his mother and classmates to the devastating quake and to hold the attitude stated in the last sentence, "...we look to he future, not to the past." A student told me after class that he used a similar sentence to wrap up his composition on the SAT. Wow! That's great!
For the first article, I asked them to do silent reading for 3 minutes, and then I asked them some questions. As for Obama's letter, I invited some of them to read it aloud, each reading one paragraph. Then after a student read a paragraph, I asked them its main idea. By doing so, I reviewed an important point in writing a composition: the main idea and unity. Surely, my primary purpose of introducing this letter is to try to inspire the students with the sentence "it is only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential."
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