Unit 4 Stage and Screen-Understanding ideas 教案-2025-2026学年高中英语外研版必修第二册

Unit 4 Stage and Screen-Understanding ideas 内容导航 This part focuses on the passage When Hamlet Meets Peking Opera, which tells a Western reader’s experience of watching the Peking Opera version of Hamlet. It shows the cross-cultural charm and unique artistic features of Peking Opera. 教学目标和重难点 1. 教学目标 In terms of language ability, students can grasp key words and sentence patterns, understand the passage and express personal views. For cultural awareness, it helps students appreciate Peking Opera, respect diverse cultures and enhance cultural confidence. Thinking quality is cultivated by improving logical and critical thinking in text analysis. Learning ability is boosted by guiding students to master reading strategies and form good autonomous learning habits. 2. 教学重难点 The key points are to master core vocabulary and phrases, grasp the main idea and details of the passage, and understand the features of Peking Opera. The difficult points include analyzing long and difficult sentences, understanding the cross-cultural meaning behind the text, and expressing personal feelings about traditional opera and Western plays fluently and accurately in English. 教学过程 Step 1: Lead-in At the beginning of the class, the teacher will greet students warmly and create a relaxed classroom atmosphere. Then, the teacher will show several classic pictures and short video clips, including the stage performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet and wonderful scenes of Peking Opera. After watching, the teacher will put forward some guiding questions to activate students’ prior knowledge and arouse their learning interest. Firstly, the teacher will ask students “Have you ever watched any plays or operas? Which one impresses you most?” Then, continue to ask “What do you know about Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Peking Opera?” Students can share their answers freely in pairs or small groups, and the teacher will walk around the classroom to listen to their discussions and give proper guidance and encouragement. After the group discussion, the teacher will invite several students to share their ideas with the whole class. The teacher will not give rigid evaluation but affirm their active participation. Then, the teacher will briefly introduce the background knowledge: Hamlet is one of the most famous tragedies written by Shakespeare, a great British playwright, and it is widely spread around the world. Peking Opera is a treasure of Chinese traditional culture, with a long history and unique artistic forms. Then the teacher will put forward a thought-provoking question: “What will happen if these two different art forms meet?” This question can stimulate students’ curiosity and lead to the new lesson naturally. Design Intention: This lead-in step uses vivid pictures and video clips to stimulate students’ sensory experience, making them concentrate on the class quickly. By discussing familiar topics, it helps students activate their existing knowledge and life experience, reducing their anxiety of learning a new passage. The guiding questions can cultivate students’ thinking ability and build a natural connection between old and new knowledge, laying a solid foundation for the following text learning. Step 2: Pre-reading Activity 1: Predict the content of the passage The teacher will ask students to look at the title of the passage When Hamlet Meets Peking Opera and the relevant pictures on the textbook. Then, students need to predict what the passage is mainly about and what information will be mentioned in it. Students can discuss their predictions in groups of four, and each group will send a representative to share their ideas. The teacher will write down several creative predictions on the blackboard without telling right or wrong immediately, leaving students with suspense to explore the text by themselves. Design Intention: Predicting is a vital reading strategy that can help students take the initiative to think and form a preliminary understanding of the text. It can also stimulate students’ reading desire and make them take the initiative to find answers in the text, improving their autonomous learning awareness and reading efficiency. Activity 2: Learn key vocabulary and phrases The teacher will present the core vocabulary and phrases that students need to master in this lesson, combining with context, pictures and simple sentences to help students understand their meanings and usages. The key words include opera, version, string, technique, transform, universe, incredible, dazzling, energetic, emotion, grief, combine etc. The key phrases consist of get across, on the edge of one’s seat, tick all the right boxes etc. For each word and phrase, the teacher will explain its part of speech, meaning, collocation and give a simple example sentence related to the text or students’ daily life. For example, for the word “transform”, the teacher can give the sentence “The small stage was transformed into a big world by amazing techniques.” to help students understand its meaning and usage. For the phrase “get across”, the example sentence can be “The actor exaggerated his movements to get the meaning across to the audience.” After explaining, the teacher will design some quick exercises to consolidate students’ memory. For