Loving and Hating New York

Thomas Griffith

Aims:

1)  Improving students’ ability to read between lines and understand the text properly;

2) Cultivating students’ ability to make a creative reading;

3)  Enhancing students’ ability to appreciate the text from different perspectives;

4)   Helping students to understand some difficult words and expressions;

5)   Helping students to understanding rhetorical devices;

6)   Encouraging students to voice their own viewpoint fluently and accurately.

Teaching Contents:

Background Knowledge

Exposition

Detailed Study of the Essay

Organization Pattern

Style and Language Features

Special Difficulties

Background Knowledge

1) About the author Thomas Griffith

2) About New York City

Exposition

http://www.stanford.edu/~arnetha/expowrite/info.html

Detailed study on the Essay

Pre-reading task

(Pictures provided here)1) Which one of these pictures are picture of

New York City? What does New York City impress you?

2)  Discuss with your partner to decide : a) which city you like most and why? b) If you are offered a chance to work or live in another city which is quiet unfamiliar to you , do you want to go there and why?

Para.1-5 General introduction

Setting forth the present status of New York in the United States and in the eye’s of foreigners

Task: Collect evidence to show that “ How the mighty has fallen.”

New York = Big Apple = Mighty

— Advertising campaigns publicly praise New York;

—  Many New Yorkers wear T-shirts with a heart design and the works “ I love New York”

— New York is trying desperately to regain her lost prestige and status.

Para.2-3 New York

Yesterday & Today

New York City

Yesterday

Top, highest, biggest

Leading city sets styles and trends of nation

Undisputed fashion authority

Looked up to and imitated

Today

isn’t any more

out of phase with ______ as out of step with

lost its undisputed leadership

no longer so

Question:

1) From where we can see New York’s deficiencies as a pacesetter are more and more evident?

“ Nowadays New York is out of phase with American taste “

— Nowadays New York connot understand nor follow the taste of the American people and is often in disagreement with American politics.

“ No longer so looked up to or copied, New York even prides itself on being a holdout from prevailing American trends”

— Since New York is no longer looked up to or copied as the undisputed fashion authority, it now boasts that it is a city that resists the prevailing trends (styles, fashion) of America, that it is a place where people can escape from uniformity and commonness.

—     Building

—     Manhattan television studios

—     Tin Pan Alley

—     Hiring singers and entertainers

—     Sports

2) The technique used to support author’s view is___________.

Para.4 New York

In the eyes of Americans

Comeback: 1 a : a sharp or witty reply : retort b : a cause for complaint 2 : a return to a former position or condition (as of success or prosperity): recovery, revival <staging his ultimate comeback from self-imposed exile

Para5 New York

In the eyes of foreigner

Question: Why do many Europeans call New York their favorite city?

— Cosmopolitan complexities

— European standards

— Mixture of many foreigners

— Many jewelers, shoe stores and designers shops

— Familiar international names

— Tense, restless atmosphere; its energetic pulse

“ … and designer shops that exist to flatter and bilk the frivolous rich.”

These shops are set up to cheat and gratify the vanity of the silly rich people

Para 6 New York

Energy, contention and striving

Convention: angry disagreement

Striving: trying very hard to achieve or to defeat the others

Put-down: ( informal) a remark or criticism intended to make the others feel stupid ( 令人难堪的话，噎人的话 )

“ To win in New York is to be uneasy; to lose is to live in jostling proximity to the frustrated majority.”

— A person who wins in New York is constantly disturbed by fear and anxiety ( because he is afraid of losing what he has won in the fierce competition); a person who loses has to live among the defeated, who are in the majority in New York.

Para.7 New York

In author’s eyes

“New York was never Mecca to me”

Rhetorical devices employed in this sentence are: __________ and ___________.

The author compares New York to Mecca; and Mecca is standing for __________.

A place of holy pilgrimage, of a place one yearns to go.

Para 8 New York:

Nature

Questions:

1) The topic sentence is _______________.

2)The rhetorical device employed in “ Nature constantly yields to man in New York” is __________.

3) Are there any other places uses the same rhetorical device as mentioned above? What’s the function of it?

Para.9 New York

Opportunities & uncertainness

Questions:

1) What do “Ivy League Schools” refer to?

2)  Why did writer go and live in New York?

Para.10 New York

In young people’s eyes

Question: Why do young people still go to New York?

—  testing themselves

— unwilling to surrender to their most common and easily sold talents

—  the fierce competition and challenge

—  standards of excellence demanded

“ But the purity of a bohemian dedication can be exaggerated.”

— But a pure and wholehearted devotion to a Bohemian life style can be esaggerated.

“ But the present generation is enough of a subculture to be a source of profitable boutiques and coffeehouses.”

As these young writers and artists have distinct cultural patterns of their own, many businessmen open up profitable boutiques and coffeehouses to cater to their special tastes and interests.

“ And it is not all that estranged” “It” probably means _______________.

Para.11 New York

A judging town

“A market for knowingness exists in New York that doesn't’t exist for knowledge.”

— In New York, a shrewd understanding or ability to appraise things is appreciated and paid for and skill and learning by themselves are not considered valuable.

Para12 New York

An advertising Center

Question: 1) The rhetorical device used in “The

condescending view from the fiftieth floor of the city’s …” is _________. And “ The condescending view is the view of __________.

2)  In sentence “So does an attitude which sees….” The author compares ______ to ______.

Para 13 New York

Lack of cynicism

Task: Collect evidence to show New York is lack of cynicism

In sentence “ Men and women do their jobs professionally and, like pilots who from great heights bombed Hanoi …” the author compares_______ to ______.

Para 14 New York

Freedom

Para 15 New York

Wounded not dying

Amenity: the attractiveness and value of real estate or of a residential structure

To succumb to: to fail to resist an attack, illness, temptation

Para 16-18 New York

New Yorkers’ Love

New Yorker who sees all the faults of the city still prefer to live in New York

New York’s faults:—Trash-strewn streets— Unruly school— Uneasy feeling or menace— The noise— The brusqueness

“ He is hopeless provincial”

— He will always be a New Yorker. His attitude towards and his love for New York will never change

“ New York … is the spoiler of all other American cities”

— New York has spoiled all the other American cities for him.

Para 19-10 New York

International Metropolis

Para.22 New York

Loving and Hating

     — An alternating mood

1.exasperate: to excite the anger of; to cause irritation or annoyance to

2.exhilarate: to make cheerful; to excite

“ The place constantly exasperates, at times exhilarates.”

— New York constantly irritates and annoys very much but at times it also invigorates and stimulates.

Organization Pattern

1) The thesis: Loving and hating New York or more specifically: Loving and hating New York becomes a matter of alternating moods, often in the same day.

2) The thesis developed by both objective and emotional description of New York and the life and struggle of New Yorkers

3) The structural organization of this essay: clear and simple

Style and Language Features

1) Full of American English terms, phrases and constructions.

T-shirt holdout comeback put-down expense-account adman high-rise measure up

2) Use of various rhetorical devices: metaphor personification metonymy transferred epithet alliteration simile synecdoche irony euphemism

Special Difficulties

Understanding Some terms/phrases/structures

out-of-phase

television generation

economy of effort

wrong side

sitcoms cloned and canned

Mecca

Ivy League schools commercial Broadwayoff-Broadway/off-off-Broadway Madison Avenue/Wall Street like seeks like Wasps