Unit 2 Sports Culture-Welcome to the unit 教案-2025-2026学年高中英语译林版选择性必修第二册

It focuses on improving students’ language ability in sports-related expression, cultivating cultural awareness of diverse sports cultures, developing critical thinking, and guiding students to master effective cooperative learning strategies.

Key: Mastering sports-related core vocabulary and expressions; understanding the connotation of sports culture.

Difficulty: Using English to discuss sports culture and express personal views fluently.

1. Lead-in: Spark Interest and Introduce the Theme

The teacher starts the class by showing a short video clip that includes a variety of sports events, such as football, basketball, table tennis, taekwondo, and sumo. The video is vivid and dynamic, with background music that is passionate and inspiring. After playing the video, the teacher asks students two simple and easy-to-answer questions in English: “What sports did you see in the video?” and “Which sport do you like best and why?”

The teacher invites 3-4 students to share their answers freely. During the sharing process, the teacher gives positive feedback in a timely manner, such as “Your answer is very interesting!” “I agree with your opinion.” and properly guides students to use simple English expressions related to sports, such as “I like playing basketball because it is exciting.” “Table tennis is my favorite sport because it is easy to learn.”

After the student sharing, the teacher summarizes naturally: “Today, we will enter a wonderful world of sports culture. We will learn about different sports, understand the cultural connotations behind them, and learn to express our views on sports culture in English. Let’s start our today’s lesson — Welcome to the unit of Sports Culture.”

Design Intention: The video clip can quickly attract students’ attention and arouse their interest in sports, which lays a good emotional foundation for the smooth development of the follow-up teaching. The simple and direct questions are designed to reduce students’ speaking pressure, encourage them to participate in classroom interaction actively, and at the same time, imperceptibly lead students into the theme of sports culture, realizing a natural transition from daily life to classroom learning.

2. Vocabulary Preview: Lay a Foundation for Communication

First, the teacher presents 10 core sports-related vocabulary words on the blackboard or multimedia courseware, including sport, athlete, competition, stadium, champion, team, spirit, fair, cooperate, and strength. For each word, the teacher pronounces it clearly and standardly twice, and asks students to follow along to ensure that students master the correct pronunciation. Then, the teacher explains the meaning of each word in simple English, combines it with the sports scenes in the lead-in video, and gives simple example sentences to help students understand and remember.

For example, when explaining “athlete”, the teacher says: “An athlete is a person who plays sports professionally, like the basketball players we saw in the video.” When explaining “fair”, the teacher says: “Fair means everyone has the same chance, no cheating in the competition.” After explaining all the words, the teacher organizes a quick memory game: the teacher shows the Chinese meaning of the word, and students stand up quickly to say the corresponding English word; or the teacher says the English word, and students say the Chinese meaning. The game is conducted in groups, and the group with the most correct answers is praised appropriately.

After the game, the teacher asks students to work in pairs to make simple dialogues using the newly learned vocabulary. The teacher gives a sample dialogue: “A: What sport do you like best? B: I like football best. A: Who is your favorite athlete?

B: My favorite athlete is Messi. He is a great football player.” Then, students are allowed to create their own dialogues freely, and the teacher walks around the classroom to guide and help students who have difficulties in expression.

Design Intention: Vocabulary is the foundation of English communication. Previewing core vocabulary before formal teaching can help students eliminate language barriers in the follow-up listening, speaking and discussion activities. The combination of pronunciation, explanation and example sentences helps students understand the meaning and usage of words in context. The quick memory game increases the fun of vocabulary learning, mobilizes students’ learning enthusiasm, and the pair dialogue activity enables students to apply the newly learned vocabulary in practice, laying a solid foundation for the follow-up teaching links.

3. Text Exploration: Understand Sports Culture and Improve Language Ability

This link is divided into three parts: listening comprehension, reading and discussion, which are carried out step by step to help students deeply understand the connotation of sports culture and improve their comprehensive language ability.

3.1 Listening Comprehension: Perceive Sports Culture through Listening

The teacher plays a short listening material twice. The content of the listening material is simple and closely related to the theme of sports culture, mainly introducing the characteristics of three sports: football in Brazil, table tennis in China and sumo in Japan. The listening material includes simple introductions to the popularity of sports in the corresponding countries and the cultural connotations behind them, such as “Football is the most popular sport in Brazil. It is not only a sport, but also a part of Brazilian culture. Brazilians love football deeply.”

Before playing the listening material, the teacher puts forward two guiding questions to help students grasp the key points of listening: “1. Which three sports are mentioned in the listening material? 2. What is the relationship between each sport and the culture of its country?” Then, the teacher plays the listening material for the first time, and asks students to listen carefully and grasp the general idea. After playing it for the second time, students are asked to answer the guiding questions, and the teacher checks and corrects the answers. For students who fail to answer correctly, the teacher plays the corresponding part of the listening material again to help them understand.

After answering the questions, the teacher invites students to retell the main content of the listening material in their own words, and guides students to use the vocabulary and expressions learned earlier, such as “The listening material introduces three sports: football, table tennis and sumo. Football is very popular in Brazil and is a part of Brazilian culture.”

Design Intention: Listening is an important way to perceive language and obtain information. The design of the listening material is closely related to the theme of sports culture, which can help students initially understand the diversity of sports culture while improving their listening ability. The guiding questions can help students focus on listening, improve listening efficiency, and the retelling activity can test students’ understanding of the listening material and exercise their oral expression ability.

3.2 Reading and Discussion: Deepen the Understanding of Sports Culture

The teacher distributes a short reading passage to each student. The reading passage is about the Olympic Games, focusing on the Olympic spirit of “higher, faster, stronger — together” and the role of the Olympic Games in promoting the exchange and integration of sports cultures among different countries. The difficulty of the reading passage is suitable for senior high school students, and it contains the core vocabulary and expressions learned earlier, which is conducive to students’ reading and understanding.

First, students are asked to read the passage silently by themselves, and mark the new words and sentences they don’t understand. During the silent reading process, the teacher walks around the classroom to answer students’ questions in a timely manner. After silent reading, the teacher leads students to read the passage aloud together, pays attention to correcting students’ pronunciation and intonation, and helps students understand the long and difficult sentences in the passage. For example, for the sentence “The Olympic Games not only promotes the development of sports, but also promotes the