Five Famous

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Unit 4
Five Famous Symbols of American
Culture
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Content
New Horizon College English
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Presentation
Discuss 1.The Symbols of Chinese Culture 2.
American Dream
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Presentation - watch and discuss
?. Watch Discuss Watch the video and then
discuss the topics as follows
1. Pay attention to the speech in her graduation
ceremony in Harvard Law School and fill in the
blanks.
New Horizon College English
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(No Transcript)
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Presentatio

• She says," It is with_____, ___of
  conviction, and a strong sense of self that
  we take our next steps into
• the world, remembering that ___ impressions
  are not always correct. You must always have
  faith in
• people, and most importantly, you
• must always have faith in____"

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Presentation
2. Could you please use your own words to
comment on her speech?
3. In our life, there are lots of ups and downs.
Unexpected frustrations always occur. What should
we do to get rid of the dark days?
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Pre-reading

• Background Information

• New words

• Pre- reading Questions

New Horizon College English
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The Statue of Liberty
Background information
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Background information
The Statue of Liberty
The idea of creating the Statue of
Liberty began in France at a dinner party
hosted by Edouard Rene Lefebvre Laboulaye,
a scholar. Laboulaye and Frédéric-Auguste
Bartholdi, a sculptor, began to discuss the
idea of presenting the United States with a
monument to memorialize independence and
human liberty.  Bartholdi sailed from
France to New York on June 8, 1871, to propose
the building of the statue to honor the
friendship between France and the United States.
As the ship pulled into New York Harbor,
Bartholdi spotted the perfect location, Liberty
Island.  During his trip to the United
States, he met with US President Ulysses S.
Grant Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an American
poet Horace Greeley, a New York editor and
politician and others. Bartholdi traveled across
the United States carrying a sketch of the statue
and a small model. Everyone was receptive, but
financial backing was difficult to find.
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Barbie Dolls
Background information
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Background information
Barbie Dolls
It was the late 1950s when Ruth Handler
noticed her daughter playing with paper dolls
and imagining them in grown-up roles. Since most
dolls at the time were baby dolls, Ruth
envisioned one that would inspire little girls to
think about what they wanted to be when they grew
up. Ruth created a teenage fashion model doll
named Barbie (after her daughter), and the rest
is history. Barbie has been an integral part
of the lives of millions of young girls. Her
timeless appeal has resulted in a dedicated
legion of fans that love to collect her. 
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American Gothic

• American Gothic is a painting by Grant Wood
  from 1930. Its inspiration came from a cottage
  designed in the Gothic Revival style with a
  distinctive upper window1 and a decision to
  paint the house along with "the kind of people I
  fancied should live in that house. The painting
  shows a farmer standing beside a woman whose
  identity remains ambiguous she may either be his
  spinster daughter, as explained by the artist's
  sister, or the farmer's wife. The figures were
  modeled by the artist's dentist and sister. The
  woman is dressed in a colonial print apron
  mimicking 19th century Americana and the couple
  are in the traditional roles of men and women,
  the man's pitchfork symbolizing hard labor, and
  the flowers over the woman's right shoulder
  suggesting domesticity. It is one of the most
  familiar images in 20th century American art and
  one of the most parodied artworks within American
  popular culture.

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Background information
American Gothic
Grant Wood came to Eldon in the late 1920's
with fellow artist and Eldon native, John Sharp.
He was inspired by the contrastof the modest
little one-and-one-half- story frame house with
its (as he described it) pretentious Gothic
style windows. There is one in each gable end. He
sketched the house on the back of an envelope and
used it as the backdrop in his world-renowned
1930s painting American Gothic?McKeeby, posed as
the sour-faced couple. Wood intended the couple
to represent a typical small town resident and
his daughter, but most interpret them as man and
wife. Since completion, Grant Wood's 1930
painting American Gothichas become a critically
acclaimed work that continues to enjoy enormous
popularity. It also has become an American icon
and isthe model for a countless number of
commercial art parodies, such as posters, cards,
and souvenirs. The painting hangs in the Art
Institute of Chicago. 
His sister, Nan, and his dentist, Dr. B. H
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Background information
Buffalo nickel
Fraser was born in Minnesota in 1876, but
grew up on a ranch in South Dakota. His first art
instructor was a town whittler. Later, Fraser
studied art in Chicago and Paris and established
a studio in Westport, Connecticut. He was only 17
when he completed the first modeling of The End
of the Trail.
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Background information
The statue portrays a weary native American
riding an equally forlorn horse. At an exhibition
in Paris in 1898, The End of the Trail won a
1,000 cash prize. Despite the pressure of other
projects, Fraser worked on The End of the Trail
off and on throughout his career. Today a large
version of the statue is in the Cowboy Hall of
Fame and Western History Center in Oklahoma City,
which also has Fraser's sketches for the tail's
side of the Buffalo nickel.   When the
Buffalo nickel finally made its debut in 1913, a
coin collector's magazine hailed it as a true
work of art, powerfully modeled. Many critics
agreed, and in 1951 the American Academy of Arts
and Letters presented Fraser with a gold medal
honoring a lifetime of distinguished achievement.
On October 11, 1953, James Earle Fraser died. 
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Background information
Uncle Sam
Historians aren't completely certain how the
character Uncle Sam was created, or who (if
anyone) he was named after. The prevailing theory
is that Uncle Sam was named after Samuel Wilson.
Wilson was born in Arlington, Mass., on September
13, 1766. His childhood home was in Mason, New
Hampshire.
In 1789, he and his brother Ebenezer walked
to Troy, New York. During the War of 1812,
Wilson was in the business of slaughtering and
packing meat. He provided large shipments of meat
to the US Army, in barrels that were stamped
with the initials US. Supposedly, Someone who
saw the US stamp The suggestion that the meat
shipments came from Uncle Sam led to the idea
that Uncle Sam symbolized the federal government.
Samuel Wilson died in 1854. His grave is in
the Oakwood Cemetery in Troy. The single most
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Background information
famous portrait of Uncle Sam is the I WANT YOU
Army recruiting poster from World War I. The
poster was painted by James Montgomery Flagg in
1916-1917.
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New Words
1. liberty n.
the right or permission to do or use sth.

