[00:05.09]Speaking
[00:07.73]Example:
[00:10.37]I'm interested to read some Romantic poetry about love and friend sip.
[00:16.40]Why are you interested in that kind of poetry?
[00:20.53]Because I think Romantic poetry is about real passion.
[00:26.10]I see.What kind of poetry would you not like to read?
[00:31.95]I don't want to read English poetry about death and World War One,
[00:37.83]becuase I think it is too sad.
[00:41.98]Reading ENGLISH POETRY
[00:50.23]Reading poetry brings people from different places and different times together.
[00:56.87]More than any other form of literature,poetry plays with sounds,words and grammar.
[01:04.52]That makes poetry difficult to write,but very interesting to read.
[01:11.08]Poetry also calls up all the colours,feelings,
[01:16.36]experiences and curious images of a dream world.
[01:21.50]China has a long history
[01:25.16]during which many of the world's greatest poets were active.
[01:30.33]Poems by Du Fu,Li Bai and Wang Wei among others stand out in the halls of glory.
[01:38.59]When you have read some Chinese poems,
[01:42.64]you will have seen and heard some of the features that all good poetry shares.
[01:49.40]The form is very important:
[01:53.16]the number of lines and the number of characters in each line.
[01:58.41]Poetry often follows special patterns of rhythm and rhyme.
[02:03.87]Despite its short history,there is a lot of good English poetry around.
[02:10.12]The earliest English poetry was written in a kind of English
[02:15.68]that is now difficult to understand.
[02:19.83]Modern English started around the time of William Shakespeare,
[02:25.08]towards the end of the sixteenth century.
[02:29.84]The seventeenth century was a great time for English poetry.
[02:35.19]Shakespeare is most famous for his plays.
[02:39.87]His sonnets, however,belong to the best English poetry.
[02:45.51]In the next generation of great English poets we meet John Donne.
[02:51.57]Chinese readers admire his works because of his use of surprising images
[02:58.34]that reminds them of the works of poets such as Su Dongpo.
[03:04.01]Before the end of the century,there was another famous writer,John Milton.
[03:10.25]Once published,
[03:13.12]his work became famous for the absence of rhyme at the end of each line.
[03:19.05]In the eighteenth century it was Alexander Pope
[03:24.30]who wrote the finest poetry in England.
[03:28.56]The next period that produced a great number of fine poets
[03:33.73]was the nineteenth century.
[03:36.89]Greatly loved in China are the English Romantic poets.
[03:42.64]Although they were all born in the eighteenth century,
[03:47.11]they wrote their major works in the early years of the nineteenth century.
[03:52.96]John Keats died at a very young age in 1821;
[03:58.52]while William Wordsworth,who spent much of his time in the English Lake District,
[04:05.37]lived to the age of 80 and died in 1850.
[04:10.23]The nature poems by William Wordsworth,
[04:14.67]George Gordon Byron's Isles of Greece
[04:19.13]and the sonnets and long poems by John Keats have long been favourites.
[04:25.80]The style and atmosphere in their poems
[04:30.24]has often led to comparisons with poets such as Du Fu and Li Bai.
[04:36.61]Finally, modern poets have their special attraction
[04:42.07]because they stand closest to us both in the language and images they use.
[04:49.33]Among them we find the American poet Robert Frost.
[04:54.66]The introduction of English poetry to China came late.
[04:59.62]Towards the end of the nineteenth century
[05:03.75]Chinese writers started reading more foreign poetry.
[05:08.79]The great moment for European literature to come to China
[05:13.94]is between 1910 and the late 1930s
[05:19.90]when famous writers such as Lu Xun and Guo Moruo
[05:25.96]translated both poetry and novels into Chinese.
[05:31.62]More and more people are interested to read modern poetry in English.
[05:37.27]Translations can be good,
[05:40.74]but being able to read in English gives you much more choice
[05:46.20]Besides,no matter how well a poem is translated,
[05:51.76]something of the spirit of the original work is lost.
[05:56.81]Reading poetry in English also opens the door to finding new ways
[06:03.36]of expressing yourself in Chinese.
[06:07.33]Finally, poems and literature can be bridges between the East and the West.
[06:14.39]They can help us to understand each other better,or as Mu Dan wrote:
[06:20.55]Quietly,we embrace in a world lit up by words.
[06:26.80]Integrating skills Reading,listening and writing
[06:36.36]SONGS AND POEMS
[06:39.88]Why read,and sometimes even write poetry?
[06:46.23]That question is not difficult to answer if we change the word poetry to songs.
[06:54.09]I sing when I feel good.
[06:58.17]When I sing my favourite songs, I feel even better.
[07:03.81]Sometimes when I am listening to music and to the song words,
[07:09.77]I feel that it was written for me.
[07:13.84]A good song always makes me feel something.
[07:18.49]There are songs that I sing in my head between classes
[07:24.26]and songs that I want to sing when the school bell rings by the end of the day.
[07:30.43]They help me get through the day.
[07:34.50]They are like bright and warm colours in the middle of greys and shades.
[07:41.17]I like songs about love and friendship.
