Unit 5
The Tapestry of Friendship
1. Text One
2. Text Two
3. Oral Activity
4. Post-reading Activity
Text One
• 1. Pre-reading Questions
• 2. Background Information
• 3.Language Study
• 4. Analysis of the Structure
Pre-reading Questions
• 1. Do you keep in touch with your
childhood friends?
• 2. What do you need friends for?
• 3. How do you define “friends”?
• 4. What do you expect of friendship?
• 5. What is needed to make friendship grow,
blossom and last?
Proverbs on Friendship
• A friend is a present which you give yourself.
朋友是你送给自己的一份礼物。
——R.L.Stevenson
• A man dies often as he loses a friend. But we gain
new life by new contacts, new friends. -----Bacon
一个人每逢失去一个朋友就等于经历一次死亡。
但是取得新联系，结识新朋友却又使我们获得了
新的生命。 ----培根
• In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we
know our friends.
在顺境中，朋友结识了我们；在逆境中，我们了
解了朋友。——C.Collins
Background Information
• tapestry:[C] something resembling a
richly and complexly designed cloth 织
锦, 挂毯
• 1.About the text:
• This text is taken from Close to Home, which
was published by the Boston Globe Newspaper
Company/Washington Post Writers Group in
1979.
About the author:
• Newspaper columnist Ellen
Goodman has been with The
Boston Globe since 1967. Born
on April 11, 1941, in Newton
MA, Goodman graduated from
Radcliffe College in 1963. She
began her career at Newsweek,
where she worked as a
researcher at a time when very
few women became writers. In
1965, she landed a job as a
reporter for the Detroit Free
Press and two years later, she
returned to Boston, where she
began writing her column for
The Boston Globe.
About the author:
• In 1980, Goodman received the Pulitzer Prize for
Distinguished Commentary. Among other awards she
has won are the American Society of Newspaper
Editors Distinguished Writing Award and the Hubert
H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award. The National
Women's Political Caucus gave her the President's
Award, and the Women's Research and Education
Institute presented her with their American Woman
Award. Goodman spent 1973-1974 at Harvard as a
Nieman Fellow. She has also worked as a radio and
television commentator and taught journalism at
Stanford University as the first Lorry I. Lokey
Visiting Professor in Professional Journalism.
About the author:
• Goodman wrote the book Turning Points, about
the effect of the changing roles of women on
the family, and she is co-author with Patricia
O’Brien of I Know Just What You Mean: The
Power of Friendship in Women’s Lives. In
addition, five collections of her columns have
been published: Close to Home, At Large,
Keeping in Touch, Making Sense, and Value
Judgments.
• She is married to Bob Levey, a fellow
journalist on The Boston Globe.
Bibliography:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Turning Points (1979)
Close to Home (1979)
At Large (1981)
Keeping in Touch (1985)
Making Sense (1989)
Value Judgments (1993)
Paper Trail (2004)
• Co-author, with Patricia O'Brien:
• I Know Just What You Mean : The Power of
Friendship in Women's Lives (2000)
Text Organization:
Parts Paragraphs
1
2
3
4
Main Ideas
1-2 the
Prelude
the author reveals what kind of film the
woman had just seen.
the author advances the double standard
3-6 the
of friendship on the basis of the
Introduction personally observed shift of focus of
cinema lens.
7-18 the
Body
19 the
Conclusion
the distinctions of the two types of
friendship are detailed.
It summarizes the fundamental difference
between the male companionship and the
female friendship.
Language study(paragraph 1&2-1)
• In this part the author reveals what kind of film the woman had
just seen and what attitude she had to it.
• Questions:
• 1) What kind of film did the woman see?
• It was a movie that portrayed all aspects of the friendship
between two women: its fragility, its resiliency and its
connecting function. It was quite an ordinary film, without
thrilling scenes like the long-time car chase or the fierce
gunfight. The end was of no great significance either.
• 2) What did she think of it?