• They give their children a great deal of liberty.
• He granted the boy liberty to go out.

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New Words

2. approve vi. say, feel,or show sth is good
vt. accept, permit or
officially agree to N.
Approval

• I don't approve of smoking in public places.

• We had to wait months for the government to
  approve our plans to extend our house.

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New Words
3. affection n. feeling of fondness
( pl. ) love

• His kindness increased the child's affection for
  him.

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New Words
4. assemble vt. fit together (the parts of
sth.) v. come
together, collect

• Some boys like to assemble model airplanes.
• When the fire alarm rang, we assembled outside
  the emergency exit.

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New Words
Book3 Unit4

• 5.lunar calendar
• solar calendar
• 6. retail
• the wholesale trade
• 7. bare
• He walked with bare feet.
• He is a bare faced man.

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New Words
Book3 Unit4

• barely /rarely
• I barely caught the bus.
• He rarely goes out for dinner.
• St

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New Words
Book3 Unit4

• 8. comprise
• The British parliament is comprised of the
  House of commons and the House of Lords.
• St

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New Words
Book3 Unit4

• 8. comprise
• Twelve months constitute a year.
• A year is constituted of twelve months.
• A year consists of 12 months.
• St

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New Words
Book3 Unit4

• 9.imaginary/imaginable/imaginative
• He tried every means imaginable, but all in
  vain.
• Shes always full of imaginative ideas.
• In the novel, the writer creates an imaginary
  world.
• St

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BOOK 3
Pre-reading Questions
Unit 4

• What are the five symbols of the United States?
• 2. How popular is Barbie according to the text?
• 3. What did the Buffalo nickel honor?

New Horizon College English
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Text Study

• Structure Analysis

• Detailed study

New Horizon College English
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Text Study
Main idea of the text
The passage is a narration about five famous
symbols of American culture, telling us the
historical background of the well-known symbols.
New Horizon College English
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Text Study
Part?
Paras . 1-4 The Statue of Liberty
Part?
Para 5-10 Barbie
Part?
Paras. 11-14 American Gothic
Part ?
Paras 15-18The Buffalo Nickel
Part ?
Para 19-22 Uncle Sam
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Text Study
While white people had previously been used as
models for most American coins, famed artist
James Earle Fraser went against tradition by
using three actual American Indians as models for
his creation. (L. 50)
? ? ? ? ?
While people tend to do sth., someone goes
against tradition / conventionality by doing
something else. ??????????,???????/?????,?????
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Text Study
?????????,??????????,????????,??????????
While people tend to get up early to take
morning exercise, he goes against tradition by
running in the night, thus cultivating his
inspiration in works.
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Text Study
His mother could not approve of her sons
affection for a woman she had never met, but
Bartholdi went ahead and married his love in
1876. (L. 5)
? ? ? ? ?
Some people object to/are opposed to/put
obstacles in the way of/dont approve of sb.s
doing sth., but sb. goes ahead and
?????/??/????????,???????,?
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Text Study
?????????????,???????,?????????,????????????
??

The whole family couldnt approve of his
leaving off studies, but Bill Gates went ahead
with great perseverance and set up the famed
Microsoft Corporation, which has brought great
fortune to the whole globe.
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Consolidation
1. ????????????????????????????,??????,?????????
His parents did not approve of his plan to
go and study abroad with a girl they had never
met, but he went ahead and got to New York with
her.
New Horizon College English
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Consolidation
2. ??????1950??????,???????,????????????????????
?????
The novelist instantly rose to fame in 1950 with
the publication of Good-bye, My Dear, a novel
inspired by his experience with a girl on his
older brothers farm.
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Consolidation
3. ???????????????,????????,??????,???????????????
??
The painting shows a serious-looking man and a
woman standing alongside him in front of a
farmhouse, their models being respectively the
painters dentist and sister.
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Consolidation
4. ????????????,???????????????????,??????????????
????
In order to have the buffalo on the other side
of the nickel, he went to the Central Park Zoo to
sketch an aging buffalo which was later killed
for a wall decoration.
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Consolidation
5. ?????,US????????,????????? ?
???,????????????,????????????????,????????
One story says that US was short for
Uncle Sam whose real name was Sam Wilson who
had once worked with a man who had signed a
contract with the government to provide meat to
the US Army.
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Writing
How to write an essay concerning Proverbs?
?. Strategies
?. Module