上外全新版大学英语综合教程讲义-book3-unit5.docVIP

Unit Five How to Celebrate Holidays Preview assignment: Try to find the information about the Thanksgiving Day：the introduction, the origin, the special meals and the celebration. Preview the new words and expressions in the two texts. Objectives: Students will be able to: understand the main idea and structure of the texts; learn to memorize words in association; grasp the key language points and grammatical structures in the texts. Text A Writing Three Thank-you Letters I. Cultural notes 1. Check on the previewed work (ask students to tell the information about the Thanksgiving Day ) Thanksgiving : 1) Introduction Thanksgiving is celebrated in the US on the fourth Thursday in November. For many Americans it is the most important holiday apart from Christmas. Schools, offices and most businesses close for Thanksgiving, and many people make the whole weekend a vacation. The writer O. Henry called it the one day that is purely American. The holiday is a time of family reunion. 2) Origin Thanksgiving is associated with the time when Europeans first came to North America. In 1620 the ship the Mayflower arrived, bringing about 150 people who today are usually called Pilgrims. They arrived at the beginning of a very hard winter and could not find enough to eat, so many of them died. But in the following summer Native Americans showed them what foods were safe to eat, so that they could save food for the next winter. They held a big celebration to thank God and the Native Americans for the fact that they had survived. 3) Special Meal Today people celebrate Thanksgiving to remember these early days. The most important part of the celebration is a traditional dinner with foods that come from North America. The meal includes turkey, sweet potatoes (also called yams) and cranberries, which are made into a kind of sauce or jelly. The turkey is filled with stuffing or dressing, and many families have their own special recipe. Dessert is pumpkin made into a pie. 4) Celebr