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课件网) Unit 1 Period 4 Reading 新 课 导 入 What do you know about The Little Prince and its author 课 堂 学 习 1 Read the introduction to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and answer the questions. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) was a French writer and pilot. As a young boy, he was obsessed with aeroplanes, riding in one for the first time at the age of 12. He spent much of his life flying and writing about his adventures. Saint- Exupéry's most successful work, The Little Prince, is one of the best-selling books ever published. The story was probably inspired by his plane crash in the desert in 1935. Saint-Exupéry nearly died, and wandered around for four days before being rescued. In 1944, Saint-Exupéry left on a wartime mission over occupied France, from which he never returned. Although the remains of his plane were discovered in 2000, Saint-Exupéry's body has never been found, and the cause of his death remains unknown. 1 What experience made the author write The Little Prince The story was probably inspired by his plane crash in the desert in 1935. 2 What kind of person do you think Saint-Exupéry was He was a person of adventurous spirit. He was also creative and had big imagination. 2 Look at the three drawings and predict what the story is about. Predicting The Little Prince 1 Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing. 2 In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion.” Now read the passage and check your prediction. 3 I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this: 4 I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. 5 But they answered: “Frighten Why should any one be frightened by a hat ” 6 My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this: 7 The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by t ... ...