• The movie was gentle and moving to the woman, because, as
the following paragraphs show, with the other two movies it
brought about a new definition of friendship that stood against
traditional view of friendship.
Language study(paragraph 1&2-2)
• 1. It was, in many ways, a slight movie.
– Pp. In many aspects it was a simple, ordinary movie.
• slight: of small importance or consideration; trifling:
– slight matters.微不足道小事
• 2. big-budget chase scene
• budget: the amount of money needed or available for
a particular purpose.
• chase: [U] the act of pursuing someone or something.
– Pp. a car-chase scene that costs a lot of money
• 3. shoot-out: a decisive gun battle.
Language study(paragraph 1&2-3)
• 4. cosmic :
• 1) relating to the universe
– E.g. Some people believe that what happens in their lives is
influenced by cosmic forces.
• 2) very great
– E.g. This earthquake was a disaster of cosmic scale.
• 5. Claudia Weill: is best known for her film
Girlfriends(1978), which chronicles the struggle of a
young girl to become a professional photographer and
maintain a friendship with a female pal. Prior to
making this popular film, Weill spent ten years as a
camerawoman and documentarist.
Girlfriends
• It is a believable relationship
story of a young Jewish
woman who is trying to
make it on her own, coping
with work, romance and
friendship at the same time
and has to accept the
marriage of her best friend
and roommate. It seemed
almost revolutionary in 1978
when it was first released. It
is a small movie that made a
big splash with its focus on
women's’ interior lives.
Language study(paragraph 1&2-4)
• 6. affecting: adj. inspiring strong emotion:
moving.
– E.g. Departure is an affecting scene.
• 7. Slowly, it panned across the tapestry of
friendship ...
– Pp. Step by step it gave an all-sided view of the
complex structure of friendship ...
• pan: vt/i. swing (a video or film camera) to
follow an object to have an all-round view of it
摇动（镜头）拍全景.
Language study(paragraph 1&2-5)
• 8. fragility: [U] (of an object) being easily
broken or damaged.
– E.g. Older drivers are more likely to be seriously
injured because of the fragility of their bones.
• Adj. fragile
– E.g. The thin glass is fragile.
– I'm feeling rather fragile after all that beer last night.
– fragile happiness
Language study(paragraph 1&2-6)
• 9. resiliency/e: [U] the ability to recover readily
– E.g. Do your muscles have the strength and
resilience that they should have?
• Adj. resilient: are able to recover easily and
quickly from unpleasant or damaging events.
– E.g. Rubber is more resilient than wood.
– The Japanese stock market was resilient.
• 10. tissue: network; web
– E.g. Her whole story was a tissue of lies.她的整个
故事是一套谎言。
– The text is a tissue of mocking echoes这本书充满
了一连串讽刺性的模仿
Language study(paragraph 3-6-1)
• This part describes the woman's observation of
the shift of focus of the cinema and advances
the argument for the distinction between the
two types of friendship: that between men and
that between women.
• The following questions may help students to
better understand this part:
• 1) Why does the author list the movies the
woman had seen?
• Because the three movies share the same theme:
the friendship between women.
Language study(paragraph 3-6-2)
• 2. drastically: extremely and radically
• 3. buddy: [C] a close friend
– E.g. He and I were buddies at school.他和我在学校是好朋
友。
• 4. flick:1) [C] a cinema film电影
• 2) a light, quick blow, jerk, or touch
• 5. binge: If you go on a binge, you do too much of
something, such as drinking alcohol, eating, or
spending money.狂饮作乐
• 6. trendiness: being fashionable or up to date.
• Adj. trendy: adj. very fashionable or up to date in style
or influence.
– E.g. Loft apartments have become trendy for yuppies in
Manchester and Liverpool.
Language study(paragraph 3-6-3)
• 7. verite: a genre of film, television, and radio
programmers emphasizing realism and naturalism.
