21世纪大学实用英语第四册Unit_1

21st Century College English: Book 1

Unit 4: Text A

The Washwoman

Unit 4: Text A

Lead-in Activities Lead Text Organization Reading & Writing Skills Language Points Guided Practice Assignment

LeadLead-in Activities

Questions for Discussion Do your grandparents live with your parents? What’s the possible advantages and disadvantages of elders living together with their children’s families? Think of a person you know who continues to work hard in his / her old age. Describe this person to others. What is he / she like? What does he / she do? Why do you think he / she still work?

Text Organization The Structure of Text A

Washwoman and her job

Para. 1-4 1Para. 5

Mother and son

Sense of responsibility

Para. 6-14 6-

Text Organization I. Washwoman and her job

This part introduces the washwoman to readers by giving a brief description of her and shows readers the difference between her and other Jewish women at her

Text Organization II. Mother and son

From this paragraph, we can see how the washwoman was treated by his rich son and how kind, caring and loving she was to her son as a mother. mother.

Text Organization III. Sense of responsibility

Some episodes briefly but accurately tells readers how responsible the washwoman was although her health was declining as time passed by. by.

Reading & Writing Skills 1) Reading skill learning: Ss learn to get the needed information such as physical appearance by skimming the descriptive words and understand and generalize a person's personalities and qualities through some stores and life episodes 2) Writing skill learning Ss learn to write about a person by giving a description of what he or she looks like and telling some stories that shows what kind person he or she is.

Intensive Study

The Washwomanby Isaac Bashevis Singer

1 She was a small woman, old and wrinkled. When she wrinkled. started washing for us, she was already past seventy. Most seventy. Jewish women of her age were sickly and weak. All the old weak. women in our street had bent backs and leaned on sticks when they walked. But this washwoman, small and thin as she walked. was, was, possessed a strength that came from generations of peasant forebears. Mother would count out to her a bundle of forebears. laundry that had accumulated over several weeks. She would weeks. then lift the bundle, put it on her narrow shoulders, and carry it the long way home. home.

Intensive Study

2

She would bring the laundry back about two weeks later. later.

My mother had never been so pleased with any washwoman. washwoman. Yet she charged no more than the others. She was a real find. others. find. Mother always had her money ready, because it was too far for the old woman to come a second time. time.

Intensive Study

3

Laundering was not easy in those days. The old woman days.

had no running water where she lived but had to bring in the water from a pump. And the drying! It could not be done

pump. outside because thieves would steal the laundry. So it had to laundry. be carried up to the attic and hung on clotheslines. Only God clotheslines. knows what the old woman had to endure each time she did a wash!

Intensive Study

4

She could have begged at the church door or entered a

home for the penniless and aged. But there was in her a aged. certain pride and love of labor with which many members of the labor force have been blessed. The old woman did not blessed. want to become a burden, and so she bore her burden. burden.

Intensive Study

5

The woman had a son who was rich. He was ashamed of rich.

his mother, and never came to see her. Nor did he ever give her. her money. The old woman told this without bitterness. When money. bitterness. the son got married, the wedding took place in a church. The church. son had not invited the old mother to his wedding, but she went to the church anyway and waited at the steps to see her son lead the bride to the altar. altar.

Intensive Study

6

One day the washwoman, now nearly eighty years old,

came to our house. A good deal of laundry had accumulated house. during the past weeks. Mother gave her a pot of tea to warm weeks. herself, as well as some bread. The old woman sat on a kitchen bread. chair trembling and shaking, and warmed her hands against the teapot. Her fingernails were strangely white. These hands teapot. white. spoke of the stubbornness of mankind, of the will to work not only as one’s strength permits but beyond the limits of one’s power. power. It was sad to watch the old woman stagger out with the big bundle and disappear. disappear.

Intensive Study

7

Usually the woman brought back the wash after two or, at

the most, three weeks. But three weeks passed, then four and weeks. five, and nothing was heard of the old woman. woman. 8 For us the washwoman’s absence was a catastrophe. We catastrophe.

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