4. Auold Lang Syne- traditional (傳統的) Scottish (蘇格蘭的) song that is sung on New Year's Eve. It means " the old days" in Scottish [KTV with Chinese]
II. Dialogue (對話，對白):
A: Do you want to go to the New Year’s fireworks show tonight? 今天晚上要不要一起去看跨年煙火？
B: Of course, but the mountain slope we used to go to has been overcrowded the past two years. There’s no atmosphere. 當然好囉。只是往年我們常去看煙火的那個山坡，從前年開始，每逢跨年就擠滿了人，一點情調都沒有了。
A: I found a great place for watching the fireworks. It’s quite far off, so there’s probably no one there. 我發現了一個很適合看煙火的好地方，還蠻偏僻的，應該不會有什麼人。
B: That’s great. I hope we will be able to enjoy the fireworks in peace. 那太好了。希望我們可以平靜地一起欣賞煙火
How The Grinch
Stole Christmas is a poem by Dr. Seuss, about a character who hates Christmas,
so he decides to steal it. Read these extracts from the poem...
8. -ville = suffix (後綴，詞尾) for place, town (城鎮，市鎮)
Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot... But
the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, Did NOT! The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole
Christmas season! Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn'tscrewed on just right. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were
too tight. But I think that the most likely reason of all, May have been that
his heart was two sizes too small. Whatever the reason, his heart or his
shoes, He stood there on Christmas Eve, hating the Whos, Staring down from
his cave with a sour, Grinchy frown, At the warm lighted windows below in their town.
...the Grinch comes up with an idea
to steal Christmas, and takes all the presents and decorations from the
houses...
It was quarter past dawn... All the Whos, still a-bed, All the Whos,
still a-snooze when he packed up
his sled, Packed it up with their presents! The ribbons! The wrappings!
The tags! And the tinsel! The
trimmings! The trappings! Three thousand feet up! Up the side of Mt. Crumpit,
He rode with his load to the tiptop to dump it! "Pooh-pooh to the
Whos!" he was grinchishly humming. "They're finding out now that no
Christmas is coming!" "They're just waking up! I know just what
they'll do!" "Their mouths will hang open a minute or two, Then the
Whos down in Whoville will all cry Boo Hoo!" "That's a noise,"
grinned the Grinch, "That I simply MUST hear!" So he paused. And
the Grinch put his hand to his ear. And he did hear a sound rising over the
snow.
It started in low. Then it
started to grow. But the sound wasn't sad! Why, this sound sounded merry! It couldn't be so! But it WAS
merry! VERY! He stared down at Whoville! The Grinch popped his eyes! Then he
shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise! Every Who down in Whoville, the
tall and the small, Was singing! Without any presents at all! He HADN'T
stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME! Somehow or other, it came just the
same! And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow, Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How
could it be so?" "It came without ribbons! It came without
tags!" "It came without packages, boxes or bags!" And he
puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of
something he hadn't before! "Maybe Christmas," he thought,
"doesn't come from a store." "Maybe
Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!" And what happened then?
Well...in Whoville they say, That the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes
that day! And the minute his heart didn't feel quite so tight, He whizzed
with his load through the bright morning light, And he brought back the toys!
And the food for the feast! And he, HE HIMSELF! The Grinch carved the roastbeast!
THE
END
II. Vocabulary: Fill in the blank with the correct new word.
1. Our muscles were __________ after PE class.
2. I woke up at a_________ six today.
3. He forgot to cut off the
______ of his new baseball cap.
4. My brother ________ to eat mushrooms, he thinks they’re
disgusting.
5. My father’s face had a big ________ when he saw my poor grades.
6. The meaning of the movie _________ the audience.
7. Alice had blue
___________ in her hair.
8. My family likes to ________
in on the weekends.
9. There are many bats in this __________.
10. I have been in a _______ mood the ________ week because of the
grey skies.
III. Comprehension.
1. What kind of person was the Grinch in the beginning?
2. Who
is the audience for the poem? Is it for children, or adults, or both? Why?
3.
Is there a moral or message to this poem?
4.
Do you think the poem is funny? Why/ why not?
5.
Can you think of the reason why the Grinch hates Christmas?
6.
Do you think the people of Who-ville were able to forgive the Grinch for
stealing their Christmas? Why/ why not?
III. Christmas Objects: What were the 17 objects the Grinch stole
from the townspeople?
The night before Christmas at
the large house of a German couple and their two children, Clara and Fritz, this
family is throwing a Christmas party. They have invited a lot of guests.
