An Integrated English Course
Book 1
Unit 12 She’s Leaving Home
Learning Objectives
By the end of this unit, you are supposed to
• grasp the author’s purpose of writing and make clear the structure of the whole passage through an intensive reading of Text 1
She’s Leaving Home.
• comprehend the topic sentences in Text 1 thoroughly and be able to paraphrase them.
• get a list of new words and structures and use them freely in conversation and writing.
• be aware of the cross-cultural differences in saying good bye.
Teaching Procedures
Pre-reading Questions
Text I. She’s Leaving Home
Passage
Structure analysis
Main idea of the passage
Language points
sentence studies
vocabulary studies
Text II. On Going Home
Pre-reading questions
How did you feel when you left home the first time for university?
What do you think home should be like?
Text I She’s Leaving Home
My daughter Allie is leaving for university in a week. Her room is cluttered with shopping bags filled with blankets, towels, jeans and jumpers.
She won’t talk about going.
I say, “I’m going to miss you,” but she gives me one of her looks and leaves the room.
Another time I say, in a voice so friendly it surprises even me: “Do you think you’ll take your posters and pictures with you, or will you get new ones at university?”
She answers, her voice filled with annoyance, “How should I know?”
My daughter is off with friends most of the time. Yesterday was the last day she’d have for a few months with her friend Katharine, whom she’s known since kindergarten. Soon, it will be her last day with Sarah, Claire, Heather…and then it will be her last day with me.
My friend Karen told me, “The month before I left for university, I screamed at my

mother the whole month. Be prepared.”
I stand in the kitchen, watching Allie make a glass of iced tea. Her face, once so open and trusting, is closed to me. I struggle to think of something to say to her, something meaningful and warm. I want her to know I’m excited about the university she has chosen, that I know the adventure of her life is just starting and that I a proud of her. But the look on her face is so angry that I think she might slug me if I open my mouth.
One night---after a long period of silence between us---I asked what I might heave done or said to make her angry with me. She sighed and said, “Mum, you haven’t done anything. It’s fine.” It is fine---just distant.
Somehow in the past we always found some way to connect. When Alice was a toddler, I would go to the day-care center after work. I’d find a quiet spot and she would nurse---our eyes locked together, reconnecting.
In her early teen, when other mothers were already the estrangement they felt with their adolescent daughters, I hit upon a solution: rescue raids. I would show up occasionally at school, sign her out of class and take her somewhere---out to lunch, to the movies, once for a long walk on the beach. It may sound irresponsible, but it kept us close when other mothers and daughters were floundering. We talked about everything on those outings---outings we kept secret from family and friends.
When she started secondary school, I’d get up with her in the morning to make her a sandwich for lunch, and we’d drink a cup of tea together before the 6:40 bus came.
A couple of times during her final year I went into her room at night, the light off, but before she went to sleep. I’d sit on the edge of her bed, and she’d tell me about problems: a teacher who lowered her grade because she was too shy to talk in class, a boy who teased her, a friend who had started smoking. Her voice, coming out the darkness, was young and questioning.
A few days later I’d hear her on the phone, repeating some of the things I had said, things she had adopted for her own. But now we are having two kinds of partings. I want the romanticized version, where we go to lunch and lean across the table and say how much we will miss each other. I want smiles through tear, bittersweet moments of reminiscence and the chance to offer some last bits of wisdom.
But as she prepares to depart, Allie’s feelings have gone underground. When I reach to touch her arm, she pulls away. She turns down every invitation I extend. She lies on her bed, reading Emily Dickinson until I say I have always loved Emily Dickinson, and then she closes the book.
Some say the tighter your bond with our child, the greater her need to break away, to

