[其他] 见证学习的过程，说说我们进行的教材学习片段（GLENCOE COURSE 1）

说得对，心动不如行动，行动不如同做。

本帖最后由 charlenedavid 于 2012-7-13 23:36 编辑

P297 TA-NA-E-KA by Mary Whitebird

As my birthday drew closer, I had awful nightmares about it. I was reaching the age at which all Kaw Indians had to participate in Ta-Na-E-Ka.
Well, not all Kaws. Many of the younger families on the reservation were beginning to give up the old customs. But my grandfather, Amos Deer Leg, was devoted to tradition. He still wore handmade beaded moccasins instead of shoes and kept his iron-gray hair in tight braids. He could speak English, but he spoke it only with white men. With his family he used a Sioux dialect.1
1. The Sioux dialect is a language spoken by some Native Americans of the Great Plains.

Grandfather was one of the last living Indians (he died in 1953, when he was eighty-one) who actually fought against the U.S. Cavalry. Not only did he fi ght, he was wounded in a skirmish at Rose Creek—a famous encounter in which the
celebrated Kaw chief Flat Nose lost his life. At the time, my grandfather was only eleven years old.
Eleven was a magic word among the Kaws. It was the time of Ta-Na-E-Ka, the “fl owering of adulthood.” It was the age, my grandfather informed us hundreds of times, “when a boy could prove himself to be a warrior and a girl took the fi rst steps to womanhood.”
“I don’t want to be a warrior,” my cousin Roger Deer Leg, confi ded to me. “I’m going to become an accountant.”
“None of the other tribes make girls go through the endurance ritual,” I complained to my mother.
“It won’t be as bad as you think, Mary,” my mother said, ignoring my protests.
“Once you’ve gone through it, you’ll certainly never forget it. You’ll be proud.”
I even complained to my teacher, Mrs. Richardson, feeling that, as a white woman, she would side with me.
She didn’t. “All of us have rituals of one kind or another,” Mrs. Richardson said. “And look at it this way: How many girls have the opportunity to compete on equal terms with boys? Don’t look down on your heritage.”
Heritage, indeed! I had no intention of living on a reservation for the rest of my life. I was a good student. I loved school. My fantasies were about knights in armor and fair ladies in fl owing gowns, being saved from dragons. It never once occurred to me that being an Indian was exciting.
But I’ve always thought that the Kaw were the originators of the women’s
liberation movement. No other Indian tribe—and I’ve spent half a lifetime researching the subject—treated women more “equally” than the Kaw. Unlike most of the sub-tribes of the Sioux Nation, the Kaw allowed men and women to eat together. And hundreds of years before we were “acculturated,”2 a Kaw woman had the right to refuse a prospective husband even if her father arranged the match culture, in this case the culture of the European Americans.
2. A group that is acculturated is forced to adopt another people’s

The wisest women (generally wisdom was equated with age) often sat in tribal councils. Furthermore, most Kaw legends revolve around “Good Woman,” a kind of supersquaw, a Joan of Arc3 of the high plains. Good Woman led Kaw warriors into battle after battle, from which they always seemed to emerge victorious.
3. Joan of Arc was a French heroine in the early 1400s.

And girls as well as boys were required to undergo Ta-Na-E-Ka. The actual
ceremony varied from tribe to tribe, but since the Indians’ life on the plains was
dedicated to survival, Ta-Na-E-Ka was a test of survival.
“Endurance is the loftiest virtue4 of the Indian,” my grandfather explained. “To
survive, we must endure. When I was a boy, Ta-Na-E-Ka was more than the mere
symbol it is now. We were painted white with the juice of a sacred herb and sent
naked into the wilderness without so much as a knife. We couldn’t return until the
white had worn off. It wouldn’t wash off. It took almost 18 days, and during that time we had to stay alive, trapping food, eating insects and roots and berries, and watching out for enemies. And we did have enemies—both the white soldiers and the
Omaha warriors, who were always trying to capture Kaw boys and girls undergoing their endurance test. It was an exciting time.”
4. The loftiest virtue is the most noble quality.