• 始于50年代欧洲的一种电影制作风格。由让·卢什
和社会学家莫兰为首的一批纪录电影工作者组成。
他们主张用采访报道的形式拍摄纪录片，因此在
拍摄过程中会出现一些由拍摄者人为诱导的情节
发展，通常会表达出强烈、甚至激进的思想倾向。
由于当时已出现轻便型无杂音同期录音的摄影机、
微型话筒及高感光度胶片，使得创作人员有可能
在任何条件下都自如地进行拍摄。尽管它流行的
时间并不长，但其拍摄手法所产生的影响却不仅
仅局限于纪录电影之中。
Language study(paragraph 3-6-4)
• 8. across millions of miles of
celluloid
• in large numbers of movies
• celluloid:1) a kind of plastic that cinema film
used to be made of.赛璐珞，明胶一种由硝酸
纤维和樟脑制成的无色、易燃材料，用以制
作照相胶卷
• 2. motion-picture film:
• There are no heroes but in celluloid.
• 9. sidekick: [C] a person’s assistant or close
associate, esp. one who has less authority than
that person.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid虎豹小霸王/
神枪手与智多星
• 轻喜剧风格的西部片。 两位主
人公都是反英雄类的典型，是令
人愉快的个人主义者。特别是保
罗·纽曼，自命不凡，永远乐观，
从没杀过人，整天幻想着全世界
的银行都已时机成熟待他轻取，
实实的一个空想家。他与搭档神
枪手罗伯特·雷福德爱着同一个
女人，他们最擅长的就是在打抢
或逃亡时还一路诙谐打趣，这与
传统西部片里的歹徒绝对两样。
影片温情而饶有趣味，因纽曼和
雷福德的表演而大放光芒。两位
男星英俊迷人无疑是主要吸引力，
但他们确实也得益于编剧威
廉·高曼的机智诙谐和导演的超
一流水准。该片最终获得奥斯卡
最佳剧本、最佳摄影、最佳音响、
最佳音乐项大奖。人们把它推为
首席非主流西部片。
Language study(paragraph 3-6-5)
• 10. atavistic: adj. relating to or characterized by
reversion to something ancient or ancestral.返
祖性的
• [C] atavist: 呈现返祖现象的人/
• [U] atavism:返祖性
• 11. attachment: If you have an attachment to
someone or something, you are fond of them or
loyal to them. ，如爱戴或忠诚；爱慕
– E.g. As a teenager she formed a strong attachment
to one of her teachers...
Language study(paragraph 3-6-6)
• 12. cull: choose from various sources.
– E.g. Here are a few facts and figures I've culled from the
week's papers.
– It's a collection of fascinating stories culled from a lifetime
of experience.
• 13. anthropology:[U] The scientific study of the origin,
the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural
development of human beings.
• 14. bonding: the formation of a close relationship
especially through frequent or constant association.亲
密关系的形成形成亲近的特别的人际关系，如配
偶之间或朋友之间：
Ernest Hemingway
• Ernest Hemingway is
one of the most famous
American writers of the
20th century. He wrote
novels and short stories
about outdoorsmen,
expatriates, soldiers and
other men of action, and
his plainspoken no-frills
writing style became so
famous that it was (and
still is) frequently
parodied.
• His dashing machismo was almost as famous
as his writing: he lived in Paris, Cuba and Key
West, fancied bullfighting and big game
hunting, and served as a war correspondent in
WWII and the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway
sealed his own notoriety when he killed
himself with a shotgun in 1961. His books
include The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell
to Arms (1929) and For Whom the Bell Tolls
(1940). His short novel The Old Man and the
Sea (1952) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and
Hemingway was given the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1954.
Language study(paragraph 3-6-7)
• 15. only men ... inherited a primal capacity for friendship.
– Pp. only men ... were born with the instinctive capacity of
making friends.
• primal: fundamental; essential
– E.g. Money was a primal necessity to them.
– Jealousy is a primal emotion.