establish her own identity in the world. The more it will hurt, they say. A friend of mine who went through a difficult time with her daughter but now has become close to her again, tells me, “Your daughter will be back to you.”
“I don’t know,” I say, I sometimes feel so angry that I want to go over and shake Allie. I want to say, “Talk to me---or you’re grounded!” I feel myself wanting to say that most horrible of all mother phrases: “Think of everything I’ve done for you.”
Late one night, as I ‘m getting ready for bed, she comes to the bathroom door and watches me brush my teeth. For a moment, I think I must be brushing my teeth in a way she doesn’t approve of. But the she says, “I want to read you something.” It’s a pamphlet from her university. “These are tips for parents.”
I watch her face as she reads aloud: “Don’t ask your child if she is homesick,” it says.
“She might feel bad the first few weeks, but don’t let it worry you. This is a natural time of transition. Write her letters and call her a lot. Send a package of goodies.”
Her voice breaks, and she comes over to me and buries her head in my shoulder. I stroke her hair, lightly afraid she’ll bolt if I say a word. We stand there together for long moments, swaying. Reconnecting.
I know it will be hard again. It’s likely there will be a fight about something. But I am grateful to be standing in here at midnight, both of us tired and sad, toothpaste smeared on my chin, holding tight to---while also letting go of---my daughter who is trying to say goodbye.
Structure Analysis
The passage can be divided into four parts.
Part One: (Paragraphs 1-8)
Telling us that the writer’s daughter Allie, who is leaving for university in a week, is busy making preparations for her university life and visiting her friends and relatives, and that she is becoming impatient with her mother. Her abnormal attitude towards her mother is probably due to the fact that she is feeling reluctant to leave home where she has been brought up, and to leave her parents, relatives and friends, who have been kind to her, but she has to leave them in order to attend university, which marks a milestone in her life.
Part Two: (Paragraphs 9-12)
These paragraphs are developed in a chronological order, relating how the writer took good care of her daughter when she was a toddler, how she kept her daughter close to her when she was in her teens and when she was a secondary school student.
Part Three: (Para. 13-16)
These paragraphs narrates the following facts: the writer wants the romanticized parting with her daughter, but her daughter has concealed her feelings as she prepares to depart.

In other words, her daughter has adopted a cold attitude towards her mother’s affectionate actions. The writer has been told by one of her friends that her daughter will become close to her again. The writer is not sure about it. She is so angry with her daughter that she wants to shake her, to awaken her up to every kindness that she has done for her.
Part Four: (Para. 17-20)
These paragraphs form the concluding part of the text, which relates the touching event that Allie is back to her mother, reading to her mother a pamphlet from her university, which conveys tips for parents, and that she has become close to her mother again, who treats her daughter gently, holding tight to her while letting go of her who is trying to say good-bye.
Main Idea of the passage
The text is concerned with the present events, especially with the changes in the mood and actions of the main character---the writer’s daughter, who is leaving home for university. The writer recalls what she did to her daughter, showing clearly how intimate the mother-daughter relationship was, which presents a contrast to the superficially tense relationship between the writer and her daughter before the latter leaves home for university.
The first person narrator seems to be more believable and unquestionable, for she tells about events as his or her personal experiences.
The simple present tense used in the text renders accounts of events more vivid, more direct and more dramatic. It appears that everything described by means of the simple present tense emerges directly before your eyes.
LANGUAGE POINTS
• clutter
– make untidy or confused, esp. by filling with useless or unwanted things
E.g. The room was cluttered up with toys.
His mind was cluttered with useless information.
His study is cluttered up with books.
toddler
A small child who has just learned to walk
E.g. A toddler falls down easily while walking.
Look at that toddler. He is walking unsteadily towards his mother.
• I’d find a quiet spot and she would nurse---our eyes locked together…
-I would find a quiet place, where she would suck milk from my breast---we looked at each other…
• spot
- (1)a usu. Round part or area that is different from the main surface, in color or in some other way
E.g. She is wearing a white dress with blue spots.
She wiped a spot of black paint off the door handle.

