Lesson 13 After Twenty Years Step 1. Tell the students the information about O. Henry He was born in North Carol.ina and spent his early life there and in Texas, working as a ranch hand an later as a bank clork. In his thirties he became a newspaperman and began writing short stories. In nearly all of his works of fiction O. Henry showed his unusual cleverness at inventing plots which build up to sharp, unexpected endings as in “After Twenty Years”. His short-story collections include Cabbages and Kings, The Trimmed Lamp, Roads of Destiny, and Sixes and Sevens. He described in most of his short stories amusing incidents of everyday life. Though he criticized the evils of capitalist society, he rarely went into the root cause of things. His last years were damaged by an uinhappy second marriage, financial difficulties and alcoholism.

Step 2. Ask some of them to retell the story That is the main idea in details. Step 3. Ask the students to find out some hints or clues that suggest policeman Wells would have Bob arrested Often in a narrative some hints or clues are given to suggest something important will happen later. These hints or clues are claaed foreshadowing. the officer, Wells, with his strongly-built form and slight air of superiority, made a fne picture of a guardian of the peace. This suggests that he would not be soft with any law violater no matter who he was. Before he moved on policeman Wells asked Bob if he was going to leave immediately. This implies that he was going to take some action.

2 ） background information Wal-Mart: founded by Sam Walton in 1962, is the largest company in the world based on revenue. It is the largest private employee in the United States, Mexico and Canada Corporate culture: a company’s values, benefits, business principles, traditions, ways of operating, and internal work environment 2. give the students ten minutes to read and understand the passage in a rough way ask Ss to give the general idea of the passage and try to find the keys to the questions in reading tasks A. 3. explain the passage in details and make translations of some of the content.

Step 4 summarization and review Ask the students to finish the following reading tasks understanding details mark these statements T or F 1. asda and wal-mart have very similar corporate cultures 2. Wal-Mart is the biggest supermarket group in the US. 3. asda had financial problems in the 1980s. 4. many of asda’s employees are over Allan Leighton is sure the merger of asda with Wal-Mart will succeed. 6. Wal-Mart plans to impose its corporate culture on asda. 7. Creating a corporate culture cannot be planned in theory only.