• 16. pick on:If someone picks on you, they repeatedly
criticize you unfairly or treat you unkindly. (informal)
– E.g. Crippled Children may be teased and picked on at school.
• If someone picks on a particular person or thing, they
choose them, for example for special attention or
treatment.
– E.g. When you have made up your mind, pick on a day when
you will not be under much stress...
Language study(paragraph 3-6-8)
• 17. duality: is a situation in which two
opposite ideas or feelings exist at the same time.
• 18. mortal: seriously and may causing death.
• 19. What led the woman to think that the
cinema has drastically shifted its focus?
• It was the fact that at present there were many
more movies about Female Friendship than
movies about Male Buddiness. In contrast, in
the past, the friendship between men had
dominated the movies, giving a false
impression that only men were capable of
making friends.
Language study(paragraph 3-6-9)
• 20. What was the shift?
• On the surface, it was a shift from the
friendship between men to that between
women; but in nature the shift highlighted a
different type of friendship: Male Buddiness is
subtly distinct from Female Friendship.
Language study(paragraph 7-18-1)
• This part discusses in detail the distinctions
between the Male Buddiness and the Female
Friendship. Generally speaking, the former is
action-oriented while the latter is emotionoriented That is, the Male Ruddiness is based
on the need for co-operation in the activities
that men are engaged in or in the adverse
situations they are confronted with. In contrast,
the Female Friendship borders on love, the
need for mutual emotional support.
Language study(paragraph 7-18-2)
• Q: What's the fundamental difference between
buddies and friends?
• Buddies are men's companions; they are
connected by common activities. Friends, in
the narrow sense in the text, are women's
companions; they are associated by emotional
attachment. Without shared activities, there
would be no buddies for men; without love
there would be no true friends for women.
Language study(paragraph 7-18-3)
• Q: What are the conditions of men becoming
buddies and of women becoming friends?
• Men can become buddies only when they have
weathered storms in commercial or athletic or
military " wars" together, while women have to
exchange at least three loathsome secrets
before they consider themselves as friends.
Language study(paragraph 7-18-4)
• 1.Sara Coleridge: was an English author and translator.
She was the fourth child and only daughter of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge: a leader of the romantic movement.
With William Wordsworth he published Lyrical
Ballads.
• 2. whilst:while.
• 3. adversity: [U] difficulties; misfortune.
– E.g. Mr. Huang has been a good friend to me in adversity or
in prosperity.不管我处于逆境还是顺境, 黄先生一直是我
的好友。
• Adj. adverse: unfavourable
– E.g. Adverse circumstances compelled him to close his
business.
Language study(paragraph 7-18-5)
• 4. palpably: noticeably
• Adj. palpable: clear to the mind or plain to see.
– E.g. a palpable mistake
• 5. accessory: [C] a thing which can be added to
something else in order to make it more useful
or attractive.
– E.g. She was charged with being an accessory to
the embezzlement of funds.
• 6. “through the wars” together — corporate or
athletic or military ?
• Pp. through the commercial athletic or military
strives together
Language study(paragraph 7-18-6)
• 7. They had to soldier together ...
• Pp. They had to struggle together ...
• 8. count: consider or be considered as
– E.g. I count myself fortunate to have had such a good
education.
– I think we can count this meeting a great success.
– I didn't think his grudging remarks really counted as an
apology.
• 9. loathsome: adj. causing hatred or disgust.
– E.g. a loathsome smell
• loath: unwilling or reluctant;
– E.g. I am loath to go on such short notice.我不愿这么急急
忙忙就走。
Language study(paragraph 7-18-7)
• 10. confidence: [C] often confidences, a secret or
private matter told to someone under a condition or
trust.
– E.g. A friend does not betray confidences.朋友是不会泄露
秘密的
• 11. hang together: to stand united; stick together; To
constitute a coherent totality:
– E.g. These diverse plot lines did not hang together.
• 12. hang on: to cling tightly to something.
