节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2013-09-03
难易度:Low
关键字:scholar, influential, fantasy, publish, Anglo, Saxon, publisher
Hello, and welcome to Studio Classroom.
My name is Gabe.
And I'm Carolyn.
And your English will improve today.
We're going to the second part of our lesson The Tale of Tolkien.
And of course, we already learned a little bit about the history of Tolkien, his
background,
how his parents died at an early age... or when he was very young,
and also how he fell in love with somebody and married Edith Bratt, who he fell
in love with.
And we're going to continue learning about his life today and a little bit about
his art or what he did, what he wrote, how he studied.
Now I wonder about your experiences.
I know many of you also like art or poems or writing songs or things like that.
How do your experiences shape your art?
Carolyn?
That is a great question, Gabe.
And actually, I do like to write poems.
And a lot of my poems have to do with nature and beautiful things outside.
And I think that's because of my experiences growing up enjoying spending time
outdoors on the farm, going hiking.
I think that they have a big influence on what I write.
Interesting.
Well, I also like to write poems.
I think the best poem that I wrote was when I was in Romania in a completely
different culture.
I think I was just really excited about being in that place.
And uh... but sometimes something sad could influence your art.
And I think that's what happened in Tolkien's life.
Let's continue learning about his tale today.
(Music).
The Tale of Tolkien.
But soon Tolkien faced his darkest trial - fighting in World War I.
Life as a soldier was difficult, painful and dangerous.
Tolkien became sick and had to return to England.
Others were not so lucky.
"By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead," Tolkien later wrote.
Back in the England, Tolkien became a scholar.
He taught literature classes at Oxford University, did research and wrote
several influential papers.
He continued to love languages, studying Greek, Anglo Saxon, Finnish and more.
(Music).
Yes, he knew many languages.
Let's go back to the beginning of our lesson here today.
We're talking about Love, War and Studies.
OK, so that part of Tolkien's background.
We read here: But soon Tolkien faced his darkest trial - fighting in World War
I.
I think if you have fought in a war somewhere, anywhere, or even if you've just
fought, it can be a dark time in your life.
I would agree with that, Gabe.
It is very difficult.
And we find that in the next sentence how this shaped his life.
Life as a soldier was difficult, painful and dangerous.
So this would be a very trying time in Tolkien's life.
And we learn Tolkien became sick and had to return to England.
So his war experience was not very good at all.
And World War I was a very scary time.
It's true.
And uh, Tolkien became sick here, we read in the previous sentence that life as
a soldier was painful.
Now I think that painful is not just talking about if he was sick or if he was
injured.
We read here in the next sentence that others were not so lucky.
OK. So he lost some friends.
I think that is a very painful experience for anybody.
We read here:
"By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead," Tolkien later wrote.
So this is something that Tolkien told people that most of his friends were dead
by 1918.
That is a lot of tragedy in his young life.
And it is a very painful experience to lose someone close to you, especially
friends, family.
That would be very painful.
And it's a little interesting - we read that Tolkien became sick and had to
return to England.
Some people might think that that is kind of sad that he wasn't able to continue
fighting for his country, that he had to go back because he was ill.
But we learn that others were not so lucky.
So actually, him getting sick was a good thing.
That's right.
Well, it took him out of the war.
Um, I think that I would consider that lucky as well if some sickness took me
away from war.
Well, it's time for us to continue learning with Steve and Ken in the
Information Cloud.
So Ken, have you finished all the books I lent you?
All but one.
I'm still in the middle of the Spy Catcher.
OK, friends, did you catch that exchange?
So then let me ask: Did Ken finish one book or does he have one book to finish?
And the answer is the latter.
The phrase "all but one" means all except one.
Steve lent me five books in total.
I've read four so far.
I finished all but one book.
You can replace the word "but" with the word "except" - all except one.
Now the phrase "all but" can have another meaning: almost or very nearly.
Right. Here's an example.
In some places, bus service has all but disappeared.
And that means bus service has almost disappeared.
You might see just one or two buses a day in those places.
Or we might talk about a dying language that's all but forgotten.
Hardly anyone speaks it anymore.
Hmm, what a shame!
(Chinese).
Thank you, guys.
Now continuing to learn about Tolkien's life after the war,
we read: Back in England, Tolkien became a scholar.
And that's a word from our Word Bank, the word "scholar." Someone who is a
scholar is someone who studies a certain subject.
They know a lot about it and they can probably teach other people about that
subject as well.
That's right.
And of course we learned here in today's lesson that Tolkien was a scholar that
he learned about literature.
And of course he taught literature, and he learned many different languages as
well.
So he learned these specific subjects.
You could also use kind of an adjective here.
He was a scholarly person.
S-C-H-O-L-A-R-L-Y.
Or maybe you have read some scholarly literature.
There are different things.
That's an adjective you can use to describe um, what a scholar does or things
that are written by scholars.
So if you want to continue to study English, perhaps you can become an English
literature scholar.
You study that subject very deeply.
Well, continuing learning:
He taught literature classes at Oxford University, did research and wrote
several influential papers.
So he became a scholar and he did teach classes.
He taught literature at a very famous university.
That's right, Oxford University, probably one of the most famous universities
around the world.
OK. We see another word from our Word Bank here.
It is "influential," because he wrote some influential papers, some influential
things.
What does it mean to be influential?
That means you are influencing other people through what you do.
That's right.
So you have a big impact or a big effect on other people, maybe what they do or
the way they think.
And he wrote papers that kind of changed the way that people thought about
different things.
Well, who else is influential in your life?
A thing can be influential like his papers or his books.
Uh, but what else?
Who can be influential?
Think about someone who is influential in your life, someone who maybe changed
the way you think about something.
Well, Tolkien here, he continued to love languages, study Greek, Anglo Saxon,
Finnish and more.
I know that Finnish is one of today's most difficult languages to learn.
But Anglo Saxon?
What is Anglo Saxon?
Well, another word is Old English, English that people used a long time ago,
centuries ago.
That's right.
And he was also studying Greek.
So he continued to learn many, many different languages.
Well, it's time for us to continue learning with Michelle in the Language Lab.
Hi, everyone. I'm Michelle.