Unit 1 Festivals and Celebrations 

Listening and speaking & Listening and talking

【教材分析】

本板块的活动主题是“谈论节日活动”（Talk about festival activities），主要是从贴近学生日常生活的角度来切入“节日”主题。学生会听到发生在三个国家不同节日场景下的简短对话，对话中的人们正在参与或将要亲历不同的庆祝活动。随着全球化的进程加速，国际交流日益频繁，无论是国人走出国门还是外国友人访问中国，都已成为司空见惯的事情。因此，该板块所选取的三个典型节日场景都是属于跨文化交际语境，不仅每组对话中的人物来自不同的文化背景，对话者的身份和关系也不尽相同。

【教学目标】

1. Master the new words related to holiday: lantern, carnival, costume, dress (sb) up, march, congratulation, congratulate, riddle, ceremony, samba, make-up, after all.

2. To understand the origin of major world festivals and the activities held to celebrate them and the significance of these activities;

3. Improve listening comprehension and oral expression of the topic by listening and talking about traditional festivals around the world;

4. Improve students’ understanding of the topic by watching pictures and videos about different traditional festivals around the world;

5. Review the common assimilation phenomenon in English phonetics, distinguish the assimilated phonemes in the natural language flow, and consciously use the assimilation skill in oral expression.

【教学重难点】

Importance:

1. Guide students to pay attention to the attitude of the speaker in the process of listening, and identify the relationship between the characters;

2. Inspire students to use topic words to describe the festival activities based on their background knowledge.

Difficulties:

In the process of listening to the correct understanding of the speaker’s attitude, accurately identify the relationship between the characters.

【课前准备】

1. To understand the origin of traditional festivals in the world, the celebration activities (customs) of these festivals and the meaning of these activities;

2. Talk about holiday celebrations;

3. Preview: understand the new words according to the context.

【教学过程】

Step 1 Lead-in

Teachers talk about the world’s traditional festivals, such as the Lantern Festival in China, adults’ day in foreign countries, carnivals and so on.

Step 2 Watching and talking

Activity 1

1. Teacher lets Ss look at some pictures about festival activities. During talking about these activities, teacher can add some background knowledge about festivals.

Questions:

①What festivals do the pictures show us?

②In which country do you think people celebrate each festival?

③How do people celebrate each festival?

2. Ask sb to choose some words or phrases from the box to celebrate each festival.

3. Teacher can show students how to use these word blocks and learn to describe holiday activities in groups. For example：

On the Coming-of-Age Day, young girls in Japan would wear traditional costumes.

One of the most important activities during the Lantern Festival is to guess riddles.

During the Rio Carnival, you can watch wonderful samba dances.

4. The teacher asks students to report the results of the group lecture. Ask these questions:

①What do people do to celebrate the Chinese Lantern festival?

②Who will celebrate Coming-of-Age Day? What do they do to celebrate it?

③What do you expect to see if you go to the Rio Carnival?

5. Learn some words and phrases in the box.

Step 3 Listening

Activity 2

1. Teacher asks sb to read “Listen for relationships”, In pairs, discuss how to identify relationships between people based on their tone and content. The teacher can provide the following questions to inspire students to discuss.

①What does a tour guide usually say to a tour group? What expressions are frequently used?

②What questions does an interviewer usually ask during an interview?

③What would a reporter say or do if he/she wants to interview a tourist?

④How do friends usually talk?

2. Some group representatives are invited to communicate and speak in class.

3. Teacher plays the listening tape for students to listen to and write the order of the conversations next to the names of the festivals.

4. Play the tape again, students match each conversation with the relationship between the speakers.

5. Check the answers with class.

Activities 3-4

1. Teacher asks students to look at the tasks and requirements of activity 3. Then read the main ideas of the three dialogues. (Guide the students to guess and fill in the words according to the context. Let the students analyze the English syntactic structure based on the meaning of the sentence and make reasonable inferences.)

2. Teacher plays the tape for the second time. After listening to the tape, students discuss the answers in pairs. Then the class communicates and checks the answers.