“What happened if you couldn’t make it?” Roger asked. He was born only three
days after I was, and we were being trained for Ta-Na-E-Ka together. I was happy to know he was frightened, too.
“Many didn’t return,” Grandfather said. “Only the strongest and shrewdest. Mothers were not allowed to weep over those who didn’t return. If a Kaw couldn’t survive, he or she wasn’t worth weeping over. It was our way.”
“What a lot of hooey,” Roger whispered. “I’d give anything to get out of it.”
“I don’t see how we have any choice,” I replied.
Roger gave my arm a little squeeze. “Well, it’s only five days.”
Five days! Maybe it was better than being painted white and sent out naked for
eighteen days. But not much better.
We were to be sent, barefoot and in bathing suits, into the woods. Even our very traditional parents put their foot down when Grandfather suggested we go naked. For five days we’d have to live off the land, keeping warm as best we could, getting food where we could. It was May, but on the northernmost reaches of the Missouri River the days were still chilly and the nights were fi ercely cold.
Grandfather was in charge of the month’s training for Ta-Na-E-Ka. One day he caught a grasshopper and demonstrated how to pull its legs and wings off in one fl ick of the fingers and how to swallow it.
I felt sick, and Roger turned green. “It’s a darn good thing it’s 1947,” I told Roger teasingly. “You’d make a terrible warrior.” Roger just grimaced.
I knew one thing. This particular Kaw Indian girl wasn’t going to swallow a grasshopper no matter how hungry she got. And then I had an idea. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? It would have saved nights of bad dreams about squooshy grasshoppers.
I headed straight for my teacher’s house. “Mrs. Richardson,” I said, “would you lend
me five dollars?”
“Five dollars!” she exclaimed. “What for?”
“You remember the ceremony I talked about?”
“Ta-Na-E-Ka. Of course. Your parents have written me and asked me to excuse you from school so you can participate in it.”
“Well, I need some things for the ceremony,” I replied, in a half-truth. “I don’t want to ask my parents for the money.”
“It’s not a crime to borrow money, Mary. But how can you pay it back?”
“I’ll baby-sit for you ten times.”
“That’s more than fair,” she said, going to her purse and handing me a crisp, new five-dollar bill. I’d never had that much money at once.
“I’m happy to know the money’s going to be put to a good use,” Mrs. Richardson said.

A few days later the ritual began with a long speech from my grandfather about how we had reached the age of decision, how we now had to fend for ourselves and prove that we could survive the most horrendous of ordeals.5 All the friends and relatives who had gathered at our house for dinner made jokes about their own Ta-Na-E-Ka experiences. They all advised us to fill up now, since for the next fi ve days we’d be gorging6 ourselves on crickets. Neither Roger nor I was very hungry. I’ll probably laugh about this when I’m an accountant,” Roger said, trembling.
5. An ordeal is a diffi cult or painful experience.
6. If you are gorging yourself, you are stuffi ng yourself with food.

“Are you trembling?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
“I’m happy to know boys tremble, too,” I said.
At six the next morning, we kissed our parents and went off to the woods. “Which side do you want?” Roger asked. According to the rules, Roger and I would stake out “territories” in separate areas of the woods, and we weren’t to communicate during the entire ordeal. “I’ll go toward the river, if it’s okay with you,” I said.
“Sure,” Roger answered. “What difference does it make?”
To me, it made a lot of difference. There was a marina a few miles up the river, and there were boats moored there. At least, I hoped so. I fi gured that a boat was a better place to sleep than under a pile of leaves.
“Why do you keep holding your head?” Roger asked.
“Oh, nothing. Just nervous,” I told him. Actually, I was afraid I’d lose the five-dollar bill, which I had tucked into my hair with a bobby pin.
As we came to a fork in the trail, Roger shook my hand. “Good luck, Mary.”
“N’ko-n’ta,” I said. It was the Kaw word for “courage.”
The sun was shining and it was warm, but my bare feet began to hurt immediately. I spied one of the berry bushes Grandfather had told us about. “You’re lucky,” he had said. “The berries are ripe in the spring, and they are delicious and nourishing.” They were orange and fat, and I popped one into my mouth. Argh! I spat it out. It was awful and bitter, and even grasshoppers were probably better tasting, although I never intended to find out.

I sat down to rest my feet. A rabbit hopped out from under the berry bush. He nuzzled the berry I’d spat out and ate it. He picked another one and ate that, too. He liked them. He looked at me, twitching his nose. I watched a red-headed woodpecker bore into an elm tree, and I caught a glimpse of a civet cat7 waddling through some twigs. All of a sudden I realized I was no longer frightened. Ta-Na-E-Ka might be more fun than I’d anticipated. I got up and headed toward the marina.
7. A civet cat is a spotted skunk.

“Not one boat,” I said to myself dejectedly.8 But the restaurant on the shore,
“Ernie’s Riverside,” was open. I walked in, feeling silly in my bathing suit. The man at the counter was big and tough-looking. He wore a sweatshirt with the words “Fort Sheridan, 1944,” and he had only three fingers on one of his hands. He asked me what I wanted.
8. To react dejectedly is to respond in a depressed manner.