The godfather of Clara and Fritz arrives and gives them wonderful
gifts. Clara receives a nutcracker,
shaped like a toy soldier, but her
brother breaks the nutcracker while playing with it. Clara is very sad that
her lovely new toy has been damaged.
Later on in the evening, the
guests leave and everyone goes to bed. Clara wakes in the middle of the night
to check on her injured nutcracker
soldier. The clock strikes midnight.
Suddenly the room fills with giant mice. The Christmas tree begins to grow
and grow. Clara's nutcracker also increases in size, until it is as big as a
real soldier.
Clara's nutcracker soldier
springs to life, and fights a battle
with the mice. The toys in the room also come alive, and fight as soldiers
alongside the nutcracker. With Clara's help, the Nutcracker defeats the mouse army and kills the
Mouse King.
The Nutcracker then turns into
a prince. The Nutcracker Prince leads Clara through a pine forest where beautiful snowflakes swirl and dance around
them. After this, they travel to the Land of Sweets, ruled by the Sugar Plum
Fairy. The Sugar Plum Fairy also dances. At the end of the dance, Clara awakens from her dream. She is lying
under the Christmas tree and next to her is her beloved Nutcracker.
THE END
Questions
1. What is the name of the little girl?
2. What
Christmas present does her uncle give her?
3. Why do
you think the Nutcracker came to life?
4. If he stays "alive," how do you think
he'll live in Clara's house--as a brother, a prince, a dad?
5. What do you think about the ending? Was it real
or just a dream?
One way to bring in Christmas, literature and social justice is to introduce Dickens', A Christmas Carol. Imagine 19 century England, during the Industrial Revolution (工業革命). Some have argued Dickens critiqued capitalism (資本主義)and was a socialist, others have argued he valued capitalism. Whatever your opinion Dickens brought attention to the plight of the lower classes, the poor who were exploited and without social safety nets.
I think the students will enjoy a break on Christmas day, a little ghost story that also teaches morality (道德體系；道德觀；道德；道義) and social responsibility and ultimately hope. People can change.
Guiding
Question: What is the Beijing Declaration and why is it important? Why is the
market unfair to female workers in terms of unequal pay? Can you predict
which countries or regions of the world have better gender wage equality?
What do you think are the most important factors promoting wage equality?
The income of female workers
across the world will lag behind men’s for another 70 years if the gender pay
gap continues to reduce at the present painfully slow rate, the UN is warning
in a report that lays bare global inequality in the workplace.
More than half a century after the
United States passed the Equal Pay Act, and 45 years after similar
legislation in the UK, women across the world earn 77% of the amount paid to
men, a figure that has improved by only three percentage points in the past
20 years, according to areport
from the UN’s International Labour Organization (pdf)(ILO).
Over and above the pay gap, women
face a “motherhood pay gap”. Women with children can expect to earn less when
they return to work than childless women, with the difference increasing for
every child they have,according
to an ILO analysis.
The report, released ahead of
International Women’s Day on Sunday, also shows that the gender gap in work
participation has barely shifted in two decades. Since the Beijing Declaration on women’s rights
was signed by 189 governments in 1995, the difference in men’s and women’s labor
market participation rates has dropped by only 1%. Today 50% of the world’s
women work, compared with 77% of men. In 1996, the figures were 52% and 80% respectively.
“The overriding conclusion 20 years on from
Beijing is that, despite marginal (微小) progress,
we have years, even decades, to go until women enjoy the same rights and
benefits as men at work,” said Shauna Olney, chief of the gender, equality and
Diversity branch of the ILO.
The report (舉例，引證) an11-country analysis carried out in
2005showing
that women with two children in the UK can expect to earn 25% less than a
childless woman. The gap was less than 10% in Belgium, the Netherlands,
Ireland, Spain and Portugal. In France, Italy and Denmark, women with two
children could expect to earn slightly more than their childless
counterparts.
Womenwho start families before the age of 25
“suffer a larger wage penalty (刑罰)”, while in general – and perhaps
not surprisingly – the longer the period of time away from work, the larger
the hit, according to the ILO.
But the report found that
government policies (政策，方針，策略) also had
a significant effect. A 2009 study by Pettit and Hook, for example, found
women in the US were penalized for even short periods out of the labor market
while, in Sweden, women only had a drop in wages if they took more than the
normal 15 months of statutory paid leave.
