高中英语北师大版 (2019)选择性必修 第二册Lesson 1 Enlightening a Mind获奖ppt课件

Unit 5 Education

Enlightening a mind

Unit 5 Lesson 1 P30-31.mp3

Helen Keller was an exceptionally special girl. By the time she was seven years old, she still couldn’t speak, read or write and needed to have everything done for her. This was because she couldn’t see or hear. With these severe restrictions to her communication, Helen’s behaviour was often unbearable. She was sometimes troublesome, stubborn and angry, and had a tendency to break things when no one understood her.

Helen’s parents got a superb teacher recommended to them, a woman named Anne Sullivan. Anne was a teacher and former student at a school for the blind in Boston. She’d had eyesight problems early in life as well so she could relate to Helen’s difficulties.

Anne’s technique to teach Helen language was simple and straightforward. Anne spelt words by writing on Helen's hand so that Helen could get a mental picture of the words. She started with the word “doll”. She would let Helen play with the doll, and then spell the letters “D-O-L-L” on her hand. When they initially did this, Helen thought it was a game. She wrote about her excitement later in her book, The Story of My Life:

“Running downstairs to my mother, I held up my hand and made the letters for “doll”! I did not know that was spelling a word or even that words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like imitation.”

When they were at the well one day, Anne put one of Helen’s hands under the stream of water. As the water flowed over Helen’s hand, Anne spelt out “W-A-T-E-R” into Helen’s other hand. As Anne wrote on Helen’s hand, Helen suddenly realised that the movement of the fingers meant the cool liquid flowing over her hand. This precious knowledge gave her hope and joy. Finally, she got the world of words opened up to her.

Now that Helen grasped the key to language, she was very eager to learn more and use it as much as she could. Children who can see and hear learn language easily, but for Helen, it was a gradual and sometimes painful process. However, because Helen was so enthusiastic about learning, the results were amazing.

As Helen’s knowledge and vocabulary expanded, she asked more and more questions. This soon led her to discover more complex words and changed her thinking process. Trying to learn the word “love” was an experience that she remembered well. This is how she described it in her book:

“I remember the morning that I first asked the meaning of the word ‘love’. This was before I knew many words. I had found a few early violets in the garden and brought them to my teacher. Miss Sullivan put her arm gently round me and wrote on my hand, ‘I love Helen.’ ‘What is love?’ I asked. She drew me closer to her and said, ‘It is here,’ pointing to my heart... Her words puzzled me very much because I did not then understand anything unless I touched it.”

Although the meaning of love was still not apparent to Helen, she kept on trying to understand it. “I smelt the violets in her hand and asked, half in words, half in signs, a question which meant, ‘Is love the sweetness of flowers?’ ‘No,’ said my teacher.”

When Helen and Anne were outside one day, Helen felt the warmth of the sun’s rays. She pointed up and asked if that was love. When her teacher said that it wasn’t, she was confused and disappointed. “I thought it strange that my teacher could not show me love.”

The word “think” was also a difficult one for Helen because it is such an abstract concept. However, one day as she was working on a simple task, she had a breakthrough. She was making necklaces with the help of Anne when she noticed that she had made some mistakes, Because she was uncertain how to fix them, she stopped to think carefully. As she did this, Anne touched Helen’s forehead and wrote the word “think” on her hand. “In a flash I knew that the word was the name of the process that was going on in my head.”

It was the first time Helen had understood such a complex word - a word for something she couldn’t touch. At that moment, her mind returned to the word “love”. As she thought about its meaning again, the sun came out. She pointed to the sun and asked her teacher again if that was love. Anne answered Helen by explaining that love was like the sun and clouds in a way.

“You cannot touch the clouds, you know; but you feel the rain... You cannot touch love either; but you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything. Without love you would not be happy or want to play.”

In that vivid moment, Helen finally understood the beautiful truth of the word “love”.