“A hamburger and a milkshake,” I said, holding the five-dollar bill in my hand so he’d know I had money.
“That’s a pretty heavy breakfast, honey,” he murmured.
“That’s what I always have for breakfast,” I lied.
“Forty-five cents,” he said, bringing me the food. (Back in 1947, hamburgers were twenty-fi ve cents and milkshakes were twenty cents.) “Delicious,” I thought. “Better’n grasshoppers—and Grandfather never once mentioned that I couldn’t eat hamburgers.”
While I was eating, I had a grand idea. Why not sleep in the restaurant? I went to the ladies room and made sure the window was unlocked. Then I went back outside and played along the riverbank, watching the water birds and trying to identify each one. I planned to look for a beaver dam the next day.
A diner (DY nuhr) is a small restaurant built to look like the dining car of a train.
The restaurant closed at sunset, and I watched the three-fi ngered man drive away.
Then I climbed in the unlocked window. There was a night light on, so I didn’t turn on any lights. But there was a radio on the counter. I turned it on to a music program.
It was warm in the restaurant, and I was hungry. I helped myself to a glass of milk and a piece of pie, intending to keep a list of what I’d eaten so I could leave money. I also planned to get up early, sneak out through the window, and head for the woods before the three-fi ngered man returned. I turned off the radio, wrapped myself in the man’s apron, and in spite of the hardness of the fl oor, fell asleep.
“What the heck are you doing here, kid?”
It was the man’s voice.
It was morning. I’d overslept. I was scared.
“Hold it, kid. I just wanna know what you’re doing here. You lost? You must be from the reservation. Your folks must be worried sick about you. Do they have a phone?”
“Yes, yes,” I answered. “But don’t call them.”
I was shivering. The man, who told me his name was Ernie, made me a cup of hot chocolate while I explained about Ta-Na-E-Ka.
“Darnedest thing I ever heard,” he said, when I was through. “Lived next to the reservation all my life and this is the first I’ve heard of Ta-Na whatever-you-call-it.”
He looked at me, all goose bumps in my bathing suit. “Pretty silly thing to do to a kid,” he muttered.
That was just what I’d been thinking for months, but when Ernie said it, I became angry. “No, it isn’t silly. It’s a custom of the Kaw. We’ve been doing this for hundreds of years. My mother and my grandfather and everybody in my family went through this ceremony. It’s why the Kaw are great warriors.”
Analyzing the Photo Do you think this is the way Mary’s grandfather pictured her surviving Ta-Na-E-Ka? Explain.
“Okay, great warrior,” Ernie chuckled, “suit yourself. And, if you want to stick around, it’s okay with me.” Ernie went to the broom closet and tossed me a bundle. “That’s the lost-and-found closet,” he said. “Stuff people left on boats. Maybe there’s something to keep you warm.”
The sweater fitted loosely, but it felt good. I felt good. And I’d found a new friend. Most important, I was surviving Ta-Na-E-Ka.
My grandfather had said the experience would be filled with adventure, and I was having my fill. And Grandfather had never said we couldn’t accept hospitality.9
9. Hospitality is the kindness that people extend to their guests.

I stayed at Ernie’s Riverside for the entire period. In the mornings I went into the woods and watched the animals and picked flowers for each of the tables in Ernie’s. I had never felt better. I was up early enough to watch the sun rise on the Missouri, and I went to bed after it set. I ate everything I wanted—insisting that Ernie take all my money for the food. “I’ll keep this in trust for you, Mary,” Ernie promised, “in case you are ever desperate for five dollars.” (He did, too, but that’s another story.)