• 13.confess:Vt. admit or acknowledge something
reluctantly, typically because one feels slightly
ashamed or embarrassed.
• [U]confession
Language study(paragraph 7-18-8)
• 14. wretched with embarrassment: unhappy
with embarrassment
• wretched: unhappy
– E.g. She had had a wretched life as a child.
• 15. moan: vi. 1) Make a long, low sound
expressing physical or mental suffering.
• 2) To complain, lament, or grieve:
– E.g. stop moaning; you really have nothing to
complain about.
• 16. a chicken call: a cowardly, tentative call.
• 17. made it better: reduced her unhappiness;
made her less unhappy
Language study(paragraph 7-18-9)
• 18. What is the point put forward in Paragraph 14?
• What men want to have is their buddies' proof of their
close relationship by actions; they don't need words
but actions. In contrast, women would accept their
friends through verbal communications; they need
words like "I love you," "Honey," and "Dear" to start
and nourish their friendship.
• 19. What is the point of Paragraph 15?
• Men do things to show their closeness but never
display their emotions by hugging each other.
Language study(paragraph 7-18-10)
• 20.What point does the example in
Paragraph 16 illustrate?
• Even though men are emotionally dependent
on each other, they never confess it.
• 21. Babbitt: A now-rare nickname derived from
the Sinclair Lewis book of the same name; it
can be loosely defined as an uncultured,
“square”, typically middle-aged and middleclass businessman characterized by timidity
and ignorance of their philistinism.市侩
Language study(paragraph 7-18-11)
• 22. grievance: [U] a feeling of resentment over
something believed to be wrong or unfair.
– E.g. to have a grievance against sb.抱怨某人
• grieve: vt. to cause to be sorrowful
– E.g. She is still grieving for her dead husband.
• 23. claustrophobic:adj.(of a person) suffering from
extreme fear of confined places. 引起幽闭恐惧的
• 24. The only relationship that gave meaning to the
claustrophobic life of George Babbitt had been with
Paul Riesling.
– Pp. What made the claustrophobic life of George Babbitt
meaningful had been his relationship with Paul Riesling;
without his relationship with Paul Ries1 Babbitt would have
found his claustrophobic life meaningless.
Language study(paragraph 7-18-12)
• 25. Why was the woman shocked by men's
description of friendship?
• Because men's standard of intimate friendship
is so drastically different from women's that
under such circumstances as described in
Paragraph 17 women would not count each
other as close friends at all.
• 26. chum: [C] a close friend(boys)
Language study(paragraph 7-18-13)
• 27. What is the point of Paragraph 18?
• For once women's version of friendship was
replacing men's as the ideal.
• 28. trenchmate: a soldier who has shared
warfare of battles with other soldiers.
• trench: a long narrow channel in the ground
used by soldiers as a defensive position.
Language study(paragraph 19)
• This part is the Conclusion of the text, which
restates the distinction between the two types
of friendship. The teacher can ask the students
to tell in what ways buddies and friends differ.
Buddies are those you can do things together
with in your lifetime, but friends are those with
whom you can share roses and thorns in your
life.
Text B
My Daughter, My Friend
Patricia Lorenz
Comprehension questions of Text II
•
•
1. Why did the mother and daughter choose
letter-writing as their form of communication?
Because they both found that it was a very
effective way to express their feelings to each
other. Through note writing the daughter told
her mother how she felt and what growing
pains she had experienced as an adolescent
and the mother told her daughter how she felt
as a middle-aged woman. We can say that
frequent exchange of feelings helped to bring
them closer to each other.
Comprehension questions of Text II
•
•
•
•
2. Rewrite Paragraph 6 of this text by changing its
written style into a spoken one.
Mom, your letters make me feel great no matter
what kind of mood I’m in. Sometimes they even
make me cry because they touch me so deeply. I’m
really glad we have the kind of relationship that we
do, even though we have our arguments. I guess
that’s life with a teenager or with a 39-year-old!
