Unit 7

When Lightning Struck

Warm-up questions Have you ever gone travelling by air?

How did you feel the first time on a plane?

1. What happened to the plane in the video?

The plane has been hijacked.2. Can you retell what people were doing in the video? Some were calling back home at the very last moment of their lives. Some were praying to God.

Imagine that your plan has been struck by lightning. What will you do?

Role-play

Text Analysis1. What happened to the plane? And what did it have to do? The plane was hit by lightning. As a result, it was jolting and swerving. It had to make an emergency landing in New Orleans. 2. What is the writer’s purpose of presenting her extraordinary and unforgettable travel experience on an airplane? To eulogize her fellow passengers, praise their fine deeds and inspire others to copy them.

Text Analysis3. What about the tone of the text? The tone is objective and emotional, with concrete or detailed accounts of the actual situations and touching scenes.

Structural AnalysisHow is the plot developed or organized? The plot is developed or organized by means of the natural time sequence of the happenings (chronological order).

Structural AnalysisParagraphs Main idea The author tells us about the setting and the unexpected happening, and introduces some main characters including the writer. This part narrates and delineates the feelings, thoughts, and actions of the writer and other passengers on the plane when they were faced with the dangerous situation.

1-4

5-9

Structural AnalysisParagraphs Main idea

10-12 13-14

This part tells the readers what the passengers saw and did after they landed safely.These two paragraphs constitute the last part of this story.

Detailed ReadingPart I( Para.1-4): 1.What must have happened to the author ’ s plane when she was in the bathroom? The plane must have been hit by the lightning. 2.What do you know about the girl who was seating beside the author? She is from a small town in east Texas, and this was only her second time on an airplane. She had won a trip to England by competing in a high school geography bee and was supposed to make a connecting flight when the plane landed in Newark.

Detailed ReadingPart I( Para.1-4): 3.Why did the young businessman look worried? Because he knew that there was sth wrong with the plane, which was showing signs of a terrible tragedy. 4.What did the pilot decide to do? The pilot decided to make an emergency landing in New Orleans. 5. Why did many passengers never pay attention to the emergency procedures instruction before take-off? Because they thought they would have already died of terror if they ever got to the point where they needed to use life jacket.

Detailed ReadingStrike (v./n.) : struck struck

v.: 1.Subject (sb/sth) to an impact; hit (sb/sth) 使(某人/某物) 遭受撞击; 打, 击, 敲(某人/某物) e.g.: He struck the table a hea

vy blow with his fist. 2. If something such as an illness or disaster strikes, it suddenly happens. (过去分词也可用stricken) e.g.: A powerful earthquake struck the Italian island of Sicily early this morning.Collocation: strike a balance (between A and B) find a sensible middle point between two demands, extremes, etc; compromise 找到折衷办法 e.g.: It was difficult to strike the right balance between justice and expediency. 在公正与私利之间很难两全.

Detailed Readingn.: When there is a strike, workers stop doing their work for a period of time, usually in order to try to get better pay or conditions for themselves. e.g.: Staff at the hospital went on strike. Derivation: stricken (adj.): ~ (by/with sth) Affected or overcome (by sth unpleasant) 经受、遭受 e.g.: stricken by poverty=poverty-stricken 贫困不堪的 grief/panic/terror/earthquake-stricken