I was sorry when the fi ve days were over. I’d enjoyed every minute with Ernie. He taught me how to make Western omelets and to make Chili Ernie Style (still one of my favorite dishes). And I told Ernie all about the legends of the Kaw. I hadn’t realized I knew so much about my people.
But Ta-Na-E-Ka was over, and as I approached my house, at about nine-thirty in the evening, I became nervous all over again. What if Grandfather asked me about the berries and the grasshoppers? And my feet were hardly cut. I hadn’t lost a pound and my hair was combed.
“They’ll be so happy to see me,” I told myself hopefully, “that they won’t ask too many questions.”
I opened the door. My grandfather was in the front room. He was wearing the
ceremonial beaded deerskin shirt which had belonged to his grandfather.
“N’g’da’ma,” he said. “Welcome back.”
I embraced my parents warmly, letting go only when I saw my cousin Roger sprawled on the couch. His eyes were red and swollen. He’d lost weight. His feet were an unsightly mass of blood and blisters, and he was moaning: “I made it, see. I made it. I’m a warrior. A warrior.”
Analyzing the Photo Does this grasshopper look delicious to you?
My grandfather looked at me strangely. I was clean, obviously well-fed, and radiantly healthy. My parents got the message. My uncle and aunt gazed at me with hostility.
Finally my grandfather asked, “What did you eat to keep you so well?”
I sucked in my breath and blurted out the truth: “Hamburgers and milkshakes.”
“Hamburgers!” my grandfather growled.
“Milkshakes!” Roger moaned.
“You didn’t say we had to eat grasshoppers,” I said sheepishly.
“Tell us all about your Ta-Na-E-Ka,” my grandfather commanded.
I told them everything, from borrowing the five dollars, to Ernie’s kindness, to observing the beaver.
“That’s not what I trained you for,” my grandfather said sadly.

I stood up. “Grandfather, I learned that Ta-Na-E-Ka is important. I didn’t think so during training. I was scared stiff of it. I handled it my way. And I learned I had nothing to be afraid of. There’s no reason in 1947 to eat grasshoppers when you can eat a hamburger.”
I was inwardly shocked at my own audacity.10 But I liked it. “Grandfather, I’ll bet you never ate one of those rotten berries yourself.”
10. Audacity is the act of being bold.

Grandfather laughed! He laughed aloud! My mother and father and aunt and uncle were all dumbfounded. Grandfather never laughed. Never.
“Those berries—they are terrible,”
Grandfather admitted. “I could never swallow them. I found a dead deer on the first day of my Ta-Na-E-Ka—shot by a soldier, probably—and he kept my belly full for the entire period of the test!”
Grandfather stopped laughing. “We should send you out again,” he said.
I looked at Roger. “You’re pretty smart, Mary,” Roger groaned. “I’d never have thought of what you did.”
“Accountants just have to be good at arithmetic,” I said comfortingly. “I’m terrible at arithmetic.”
Roger tried to smile but couldn’t. My grandfather called me to him. “You should
have done what your cousin did. But I think you are more alert to what is happening to our people today than we are. I think you would have passed the test under any circumstances, in any time. Somehow, you know how to exist in a world that wasn’t made for Indians. I don’t think you’re going to have any trouble surviving.”
Grandfather wasn’t entirely right. But I’ll tell about that another time.

这些字都是你敲进来的吗？你太牛了，我发现自己很难沉下心来看这样大段的。严重不一个层次啊，飘走

这本教材是可以复制，粘贴的，但是需要再编辑一下，字体啊，排列啊。。。

加州的G6（PDF文档）就不能复制，我确实是手敲出来的，我挺喜欢打字的，打着打着，心也就静了。。。

为什么要编辑在WORD里呢？

第一是习惯，我习惯这样了。

第二是可以在上面做很多标记，比如没理解的句子，单词啊。。。。

第三是可以存起来，有种成就感：哦，我已经看了那么多了。。。。

本帖最后由 charlenedavid 于 2012-7-14 23:56 编辑

像93楼的那篇文章，我们在加州G6里就学过的。

讲述印第安人的一个成人礼，就是把孩子赤身涂满一种白色的香草汁，放到野外18天，直到身上的白色消尽，不能洗。。。也不给带钱及任何东西，这是用来考验孩子的生存能力传统仪式。。。。
Ta-Na-E-Ka was a test of survival.

请问：HIGH5是什么?
哪里可以下载入门的英文听力资源

帖子好长，留个记号，再回来看！

你儿子现在在家还能让你教.
我家孩子10岁了,都反感我教了.

都消消气，这个平台很好，我们好好利用。

Sorry!
有眼不识泰山!
新来的

本帖最后由 charlenedavid 于 2012-7-30 00:06 编辑

P367 Eleven by Sandra Cisneros

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything’s just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are—underneath the year that makes you eleven.
Like some days you might say something stupid, and that’s the part of you that’s still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama’s lap because you’re scared, and that’s the part of you that’s five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you’re three, and that’s okay. That’s what I tell Mama when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That’s how being eleven years old is.

You don’t feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don’t feel smart eleven, not until you’re almost twelve. That’s the way it is.

Only today I wish I didn’t have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin Band-Aid box. Today I wish I was one hundred and two instead of eleven because if I was one hundred and two I’d have known what to say when Mrs. Price put the red sweater on my desk. I would’ve known how to tell her it wasn’t mine instead of just sitting there with that look on my face and nothing coming out of my mouth.