I love you. Mom!
What’s more, I think that it is much easier for me
to write my feelings down to you than trying to
speak them out to you.
Comprehension questions of Text II
•
•
•
•
•
•
3. Do you think this kind of thing can happen in
your family?
Here are a couple of hints for you discussion
1) What is the usual way of communication between
members of your family, especially between a parent
and a child?
2) Do you think your family climate is democratic?
3) What will your mother or father do if you keep
writing notes to them rather than tell them what you
want to do in an oral face-to-face interaction?
4) Do you think note writing between family
members living under the same roof can lead to
some undesirable consequence?
Post-reading Activities
Text A:
1.What is the rhetorical features of the text?
(keys) .
2. Translation practice
3. Language practice
4. Comprehension check
5. Writing
Rhetorical features of the text
• To show the differences between buddiness
and friendship effectively, the author of the text
coordinates sentences in various ways.
Sometimes he uses conjunctions such as but,
yet, while. And sometimes he simply puts two
clauses together without using any conjunction
at all.
Translation
Translate the following passage into English,
using the words and phrases given in the
brackets:
1. 你的批评近于粗暴。(border on)
2. 失业人员都应该得到政府的帮助。(count
as)
3. 总的来说，我对这项实验是相当满意的。
(on the whole)
4. 一个人的外表会影响别人对他的看法 。
(make a difference)
Translation
• 5) 广告倾向于把妇女描绘成非常传统的
角色。(portray)
• 6)刚刚继承了一大笔遗产的孪生姐妹急不
可耐地炫耀她们的珠宝首饰。(show off)
• 7)公众关注的中心再次转移到了城市环境
的变化问题。( shift focus)
• 8)相比之下，甚至最新式的飞机也显得笨
拙和缓慢。(in contrast)
Translation
Keys:
1. Your remarks border on rudeness.
2. Any unemployed person counts as
deserving government help.
3. On the whole I am quite satisfied with
the experiment.
4. A person's appearance makes a
difference in how others judge him.
Translation
Keys:
5. Advertising tends to portray women
in very traditional roles.
6. Having inherited a considerable
wealth, the twin sisters were eager
to show off their jewelry.
7. Public interest has once again
shifted focus to the changes in the
urban environment.
8. In contrast, even the most modern aircraft
look clumsy and slow.
Translate the following passage into
Chinese
• 如同在其他许多欧洲国家一样，在法国，朋友
通常是相同性别的，友谊则基本上被认为是男
人之间的关系。法国妇女嘲笑“女人不能成为
朋友”这种说法，但她们有时也承认，对女人
来说，朋友是“另一回事儿”。另外，许多法
国人对男女之间是否可能存在友谊表示怀疑。
在一个团体中还存在着这样一种关系，男女在
一起工作了很长一段时间，他们之间的关系可
能很密切，彼此忠诚，感觉亲切。他们可能
互”copains”—这个词的英文意思是朋友，但
却更接近“老铁”或“哥们”的含义。在法国
人眼里这不是友谊，虽然这种团体中的两个成
员很可能成为朋友。
Language Practice
Fill in the blank in each sentence with a word or
phrase taken from the box in its appropriate form
soldier hang together
pick on
resiliency
show off
make a difference
intimacy
binge
Language Practice
• 1. At the critical moment of presidential
election, the candidate urged his supporters to
_________.
hang together
• 2. When you have made up your mind,
___________
a particular day when you will
pick on
not be under much stress.
• 3. From the age of 52 onwards, General
Jackson was not engaged in ________
at all.
soldiering
• 4. He actually enjoys his newly-bought
Jaguar and has decided to start ________
it off
showing
____.
Language Practice
will make5. It is sad to see him go because it really ______
the way we conduct our daily
a __________to
difference
affairs.
6. After the death of her only son, she went on
binges
occasional drinking ______.