instance, ask students to match words with correct meanings, fill in the blanks with proper forms of the words or phrases, and make simple sentences with the newly learned words. The teacher will check the answers timely and explain the common mistakes to help students master these key language points, which can remove the obstacles in the process of reading the passage. Design Intention: Mastering key vocabulary before reading is helpful for students to understand the text smoothly. Explaining words in context instead of isolated memorization can help students understand the usage deeply and improve their language application ability. The timely consolidation exercises can strengthen students’ memory and lay a solid language foundation for the following intensive reading and language output activities. Activity 3: Learn about background information The teacher will briefly introduce the background knowledge about Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Peking Opera to help students understand the cross-cultural meaning of the text better. For Hamlet, the teacher will briefly introduce the plot and theme of the tragedy, focusing on the themes of revenge, love and humanity. For Peking Opera, the teacher will introduce its basic elements, such as singing, dancing, exaggerated movements, mime, costumes and masks, and its artistic characteristics. The teacher can also show some simple pictures of Peking Opera masks and costumes to help students have a direct understanding. This part will not take too much time, just providing enough background information for students to understand the text. Design Intention: Adequate background knowledge can help students understand the text from a deeper level, especially the collision and integration of Chinese and Western cultures in the passage. It can also broaden students’ cultural vision and cultivate their cross-cultural awareness, which is in line with the requirement of cultural awareness cultivation in core competencies. Step 3: While-reading Activity 1: Skimming for the main idea The teacher will ask students to read the passage quickly and silently within limited time, and ask them to focus on the topic sentences of each paragraph and the overall structure of the text. During reading, students need to ignore the new words that don’t affect the understanding of the main idea. After reading, the teacher will put forward two questions: 1. What is the main idea of the passage? 2. What is the writer’s attitude towards the Peking Opera version of Hamlet? Students can think independently first and then share their answers with desk mates. Then the teacher will invite several students to answer and summarize the main idea of the passage and the writer’s positive attitude towards Peking Opera. The teacher will also guide students to sort out the structure of the passage: the first paragraph introduces the writer’s familiarity with Hamlet; the second paragraph leads to the Peking Opera version of Hamlet; the third to fifth paragraphs describe the writer’s feelings and experience of watching the opera; the last paragraph summarizes the writer’s praise for this Peking Opera show. Design Intention: Skimming training helps students grasp the main idea and structure of the passage quickly, improving their fast reading ability. It can also help students form a holistic understanding of the text, which is beneficial for them to further analyze the details and deep meaning of the passage. Guiding students to sort out the text structure can cultivate their logical thinking ability. Activity 2: Scanning for detailed information The teacher will ask students to read the passage carefully again and find specific detailed information. The teacher will design several detailed questions and true or false exercises to guide students to locate key information accurately. The questions are as follows: 1. What is the name of the Peking Opera version of Hamlet? 2. What traditional Chinese instrument did the writer hear at first? 3. What helped the audience understand the meaning of the opera? 4. What was the writer’s favorite part of the show? 5. What emotions could the writer feel in the performance? For true or false exercises: 1. The writer knew nothing about Hamlet before watching the Peking Opera. 2. Peking Opera has a history of over two hundred years. 3. The stage of the Peking Opera was very fancy and delicate. 4. The writer thought the performance was amazing and successful. Students need to find the exact sentences in the text to support their answers. After students finish, the teacher will check the answers one by one, ask students to read out the corresponding sentences in the passage, and explain the difficult points in the sentences. This activity can help students grasp the detailed information of the text thoroughly and improve their ability to locate and obtain key information quickly. Design Intention: Scanning is an important reading skill to obtain specific information. Designing detailed questions and true or false tasks can guide students to read carefully and deepen their understanding of the text. Asking students to find supporting sentences can cultivate their rigorous reading habits and improve their ability to analyze and process text information. Activity 3: Analyzing long and difficult sentences The teacher will pick out several long and difficult sentences from the passage and guide students to analyze their structures and understand their meanings step by step. For example, the sentence “Having seen quite a few productions of Hamlet and read the play many times, I was full of confidence—until the Peking Opera came to town!” The teacher will guide students to find that the first part is the present perfect participle as an adverbial of reason, and explain the function and translation method of this structure. Another sentence “Using such techniques, the opera had transformed a small stage into the whole universe.” The teacher will analyze the present participle as an adverbial of manner and the collocation of “transform...into...”