“Whose is this?” Mrs. Price says, and she holds the red sweater up in the air for all the class to see. “Whose? It’s been sitting in the coatroom for a month.”
“Not mine,” says everybody. “Not me.” “It has to belong to somebody,” Mrs. Price keeps saying, but nobody can remember. It’s an ugly sweater with red plastic buttons and a collar and sleeves all stretched out like you could use it for a jump rope. It’s maybe a thousand years old and even if it belonged to me I wouldn’t say so.
Maybe because I’m skinny, maybe because she doesn’t like me, that stupid Sylvia Saldívar says, “I think it belongs to Rachel.” An ugly sweater like that, all raggedy and old, but Mrs. Price believes her. Mrs. Price takes the sweater and puts it right on my desk, but when I open my mouth nothing comes out.

“That’s not, I don’t, you’re not . . . Not mine,” I finally say in a little voice that was maybe me when I was four.
“Of course it’s yours,” Mrs. Price says. “I remember you wearing it once.” Because she’s older and the teacher, she’s right and I’m not.
Not mine, not mine, not mine, but Mrs. Price is already turning to page thirty-two, and math problem number four. I don’t know why but all of a sudden I’m feeling sick inside, like the part of me that’s three wants to come out of my eyes, only I squeeze them shut tight and bite down on my teeth real hard and try to remember today I am eleven, eleven. Mama is making a cake for me for tonight, and when Papa comes home everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you.

But when the sick feeling goes away and I open my eyes, the red sweater’s still sitting there like a big red mountain. I move the red sweater to the corner of my desk with my ruler. I move my pencil and books and eraser as far from it as possible.

I even move my chair a little to the right. Not mine, not mine, not mine.
In my head I’m thinking how long tilllunchtime, how long till I can take the red sweater and throw it over the school yard fence, or leave it hanging on a parking
meter, or bunch it up into a little ball and toss it in the alley. Except when math
period ends Mrs. Price says loud and in front of everybody, “Now, Rachel, that’s enough,” because she sees I’ve shoved the red sweater to the tippy-tip corner of my desk and it’s hanging all over the edge like a waterfall, but I don’t care.
“Rachel,” Mrs. Price says. She says it like she’s getting mad. “You put that sweater on right now and no more nonsense.”
“But it’s not—”
“Now!” Mrs. Price says.

This is when I wish I wasn’t eleven, because all the years inside of me—ten, nine, eight, seven, six, fi ve, four, three, two, and one—are pushing at the back of my eyes when I put one arm through one sleeve of the sweater that smells like cottage cheese, and then the other arm through the other and stand there with my arms apart like if the sweater hurts me and it does, all itchy and full of germs that aren’t even mine.

That’s when everything I’ve been holding in since this morning, since when Mrs. Price put the sweater on my desk, finally lets go, and all of a sudden I’m crying in front of everybody. I wish I was invisible but I’m not. I’m eleven and it’s my birthday today and I’m crying like I’m three in front of everybody. I put my head down on the desk and bury my face in my stupid clown-sweater arms. My face all hot and spit coming out of my mouth because I can’t stop the little animal noises from coming out of me, until there aren’t any more tears left in my eyes, and it’s just my body shaking like when you drink milk too fast.

I wish I was invisible but I’m not.
But the worst part is right before the bell rings for lunch. That stupid Phyllis Lopez, who is even dumber than Sylvia Saldívar, says she remembers the red sweater is hers! I take it off right away and give it to her, only Mrs. Price pretends like everything’s okay.
Today I’m eleven. There’s a cake Mama’s making for tonight, and when Papa comes home from work we’ll eat it. There’ll be candles and presents and everybody will sing Happy birthday, happy birthday to you, Rachel, only it’s too late.
I’m eleven today. I’m eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, fi ve, four, three, two, and one, but I wish I was one hundred and two. I wish I was anything but eleven, because I want today to be far away already, far away like a runaway balloon, like a tiny o in the sky, so tiny-tiny you have to close your eyes to see it.

本帖最后由 charlenedavid 于 2012-9-2 15:40 编辑

上面那首诗，是因为感觉晦涩难懂，所以，第一次逐句翻译了，但也大多体现是意译，而不能完全按字面意思。

这首诗，儿子学起来有点费劲。

我们也是大致了解诗的内容和情感，不做细致深入。

刚从加州那里追到这里来，爬楼看了许多内容，发现最后一个帖子是去年9月初的，最近有没有新的进展啊？希望能继续跟着楼主看看。

佩服牛妈   

佩服

Bump.

mark

长见识了！