新视野大学英语Book4-5课件Choose_to_Be_Alone_on_Purpose.ppt

 Choose to Be Alone on Purpose Background Information Watch and Discuss Structure Analysis Detailed Study of the Text Exercises Henry David Thoreau 　 (1817—1862) U.S. thinker, essayist, and naturalist. Born in Concord, Mass, he graduated from Harvard University and taught school for several years before deciding to become a poet of nature. In the years 1845—1847, to demonstrate how satisfying a simple life could be, he lived in a hut beside Concords Walden Pond; essays recording his daily life were assembled for his masterwork, Walden (1854). John Milton English poet (1608—1674). Milton attended Cambridge University (1625—1632), where he wrote poems in Latin, Italian, and English. His epic masterpieces include Paradise Lost (1667) , Paradise Regained (1671), an epic in which Christ overcomes Satan the tempter, and Samson Agonistes (1671) considered second only to William Wordsworth English poet (1770—1850). Orphaned at 13, Wordsworth attended Cambridge Univ., but remained rootless and virtually penniless until 1795, when a legacy made possible a reunion with his sister D. Wordsworth. He became friends with S. T. Coleridge, with whom he wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798), the collection often considered to have launched the English Romantic Movement. In 1843 he became Englands poet laureate. He is regarded as the central figure in the initiation of English Romanticism. Women in US living alone Why are there more and more American women choosing to be alone? How to explain this phenomenon? Main idea of the text ? The reading passage focuses on a social phenomenon — choosing to be alone on purpose. The passage mainly tells us: what living alone is, what people think of living alone, who prefer living alone, the author’s comments on living alone and what he advises for living in solitude. 1. … to be alone on purpose, … (Para. 2) 3. “How graceful, hoe benign, is solitude,” he wrote. (Para. 4) 4. …he call