3. Teacher lets students listen to the tape for the third time (Before the teacher plays the recording for the third time, the teacher should prepare the students to take notes and remind them to catch key words, especially phrasal verbs.).

Step 4 Speaking

Activity 5

1. Lead the dialogue by asking questions. Let students understand how to discuss their favorite festivals and give their reasons.

E.g.,

Conversation 1

T: Which of the three festivals do you like best?

S1: I think the Coming-of-Age Day is the most interesting.

T: Why is it your favourite?

S1: Because I like to see women dressed up in their colorful traditional kimonos.

Conversation 2

T: Which of the three festivals attracts you most?

S2: The Chinese Lantern Festival.

T: I suppose you like yuanxiao, the sweet dumplings.

S2: Not only that. I especially like guessing riddles and I’m good at it.

2. Follow the example of the conversation in activity 5 and work in pairs to discuss your favorite holiday and explain why. After the discussion, the teacher asks some groups to show the dialogue.

Step 5 Acting

One student plays the role of a journalist. The other three students play the roles of the characters in the listening dialogue. They are the Japanese girl attending the coming-of-age ceremony, the girl attending the Rio carnival, and the tourist visiting China. The following questions can be used in the interview:

①What is the purpose of this festival?

②How do you usually celebrate this festival?

③What do you like best about this festival?

Step 6 Pronunciation

1. Help students recognize speech assimilation.

（1）Teacher plays the recording of activity 1 and asks the students to pay attention to the pronunciation changes of bold letters while listening.

（2）Teacher organizes students to carry out activities in pairs: the teacher plays the recording, one person in the group reads after the words and phrases in activity 1, the other person compares the pronunciation of the recording with that of his partner carefully, and points out the pronunciation problem of his/her partner if there is any difference. Then switch roles, listen to the tape again and complete the same task.

2. Let students imitate and read.

（1）Teacher guides students to understand the requirements of activity 2. Before listening to the tape, the teacher asks the question for students to think: “How does your pronunciation change while reading the sentences?”

（2）Teacher plays the tape for the first time. The students read after the sentences in activity 2.

（3）Teacher plays the tape for the second time, the students repeat the sentences again, and then discuss with their partners the differences between the pronunciation of the bold consonants in words and the pronunciation in sentences, and describe the phonetic assimilation in the flow.

（4）Teacher asks different students to read the six sentences of activity 2 and report the result of the discussion on phonetic assimilation. The teacher supplements and corrects the students’ conclusion, explains it appropriately, and writes the assimilation pronunciation in these sentences on the blackboard or presents it to the students through the courseware.

Step 7 Listening and Talking

Activity 6

1. Learn the new words about the festivals.

2. Look at the pictures and predict what festival Song Lin and Max are going to talk about.

3. Listen and answer the questions.

①What festival is Max talking about?

②What did Max’s mother cook?

③What did Max do during the festival?

④What did Max and his family do during and after the dinner?

⑤What was the best part of the festival?

4. Listen again and check the answers with class.

Answers:

①Christmas experiences.

②Roast turkey, mashed potatoes and Christmas pudding, …

③He helped decorate the Christmas tree and put presents under it, then helped his mum prepare for the family dinner.

④During dinner they shared stories and told jokes, afterwards they played games, opened their presents.

⑤The best part was opening their presents on Christmas morning.

5. Listen again and tick the phrases that Max or Song Lin uses. Then check the answers with class.

6. Have a conversation with the help of these questions:

①What is the recent festival you have had?

②How did you celebrate it?

③How do you feel about the festival? Why?

Step 8 Homework

1）Read the passage again and understand the food culture from a cross-cultural perspective.

2）Remember the new words and learn the usages of them.

【教学反思】

1、通过本节内容学习，学生能否理解发生在三个国家不同节日场景下的简短对话，对话中的人们正在参与或将要亲历不同的庆祝活动；

2、通过本节内容学习，学生能否辨别对话中人物之间的关系；

3、通过本节内容学习，学生能否掌握听力训练中的听力策略。