- (2) a small round raised diseased mark on the skin
E.g. Do you know you have a spot on your nose?
With measles you get spots all over your skin.
- (3) a particular place
E.g. This is our favorite holiday spot.
He stood rooted to the spot in fear.
On this map X marks the spot where the treasure is buried.
- (4) an area of mind or feelings
E.g. I ‘m afraid that you touched a rather tender spot when you mentioned his former wife.
• show up
– arrive as expected or arranged; (cause to) be easily and clearly seen
E.g. Did everyone you invited show up?
The cracks in the wall show up in the sunlight.
The unexpected riots showed up the deficiencies in police training.
• flounder
– (1) move about helplessly or with great difficulty, esp. in water, mud, snow, etc.
E.g. The little dog was floundering around in the snow, so I picked it up.
The fish was floundering on the riverbank, struggling to breathe.
– (2) struggle or lose control when speaking or doing sth.
E.g. When one of his listeners laughed rudely, he lost the thread of his argument and started floundering.
She floundered for a moment before answering the awkward question.
• questioning
– appearing to have doubts or want information
E.g. She gave him a questioning look.
When he told me the story, I cast a questioning glance at him.
• bittersweet
–
pleasant, but mixed with sadness
E.g. She cherishes bittersweet memories of her childhood.
I shall never forget the bittersweet memories of my childhood.
• reminiscences
a spoken or written account of one’s own life (usu. In the past)
E.g. We had to listen to his reminiscences of the war.
His reminiscences of the war attracted a very large audience.
•
“Talk to me- or you’re grounded!”
– “Talk to me- otherwise, you are not supposed to go out!”

• ground
–
1) strike or cause a boat to strike against the bottom of a sea, a river, etc.
E.g. The ship grounded on a hidden sandbank.
He grounded his ship in two meters of water.
–
base
E.g. Our development plans are grounded on the results of our market research.
Our fears proved to be well grounded.
• goody
– (often pl., infml ) a good thing to eat; sth. Particularly attractive, pleasant or desirable
E.g. She has got us all sorts of delicious goodies for tea.
They have all the goodies---new cars, a big house, holidays abroad---that a higher income brings.
A record collector played some goodies for me on his phonograph.
• I stroke her hair, lightly, afraid she’ll bolt if I say a word.
– I pass my hand over her hair, gently, afraid that shell run away suddenly if I say a word. bolt
– run away suddenly
E.g. The thief bolted at the sight of a policeman.
sway
–
1) (cause to) swing from side to side
E.g. The trees were swaying gently in the wind.
She swayed her body in time with the music.
–
2) (often passive) influence sb., esp. so that he changes his mind
E.g. When you are choosing a career, don’t be swayed just by promises of future high earnings.
He is easily swayed, so you cannot rely on him completely.
TEXT 2: On Going Home
Joan Didion
I am home for my daughter’s first birthday. By “home” I do not mean the house in Los
Angeles where my husband and I and the baby live, but the place where my family is, in the Central Valley of California. It is a vital although troublesome distinction. My husband likes my family but is uneasy in their house, because once there I fall into their ways, which are difficult, oblique, deliberately inarticulate, now my husband’s ways. We live in dusty hour (“D-U-S-T,” he once wrote with his finger on surfaces all over the house, but no one noticed it) filled with mementos quite without value to him (what could the Canton dessert plates mean to him? How could he have know about the assay scales, why should he care if he did know?), and we appear to talk exclusively about people we know who have been committed to mental hospitals, about people we know who have been booked on drunk-driving charges, and about property, particularly about property, land, price per acre and C-2 zoning and assessments and freeway access.