7. Invitation to have dinner together is usually
treated as a means of achieving _________
with
intimacy
another person in eastern culture.
8. In his research, professor Danes found the
resiliency
______human beings to fight after they’ve been
defeated.
Comprehension Check
1. What did the woman think of the movie
Girlfriends?
Key: She thought it was a trivial movie,
particularly with regard to its dull
plot. At the same time she found it
gentle and affecting on the ground
that the movie described in detail the
characteristics of the friendship
between two women.
Comprehension Check
2. Why did the woman say that the movie
camera had shifted its focus?
Key: Because in the past men were exclusive images
for friendship in movies and they were presented
as the only inheritor of a primitive capacity for
friendship. Women, on the other hand, were
portrayed choosing each other as companions just
as they picked berries with little genuine
friendship involved. Nowadays, the female
friendship was becoming a fashionable theme of
movies to take the place of the male friendship.
Comprehension Check
3. What, according to the woman, is the subtle
distinction between the male and the female
friendship?
Key: The male friendship, i. e. the bonding
relationship between buddies, is established on the
need for co-operation in the activities that men are
engaged in or in the adverse situations they are
confronted with. In other words, without the need
to do things together, there would probably be no
buddies at all. In contrast, the female friendship
borders on love, the need for mutual emotional
support. Women friends desire to be together as a
result of spiritual attachment, regardless of whether
they are involved in the same act or not.
Comprehension Check
4. What does it show that men and women
establish their own friendship following
different courses?
Key: Men become buddies only when they have
undergone together competitive, adverse or
dangerous situations like sports games and wars,
but women are not real friends unless they have
exchanged three loathsome secrets. This fact shows
again that the male friendship is activity-oriented
while the female friendship is emotion-rooted.
Comprehension Check
5. What is the example in Paragraph
13 intended to do?
Key: It is intended to illustrate
that female friends exchange their
confidences.
Comprehension Check
6.Why was the woman shocked at men’s description
of friendship?
Key: Because what men described as friendship was
nothing of the kind at all to the woman. As she saw
it, when two women see each other only once a
year, they cannot count as best friends; when two
women do not call each other long distance
without a real reason, they don't count as intimates;
and when two women don't have dinner together
alone without the company of their spouses, they
don't count as chums. But in such situations, men
still describe them as bosom friends.
Oral study
• Discuss with your classmates what you will
do in the following situations.
• 1. Someone in your class has just broken his
or her leg in a traffic accident;
• 2. A friend of yours failed in the National
College Entrance Examination;
• 3. A friend of yours has just fallen out of love;
• 4. A penniless stranger lost his or her way in
your city.
Assignment --- Essay writing
Making friends
You are required to write a 200-word
composition on topic.
In the first part of your composition, say
something general about the necessity of
having friends in one’s life.
In the second part, give your criteria of a good
friend.
In the third part, give a conclusion.
Sample
sample
• Making friends
• Every one needs friends. One relies on his
friends for a lot of help during his lifetime;
friends not only help through his difficulties
and hardships but also share his joys. Without
friends one feels lonely and solitary.
• Knowing how valuable friends are, we should
be very careful in making friends. In order to
make friends one should reach out first instead
of just waiting. When one takes in initiative, he
will find many people who have common goals,
tastes and interest with his. And his circle of
friends grows. If one is always concerned about
other people and helps them rid out a storm,
they will certainly become his good friends.
• One should be polite, prudent, sincere, honest, tolerant
and considerate in making friends. But one should
also keep the principle in his mind that a good friends
is helpful while a bad friends would be harmful. One
should break off with false friends, get to know new
ones and never forget old ones.
As distance test a horse’s strength, so does time reveal
a person’s heart. A friend in need is a friend indeed. A
long-term contact with someone will tell you who is a
loyal friend and who is not. Life is a long way full of
troubles, difficulties, hardships and pain. It is
imperative to make good friends and keep the flowers
of lasting friendship in full blossom.