. Also, the sentence “Feeling the strong emotions of love, anger, fear and grief in the performance, I could easily recognise the theme of Hamlet.” will be analyzed in the same way. The teacher will guide students to divide the sentence components, find the subject, predicate, object and adverbial, and help students master the analysis methods of such sentences. After analysis, the teacher will ask students to read these sentences aloud repeatedly to feel the language characteristics and enhance their sense of language. The teacher will also design similar sentence imitation exercises to let students practice and master these sentence structures. Design Intention: Long and difficult sentences are the difficult points in text understanding. Guiding students to analyze sentence structures step by step can help them break through the reading obstacles and improve their ability to understand complex sentences. Imitation exercises can help students apply the sentence structures to practical use, enhancing their language output ability. Activity 4: Deep reading for implied meaning The teacher will put forward some deep-level questions to guide students to think about the implied meaning of the passage and cultivate their critical thinking and deep understanding ability. The questions are as follows: 1. Why did the writer feel surprised and amazed when watching the Peking Opera version of Hamlet? 2. What are the unique artistic advantages of Peking Opera compared with Western plays? 3. What can we learn from the collision of Western plays and Chinese traditional opera? 4. What does this passage want to tell us about cross-cultural communication? Students will discuss these questions in groups of four. The teacher will encourage students to express their own views freely and combine the text content to support their opinions. During the discussion, the teacher will participate in the discussion of each group, guide students to think deeply and avoid deviating from the topic. After the group discussion, each group will send a representative to share their views, and the teacher will make comments and summaries, guiding students to realize the charm of cross-cultural communication and the importance of inheriting and spreading traditional Chinese culture. Design Intention: Deep reading aims to guide students to dig out the implied meaning of the text beyond the surface information, cultivating their logical thinking and critical thinking ability. Group discussion can stimulate students’ thinking inspiration, enhance their cooperative communication awareness, and help them understand the theme of cross-cultural integration in the passage, so as to achieve the goal of cultivating cultural awareness. Step 4: Post-reading Activity 1: Language points consolidation The teacher will lead students to review the key vocabulary, phrases and sentence patterns learned in this lesson again. The teacher will design comprehensive exercises to consolidate these language points, such as completing sentences, rewriting sentences and translating short sentences. For example, rewrite the sentence “I saw quite a few productions of Hamlet and read the play many times, so I was full of confidence.” into a sentence with present perfect participle as adverbial. Translate the Chinese sentence “这位演员用夸张的动作把角色的情感传达给了观众。” into English using the phrase “get across”. The teacher will check the answers timely, explain the mistakes and emphasize the key usages to help students master these language points firmly. Design Intention: Timely consolidation and review can help students sort out language knowledge and turn input knowledge into internalized ability. Comprehensive exercises can improve students’ ability to use language flexibly, laying a foundation for subsequent language output and writing tasks. Activity 2: Retell the passage The teacher will provide some key words and phrases as well as the outline of the passage to help students retell the text. The key words include writer, Hamlet, Peking Opera, experience, instruments, movements, stage, emotions, successful etc. The outline is: Writer’s familiarity with Hamlet → Going to watch the Peking Opera version → Details of the performance → Writer’s feelings and evaluation. Students can first retell the passage in pairs, helping each other to correct mistakes. Then the teacher will invite several students to stand up and retell in front of the whole class. The teacher will give positive feedback and encouragement, and point out the areas that need improvement. Design Intention: Retelling the passage can help students sort out the text content and deepen their memory and understanding of the passage. It can also exercise students’ oral expression ability and language organization ability, turning text input into oral output, which is an effective way to improve language application ability. Activity 3: Group discussion and cultural exchange The teacher will put forward some open topics related to the text to let students conduct group discussions. The topics are: 1. Do you like Peking Opera or other traditional Chinese operas? Why? 2. How can we make more young people know and love traditional Chinese operas? 