Unit 1 Yesterday Once More

A Letter for You Read A Letter for You and then you can know something about the aims of this unit. It will help you learn this unit well.

Aims of this unit 1. Understand the lyrics and the theme of Yesterday. 2. Develop students’ four skills, mainly listening and speaking. 3. Develop pronunciation skills through the song. 4. Be able to use some vocabulary and sentence structures in the song. 5. Get familiar with the use of synecdoche. 6. Learn to sing the song.

Pre-enjoying Pre-Enjoying

What kind of things will hit your mind first when you look back on yesterday？

When you see the word “yesterday”, which of the following will first jump into your mind? Tick off () your choices. My kindergarten years. Cartoons. My old friends. My past teachers. My toys. My primary school years. My junior middle school year. Some old songs. The mistakes that I made. The shining moment when I achieved success. Something important to my family. The road to my school. The most successful joke I made. The secret that I’ve kept for a long time. My parents’ looks several years ago.

Why, my friend. I wonder what has happened to you. Three years ago, I failed the college entrance exam. I broke my parents’ heart. At the same time, I lost my friends. No one wants to play football along with me. And all of them began to leave me. It’s terrible. Why, my friend. I wonder what has happened to you. When I look back on the past, I feel sad.

The Carpenters

Background Knowledge 1. Who are the Carpenters? The Carpenters are the most successful brother/sister act of all time. With their gentle melodies and the amazing voice of Karen Carpenter, their middle-of-the-road（中庸的）music has universal appeal, and is enjoyed by many different generations. They rapidly rose to fame in the early 1970s and wooed（招来）millions of fans with their clean image. As part of a close family, sheltered in each other’s company, the Carpenters were seen as extremely young Americans, role models for a generation. Perhaps the pressure of maintaining this image was too much, for towards the end of the 70s both Richard and Karen were in poor health. Where Richard was addicted to a form of sleeping pills, Karen was suffering from the eating disorder, known as anorexia nervosa(厌食症), which eventually took her life. But with a catalogue as rich as the Carpenters’ their music lives on. The beauty of their sound and the sadness of their story combine to make them truly worth the status they hold.

2. More About the Carpenters A single is a good test of recording artist’s ability to be both concise and compelling(令人佩服的). The performers has just a few minutes to grab and hold the listeners’ attention; to communicate something so powerful that people can’t wait to hear it again. Few artists in pop history have passed this test as consistently as the Carpenters. From “Close to You” in 1970 to |Only Yesterday” in 1975, Karen and Richard never missed the Top 15. The Carpenters were #1 American-born hit-makers of the 1970s. And Karen and Richard’s success went far beyond their homeland: They topped the charts from Holland to Hong Kong. Karen’s vocal style combined the most attractive traits of several other legendary American singer. She had the warm, pure tones of Nat “King” Cole, the seeming effortlessness of Perry Como, the clarity and precision of Barbra Streisand, and the vulnerability(脆弱) of Judy Garden. It was this quality that most impressed the late Henry Mancini. “Karen had a quality about her that was so vulnerable, so exposed, that she just demanded attention,” she said. “Whatever she sang came right from the heart.”

3. About Yesterday Once More Richard and John Bettis wrote “Yesterday Once More” in response to nostalgia（怀旧）craze of the early ’70s. The wistful(沉思) ballad, which set up the oldies medley on the Now And Then（《有时》）album, became a smash（大成功） in its own right(因本身条件) in the summer of 1973. The song went gold and reached #2 in both the U.S. and the U.K. It did even better in Japan, where it became one of the best-selling singles of all time. More songs from the Carpenters: 1. Top of the World 2. Jambalaya 3. Sing 4. Close to You 5. A Kind of Hush 6. Superstar 7. Please Mr. Postman 8. I Need to Be in Love

2. What does “Yesterday Once More” mean? something that happens today feels like some past experiences something that happened yesterday is happening again now something from the past comes into my mind

Enjoying the Song Enjoying the Song

Focus on music I think the song is______. Encouraging cheerful What do you think of the style of this song? I think the song is______. Encouraging cheerful c. very sad d. slightly blue

Focus on comprehension 1. Listen to the song again. Choose from the boxes the statement that can best describe the song. Focus on comprehension The song is about an old story that happened yesterday. The song is the one that the singer usually sang when she was still a little girl. The song is about the worry that the singer has about her future. The song is about the singer’s yearning (怀念) for the past. The song shows the singer’s fear and hatred of the present life.

