【正文】
t the boy’s misgivings about school. He found it hard to be away from home and mom, and thought school was punishment. The second part () describes how the boy felt about school. He found that life at school was rich and colorful in many ways, although it also required discipline and hard work. In the last part of the text (1720), the boy walked out of the school to find that the outside world had changed beyond measure and that he had grown into an old man.General AnalysisPlot: a little boy’s first time to go to school Setting: on the way to school at school on the way home Protagonists: “I” –the boy in the storyTheme of the storyThe following are a few possible understandings of the message the story conveys. Which one do you agree with? Argue with your group partners. Time and tide wait for no man. Life is a tragedy. There is nothing permanent in life but change. Education can never keep up with changes in society. Life is short and time is precious. Life is a dream. Do not take anything seriously.Time goes by quickly and many things can take place in your lifetime. Before you know it, a new society is born.Symbolism is used in the story to play up the theme: Life is like a day of a child, bitter, rich, colorful and short, which is a process of growing up, exploring and acquiring.3 Vocabulary1 alongside prep. Beside, next to 在……旁邊,沿著……;和……相比 Beside/Alongside his, my trouble is nothing. 和他的相比,我的苦惱算不了什么。The vast plains of this country spread for hundreds of miles.The group of actors was brought from New York to London at vast expense.Synonyms: huge, immense, enormous, gigantic, massive, giant, colossal, mammoth, tremendous, titanic5 hesitate v. to be slow to act because one feels uncertain or unwilling He who hesitates is lost. 當(dāng)斷不斷,必受其患。He’s still hesitating about joining the expedition.6 cling to: 1) to hold tightly。 arrangeHe was sorting his foreign stamps into piles.They sorted the apples according to size into large ones and small ones.cf. sort out She spent a happy afternoon sorting out her coins and She tried to sort out her ,解決sort: n. a kind or a typeHe is the sort of person I really dislikeof sorts/of a sort 馬馬虎虎的,較差的He is a poet of sorts, and nobody likes his poems. 蹩腳的詩人out of sorts:slightly ,心