3. Talk about a cross-cultural art form you like, such as a Chinese movie adapted from foreign stories or a foreign show based on Chinese culture. Students will discuss in groups, and each person needs to express their own views. The teacher will encourage students to use the words and sentence patterns learned in this lesson to express themselves fluently and accurately. After the discussion, the teacher will invite group representatives to share their group’s opinions with the whole class. The teacher will affirm students’ creative ideas and guide them to realize the importance of protecting and inheriting traditional Chinese culture, and enhancing cultural confidence while respecting foreign cultures. This activity can not only exercise students’ oral expression ability but also deepen their understanding of cross-cultural communication. Design Intention: Open discussion topics can stimulate students’ creative thinking and let them combine text knowledge with real life. It helps students apply the language knowledge they have learned to practical communication, improving their oral English ability. At the same time, it further cultivates students’ cultural awareness, enhances their cultural confidence and sense of social responsibility, and implements the cultivation of core competencies. Activity 4: Writing small task The teacher will assign a small writing task to let students finish independently, which is a further extension of language output. The writing topic is: My Favorite Traditional Art Form. Students need to write a short passage of about 80-100 words, introducing their favorite traditional Chinese art form, including its features, reasons for liking it and their views on its inheritance. The teacher will remind students to use the vocabulary, phrases and sentence patterns learned in this lesson as much as possible, pay attention to the coherence and logic of the passage. After writing, the teacher will select several excellent works to share with the whole class and give praise and suggestions, and also point out the common mistakes in writing to help students improve their writing ability. Design Intention: Writing is an important part of language output, which can comprehensively reflect students’ language application ability. This small writing task is close to students’ life and the theme of the text, which is convenient for students to write with words they have learned. It can help students consolidate language knowledge, improve writing skills and deepen their understanding of traditional culture. Step 5: Summary and Homework 1. Classroom Summary The teacher will lead students to review the whole class content together. Firstly, review the main content of the passage When Hamlet Meets Peking Opera, including the writer’s experience, the features of Peking Opera and the theme of cross-cultural integration. Secondly, sort out the key vocabulary, phrases and sentence patterns learned in this lesson to help students form a complete knowledge system. Then, summarize the reading strategies learned, such as skimming, scanning and analyzing long sentences. Finally, emphasize the importance of respecting cultural diversity and inheriting traditional Chinese culture, and encourage students to actively spread Chinese culture in cross-cultural communication. Design Intention: Classroom summary helps students sort out and consolidate the knowledge learned in this class, forming a clear knowledge framework. It also helps students deepen their understanding of the lesson’s theme and core competencies, leaving a deep impression on the key points of the class. 2. Homework Assignment The teacher will assign hierarchical homework to meet the learning needs of different students. Firstly, basic homework: Read the passage aloud fluently and recite the key sentences, and copy the key vocabulary and phrases three times and master their meanings and usages firmly. Secondly, improved homework: Finish the writing task carefully and revise it carefully, and try to use more beautiful sentence patterns. Thirdly, extended homework: Search for more information about Peking Opera or other traditional Chinese operas, and make a simple handwritten newspaper to introduce its history and features, or watch a complete Peking Opera show and share your feelings with your classmates next class. Design Intention: Hierarchical homework can take care of students with different learning levels, ensuring that all students can consolidate their knowledge on the basis of their own ability. Basic homework consolidates language foundation, improved homework enhances writing ability, and extended homework broadens students’ vision and cultivates their autonomous learning ability and hands-on ability, linking classroom learning with extracurricular life. 1 / 1 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 学科网（北京）股份有限公司 $