Word Bank 1. listen to the radio 听收音机 2. sing along 随收音机唱 along (adv.): 一同，一道 3. Those were such happy times, And not so long ago=Those were such happy times of not so long ago. Those指“随收音机唱”的幸福时刻。 4. a long lost friend: a long-lost friend 失散已久的 朋友 long lost: 丢失或失散很久的 5. they are starting to sing so fine中的so fine是so well的意思。

6. break one’s heart: 伤某人的心 7. look back on: 回顾 When I look back on my child, I think I was very happy. 8. songs of love 歌唱爱情的歌 9. sing to: 对……唱 Don’t sing to a cow. 10. Come back clearly to me. 又清清楚楚地回到我身旁。

2. Listen carefully and try to understand the song with the help of the activities designed for you. Part A 1) Listen to the first part again and fill in the blanks with the words in the box. (Page 3) 2) “my favorite songs” means __ (Line 3) a) the songs that I wrote myself b) the songs that I loved most c) the songs that I remember well 3) “a long-lost friend” means __ (Line 10) a) a friend who has disappeared for a long time b) a friend who I haven’t seen for years c) a friend who I lost touch with

4) “How I wondered where they had gone” means __ (Line 8) a. How I wanted to know where my old friends had gone! b. How I wanted to know where to find the old songs! c. How I missed the past days! 5) From “when they … her heart” we know that the girl must be listening to ___. (Line 18~19) a. a love song b. a song of nature c. a song of peace 6) What do “sha-la-la-la”, “wo-o-wo-o” and “shing-a-ling-a-ling” refer to? (Line12~15) a. They refer to the song that the girl is listening to. b. They refer to all her favorite old songs. c. They are the names of three old songs.

Let's Sing Let’s sing!

Follow your teacher and read these sentences aloud. Pay attention to the pronunciation skills such as Liaison( )and incomplete plosion( ). When I was young I’d listen to the radio waiting for my favorite songs. When they play I’d sing along. But they are back again just like a long lost friend. Looking back on how it was in years gone by and the good time that I had makes today seem rather sad. It was songs of love that I would sing to then and I’d memorize each word. Those old melodies still sound so good to me. Some can even make me cry.

Further Enjoyment Further enjoyment

Living in the Present to Make the Most of Yourself Is there a secret to being happy in life? A young man who is disappointed with his career begins a tireless search for a magical gift that holds the key to success and happiness. This is the story of “The Present, another best seller from American writer Spencer Johnson, the author of “Who Moved My Cheese”. The story is as simple as the message it is trying to tell us: Live in the present and make the most of what you have now. If you put all your faith in things that happened in the past or things that you think will take place in the future, you can never enjoy life to the full. “The most precious (珍贵的) present is not something that someone gives to you. It is something that you give to yourself,” the young man finally realizes. Learning to live in the present is the most valuable gift he receives from life.

Now work in pairs and discuss the following questions. These questions are open. The answers cannot be determined as right or wrong. Just speak out your own opinions. What is Spencer Johnson’s opinion about the past, the present and the future? Do you agree with Spencer Johnson? Looking back on your yesterday, what do you get from it? When in frustration (挫折)，what do you usually do? Turning to your brightening past or locking forward to the unknown future? Why? How do you see the tie (关系) in YESTERDAY, TODAY and TOMORROW?

Homework 1. Preview the new words in Part B. 2. Write a composition about your favorite song. You can write from these aspects: A. When did you hear it for the first time? B. Why do you like that song? Its rhythm or its lyrics?