文档介绍：Unit 8
Fourteen Steps
purposes
1. To get students know life’s value.
2. To understand the purpose of writing.
3. To reinforce some basic linguistic knowledge by doing various types of exercises.
Structural analysis of the text
Main idea of each part:
Part I (1-2)—About the author’s first life which could be further divided into two phases.
Part II (3-5)—The author depicts his life afflicted by the disease, especially the difficulty in climbing the 14 steps.
Part III (6-8)—The author tells us about his shameful experience from which his third life began.
Part IV (9-10)—The author’s reflection on the
incident and his life philosophy, from which he discovered the true value of life.
About the Text
What does the author mean by “ And I managed to keep my health and optimism, to a degree, because of 14 steps”?
In a way, the daily exercise of climbing helped to keep his physical capability (health), which in turn made him optimistic that he could continue living.
Why does the author call these steps “14 miserable steps”?
Because the fact that everything in his life (his home, his job, his wife and his sanity) seemed to totally depend on these 14 steps made him miserable.
How did the author re-evaluate the 14 steps after the auto-repair incident?
The author came to be aware that some people who had the same or more serious adversity were always ready to offer help. For him the 14 steps were not the whole thing in his life. There are other people he should give help to when he was struggling against the adversity (to climb the 14 steps).
some difficult sentences, words or phrases
Here hobbled a bitterly disillusioned cripple, a man who held on to his sanity and his wife and his home and his job because of 14 miserable steps…
Here walked a sad man with little hope for his future, and everything he owned at that time (his home, his job, his wife and his normal life) depended on his painful effort to climb these 14 steps.
In the next few frozen seconds the shame an