[07:46.52]The extraordinary thing is,
[07:50.47]my feelings are more special when I sing my favourite songs in English.
[07:58.04]I also like reading.
[08:01.49]I used to avoid poetry until an e-pal told me.
[08:07.55]I should recite poems and not look up the meaning of the words.
[08:14.21]Poetry uses many difficult words and idioms,
[08:19.80]but the best thing is to just forget about them.
[08:24.76]In the beginning I felt quite strange.
[08:29.91]Now I always lock the door.
[08:34.17]Reading aloud gives you a strange feeling,
[08:39.34]but when you have some practice and fall into the rhythm,
[08:44.59]the rhyme and the sounds of the words,it is really a special experience.
[08:52.32]I started with small poems,but now I think I most like long poems.
[09:00.19]I have different feelings with different poems.
[09:04.76]When I have had a bad day at school,I read Keats and forget everything.
[09:12.20]When I am sad I read Wordsworth by the light of a candle.
[09:18.16]When the poem is finished,I close the book and my sadness is gone.
[09:26.02]1.Listen to the tape and read the following poems in class
[09:33.10]discuss with your classmates what they mean to you.
[09:37.75]Dust of snow.
[09:40.91]The way a crow Shook down on me
[09:45.87]The dust of snow From a hemlock tree
[09:51.02]Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part.
[09:58.39]of a day I had rued.
[10:02.33]By Robert Frost
[10:05.39]Right here waiting Oceans apart,day after day,
[10:12.83]And I slowly go insane I hear your voice on the line,
[10:19.96]But it doesn't stop the pain.
[10:23.73]If I see you next to never,How can I say forever.
[10:30.26]Wherever you go,whatever you do.
[10:35.32]I will be right here waiting for you.
[10:40.08]Whatever it takes,or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you.
[10:48.72]By Richard Marx
[10:51.89]Work Book Unit 4 Integrating skills
[11:02.05]Reading THE BIRTH OF MODERN POETRY
[11:07.32]When asked about poetry,
[11:10.77]most people will say that a poem is a text that has rhythm and rhyme.
[11:17.15]Famous are the lines by William Blake,
[11:21.51]which have clear rhythm and rhyme:
[11:25.66]Tiger, tiger, burning bright,in the forest of the night.
[11:31.83]Other people will add that poems must have a certain form,
[11:37.10]with a fixed number of lines and a fixed rhyme pattern,such as a sonnet.
[11:43.95]With rhyme,most people mean the rhyme of sound of words at the end of the lines.
[11:51.71]It is also true that much of the classical poetry that we have looks like that.
[11:59.07]Except for some short songs and poems included in his plays,
[12:05.03]all of Shakespeare's greatest poems are sonnets.
[12:09.99]John Milton was one of the first poets
[12:14.35]who started writing poems without rhyme at the end of the lines
[12:20.52]He wrote other poems too,but he is famous for his long poems without rhyme.
[12:27.47]After Milton,
[12:30.34]almost every poet had a hand at this kind of poetry that was free of rhyme
[12:37.19]Wordsworth and Keats wrote some such poems,
[12:42.46]but that is not what they are famous for.
[12:46.62]This style of poetry became known as free verse.
[12:52.07]It was not until the twentieth century that modern poetry was really developed.
[12:58.63]Modern poets wanted to break with all the traditional forms of poetry.
[13:04.38]One of the characteristics of modern poetry
[13:08.95]is that it usually does not have rhyme at the end of a line,
[13:13.99]and it is also often about common topics.
[13:18.85]In China, free verse was known and used much earlier.
[13:24.31]The following poem by Bai Juyi is an example of a poem written in free verse.
[13:32.56]THE UNHAPPY OFFICIAL By Bai Juyi
[13:38.63]Never tired of study,reading until he could not see;
[13:45.18]holding his pen until his fingers became painful;
[13:50.22]sitting for exams ten times until he passed;
[13:55.58]success has come too late;
[13:59.42]he is now an important official but his hair is already white;
[14:05.30]there is little happiness for him;
[14:08.85]when young,he spent his days being very poor;
[14:14.10]now old and often sick money and fame are of no use to him.
[14:20.66]Living behind the great red gates
[14:24.81]is a youth with the taste of mother's milk still in his mouth;
[14:30.16]not much to look at,with soft skin like a girl's and a gentle face;
[14:36.93]he has never worn a soldier's uniform ;
[14:41.29]at twenty he got his father's title and money;
[14:46.57]with the coming of spring,he is always playing outside,
[14:52.63]wearing soft furs and riding upon a fine horse;
[14:57.78]spending mornings with gamblers and drinkers,
[15:02.61]and in the evenings sleeping with the girls in a singsong house;
[15:08.36]he spends his money paying wine bills,
[15:13.03]using:what is left over on pretty girls;
[15:18.07]besides drinking,singing,and hunting with dogs or horses,he knows little else.
[15:25.94]On the hills,wild grasses grow under a great pine tree;
[15:32.31]two living things,one reaching;high and the other happy to stay low,
[15:38.76]from old times it has been this way,
[15:42.84]you are not alone in knowing this sadness.
[15:47.28]Translation: Rewi Alley |