Group Discussion Friendship is one of the greatest pleasure that people can enjoy. It is very difficult to find a better definition of friendship. What does friendship mean to you? How do you select your friends and how do you usually contact them?

Read the poem and discuss the following questions with your partners. 1. How do you understand friendship? And what does friend mean to you? 2. How do you make a new friend? 3. Please say something about your best friends.

Background information Skype was first released in 2003 written by Estonian developers Ahti Heinla and Jaan Tallinn. It developed into a platform with over 600 million users and was bought by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5 billion. The service allows users to communicate with peers by voice using a microphone, video by using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet. Phone calls may be placed to recipients on the traditional telephone networks. Find more about Skype at http://about.skype.com/

representations of belonging Word Pretest: Try to find out the following phrases in the article, and translate them. theme song reciprocal nature representations of belonging alter perspectives media device a forgotten age by necessity breaking-of-bread online communication physical factors body language Internet forum

representations of belonging references theme song reciprocal nature representations of belonging alter perspectives media device a forgotten age by necessity breaking-of-bread online communication physical factors body language Internet forum 主题歌 互补性 归属感 改变观点 媒体设备 一个被遗弃的时代 不可回避地 分享食物的 网上沟通 物质因素 肢体语言 网上论坛

Reading Comprehension True or False Questions: The theme song from US television series Friends shows the reciprocal nature of friendship. Basically the benefits of having friends are for humans to survive. If you want to make friends with somebody, it means you must speak the same language with him or her. Nowadays keeping in touch with your friends simply by knocking on the door is a like a forlorn memorial to a forgotten age. F T F T

Reading Comprehension Read the news and answer the following questions: 1. “I’ll be there for you, ‘cause you’re there for me too.” What nature of friendship do the lyrics reveal? It reveals the reciprocal nature of friendship. Here friendship means you do something for your friends, and then they will do them for you too.

Reading Comprehension Read the news and answer the following questions: 2. What does the word “companion” mean? Reading Comprehension The word comes from Latin, and it means “someone with whom you eat bread”.

Reading Comprehension Read the news and answer the following questions: 3. Why did people flock together to make friends with each other in the past? And how did friendships develop later? Initially people flocked together for increased strength and warmth, but later we began to depend on each other for conversation.

Reading Comprehension Read the news and answer the following questions: 4. What are the recent changes to language and communication here in the article? Nowadays people use networks and media devices to keep in touch with their friends, so they may spend hours talking to people without seeing them face to face.

Reading Comprehension Read the news and answer the following questions: 5. How do the friends keep in touch with each other in the movie Trainspotting (1996) ? Do people contact in the same way? Why? Reading Comprehension (1) In the movie Trainspotting a group of friends keep in touch with each other simply by going to each other’s houses and knocking on the door. (2) No, they don’t. (3) Because people have so many networks and media devices on which to keep in touch with their friends that they don’t even need to leave their own house.

Reading Comprehension Read the news and answer the following questions: 6. How do online friendships influence our real life? Reading Comprehension Social dynamics, when hidden behind online communication, change entirely. Our online friendships and relationships are, most of the time, condensed into nothing but language. Body language and the uncountable other physical factors that frame real-life communication are irretrievably lost.

Match the words with their meanings. a. at the beginning b. being the last or concluding element of a series c. an achievement that reminds people d. concerning each of two or more persons or things; especially given or done in return e. the way in which people or things have, react or affect each other f. a presentation to the mind in the form of an idea or image g. a way of regarding situations or topics etc d __ reciprocal __ initially __ representation __ ultimate __ perspective __ memorial __ dynamics a f b g c 没个答案出现时，加入的清脆的声音以示提示 e

2. Your son suffers from your _________ shielding. Fill in the blanks with the following words in the news report. Word Practice excessive, condense, pale in comparison, monopoly Miserable as current conditions are, they _________ with Japan's problems. 2. Your son suffers from your _________ shielding. 3. Marriage is the most common form of a _________, which is the situation when a market has only one seller of a good or service? 4. You can _________ milk by boiling away much of the water in it.. pale in comparison excessive monopoly condense

profound, precedence, mausoleum, banal Word Practice profound, precedence, mausoleum, banal banal 1. Their conversation was ________ full of uninteresting remarks, such as "nice weather" and "slow traffic today. ". 2. My experience with those kids had a ________ impact on me. 3. This is the highest _________ username and password. 4. The most famous ____________ is guarded by the terracotta warriors which are believed to protect the emperor in the afterlife. profound precedence mausoleum

Instruction Skimming and scanning: Find the answers to the following quesitons as quickly as possible.

General Questions 1.What does the word "companion" mean in Latin? 2.How did our friendships develop at some point in our past? The word “companion”, which comes from Latin, means “someone with whom you eat bread”. At some point in our past, though, our friendships developed. Initially we flocked together for increased strength and warmth, but later we began to depend on each other for conversation – for immaterial representations of belonging.

General Questions 3. How do people contact their friends today? 4. What does the writer think of the movie “Train Spotting“ ? Nowadays, people have so many networks and media devices on which to keep in touch with their friends that they don’t even need to leave their own house. The movie, as a result, has the air of a forlorn memorial to a forgotten age when friendship was, by necessity, a real-world affair.

General Questions 5. What is companionship like now? 6. What is the writer’s attitude towards some social network software, such as Skype? Companionship is now further than ever from its physical, breaking-of-bread origins. We now spend hours talking to people without ever setting our eyes on them. Some software, such as Skype, allows our voices and images to be heard and viewed, but this communication pales in comparison to the closeness of a shared immediate environment.

Work in teams and make a survey among your classmates based on the questions given here, and then write a report on it. 1. Do they have online pals? 2. How do they regard online friendship? 3. Do they really trust their online friends? 4. How long do they thing the online friendship will last? Is it possible for it to last a life-long time? Homework

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