My brother does not understand my husband’s inability to perceive the advantage in the rather common real-estate transaction known as “sale-leaseback,” and my husband in turn does not understand why so many of the people he hears about in my father’s house have recently been committed to mental hospitals or booked on drunk-driving charges.
Nor does he understand that when we talk about saleleasebacks and right-of-way condemnations we are talking in code about the things we like best, the yellow fields and the cottonwoods and the rivers rising and falling and the mountain roads closing when the heavy snow comes in. we miss each other’s points, have another drink and regard the fire.
My brother refers to my husband, in his presence, as “Joan’s husband.” Marriage is the classic betrayal.
Or perhaps it is not any more. Sometimes I think that those of us who are now in our thirties were born into the last generation to carry the burden of “home,” to find in family life the source of all tension and drama. I had by all objective accounts a “normal” and a
“happy” family situation, and yet I was almost thirty years old before I could talk to my family on the telephone without crying after I had hung up. We did not fight. Nothing was wrong. And yet some nameless anxiety colored the emotional charges between me and the place that I came from. The question of whether or not you could go home again was a very real part of the sentimental and largely literary baggage with which we left home in the fifties; I suspect that it is irrelevant to the children born of the fragmentation after World War II. A few weeks ago in a San Francisco bar I saw a pretty young girl on crystal take off her clothes and dance for the cash prize in an “amateur-topless” contest.
There was no particular sense of moment about this, none of the effect of romantic degradation , of “dark journey,” for which my generation strived so assiduously. What sense could that girl possibly make of, say,
Long Day’s Journey into Night
? Who is beside the point?
That I am trapped in this particular irrelevancy is never more apparent to me than when I am home. Paralyzed by the neurotic lassitude engendered by meeting one’s past at every turn, around every corner, inside every cupboard, I go aimlessly form room to room. I decide to meet it head-on and clean out a drawer, and I spread the contents on the bed. A bathing suit I wore the summer I was seventeen. A letter of rejection from The Nation, an aerial photograph of the site for a shopping center my father did not build in 1954. three teacups hand-painted with cabbage roses and signed “E.M”, my grandfather as a young man on skies, surveying around Donner Pass in the year 1910. I smooth out the snapshot and look into his face, and do not see my own. I close the drawer, and have another cup of coffee with my mother. We get along very well, veterans of a guerrilla war we never understood.
Days pass. I see no one. I come to dread my husband’s evening call, not only because he is full of news of what by now seems to me our remote life in Los Angeles, people he has seen, letters which require attention, but because he asks what I have been doing, suggests uneasily that I get out, drive to San Francisco or Berkeley. Instead I drive across the river to a family graveyard. It has been vandalized since my last visit and the monuments are broken, overturned in the dry grass. Because I once saw a rattlesnake in the grass I stay in the car and listen to a country-and-Western station. Later I drive with

my father to a ranch he has in the foothills. The man who runs his cattle on it asks us to the roundup, a week from Sunday, and although I know that I will be in Los Angeles I say, in the oblique way my family talks, that I will come. Once home I mention the broken monuments in the graveyard. My mother shrugs.
I go to visit my great-aunts. A few of them think now that I am my cousin, or their daughter who died young. We recall an anecdote about a relative last seen in 1948, and they ask if I still like living in New York Cit. I have lived in Los Angeles for three years, but I say that I do. The baby is offered a horehound drop, and I am slipped a dollar bill
“to buy a treat.”
Questions trail off, answers are abandoned, the baby plays with the dust motes in a shaft of afternoon sun. it is time for the baby’s birthday party: a white cake, strawberry-marshmallow ice cream, a bottle of champagne saved from another party. In the evening, after she has gone to sleep, I kneel beside the crib and touch her face, where it si pressed against the slats, with mine. She is an open and trusting child, unprepared for and unaccustomed to the ambushes of family life, and perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life I would like to give her more. I would like to promise her that she will grow up with sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother’s teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differently now and
I can promise her nothing like that. I give her a xylophone and a sundress from Madeira, and promise to tell her a funny story.
1182 words
Comprehension questions
1. Why does the author’s husband feel uneasy in their house?
2. What are the commonest topics of conversation at such gatherings?
3. What does the author mean when she says “we are talking in code”?
4. Why did the author cry after she talked to her family on the telephone?
5. Why does the author’s brother refer to her husband as “Joan’s husband”?
6. What is the tone of the author when she describes the girl who took an
“amateur-topless” contest?
7. What is the author referring back to wit the word “irrelevancy” in the third paragraph?
8. What effect does the passage have on you?
Main Idea
On Going Home , one of the best known short stories of Joan Didion, an American essayist and novelist. The text is written with California’s culture and geography as background and the lives of its residents as topics and symbols. Most of the conversation deals with mental illnesses, dunk-driving charges and property. People are talking in a language full of technical terms that only specially trained people can understand. The author’s husband is not accustomed to the way they talk and behave and finds it difficult to adapt himself to the new environment. And thus the author’s brother referred to her husband as “Joan’s husband” which means her husband was excluded because of his

inability to mix well with the family. The author also felt a slight sadness when remembering happy events or her life experiences form the past.