Fathers, on the other hand, are
likely to earn more than childless men, according to ILO – an influential2010
report from the University of Massachusettsthat it cites found fathers in the US earn 11%
more than non-fathers.
Mothers were more likely to have
career breaks, switch to part-time work, choose jobs that help to reconcile (調和；調解) work and family – which are usually lower paying – and miss
out on promotions (提升，晉升；升遷), said
Kristen Sobeck, an economist at the ILO. But lower pay for mothers was also
linked to other factors such as discrimination and undervaluation of women’s work, as well as government policies on parental leave, labor
rights and childcare. Asked if the gender pay gap was inevitable (不可避免), she said:
“I think a gender pay gap will persist
insofar as societies and policies shift care responsibilities disproportionately (不成比例, 不相稱) to
women.”
Naomi Wolf, a consultant at the
Athena Center for Leadership Studies, said: “Sexism in the workplace pumps
untold revenue (稅收，歲入) into the coffers (資金，金庫) of global
business ... this situation will never yield to reasoned appeals, too much
money is at stake. It is past time for women to organize both as a movement in the labor force and as a political
powerhouse to close this nightmarish gap in fairness and equality.”
Other facts are bleaker still:
according to the ILO, a third of all women are “victims of physical and/or
sexual violence that affects their attendance at work”. According to the
latest figures from the World Bank, 700m women are victims of either physical
or sexual violence – in the Middle East and Africa, 40% are victims, in south
east Asia the figure is 43%.
Asked whether working women were
better off than they were 20 years ago, Guy Ryder, the ILO’s director general,
gave a qualified yes. “Has this progress met our expectations (期盼；盼望)? The answer is decidedly no,” he added. “We need to be innovative (創新, 革新), to reframe (表達，說出)the debate (談論，討論) and to intensify the focus on ensuring the rights of women
at work, and promoting(促銷，推銷) gender equality and women’s
economic empowerment (授權；使自主).”
Questions
1.Why is sexism in
the workplace profitable for global business?
2.How are men and
women treated differently when they become parents?
3.What does the ILO
stand for?
4.What is maternity/
paternity leave? What is Taiwan’s policy on such leave?
5.What is the most
significant effect for improving gender equality in the workplace?
6.Imagine you are an
adult at work. If you are male, how does it make you feel that your female
coworker with the same education and experience background as you, earns less
than you? If you are female, how does it make you feel that you earn less than
your male coworkers?
The gender pay gap in the Western world is back in the
spotlight, after the British government announced all large businesses will
have topublish details of
the difference between earnings for men and women. About
time, many will say. Although this year marked the 45th anniversary of the
country’s Equal Pay Act, women still earn on average 20% less than men. That
makes the UK’s pay gap thesixth largest in
the European Union.
2. When workers are unionized, the gender
pay gap shrinks
Research fromthe
National Women’s Law Centerreveals that the gender
pay gap for unionized workers is half the size of that among non-unionized
workers. It also found that unionized women earn on average $200 a week more
than women who are not a member of a union.
3. Women expect to earn less than men
There isn’t just a gender pay gap; there’s a
gender pay-expectation gap. Ina
recent Glassdoor survey of the British labour market, 40% of men said they
were confident they will receive a pay rise over the next year; just over a
quarter of women said the same.
Astudy
from researchers at Columbia Universityput this expectation gap
down to two factors: overconfidence and competitiveness. According to their
research, men have a higher level of competitiveness and are twice as likely
as women to overestimate their true ability; they calculate that these two
factors account for 18% of the expectation gap.
The authors conclude that the expectation gap
also goes some way to explaining the difference in real earnings:
“Individuals with low earnings expectations are more willing to accept a
low-paying job offer because it is in line with their beliefs, and they are
also less likely to negotiate for a higher salary since the offer is
consistent with their benchmark.”
4. Women pay a ‘motherhood penalty’ – while
men get a ‘fatherhood bonus’
“While the gender pay gap has been decreasing,
the pay gap related to parenthood is increasing.” Those arethe
findings of Michelle Budig, a professor who has spent years researching
the issue and how it plays out in the US.
Fatherhood, it seems, is highly valued in the
world of work: fathers are more likely to be hired than their childless
counterparts and men tend to see their earnings increase – by around 6% –
after having children.
Women, on the other hand, pay a penalty of
around 4% per child. The penalty is higher for low-paid workers.
5. It could be another 80 years before we
achieve gender parity in the workplace
The Forum started measuring the global gender
gap back in 2006. At the time, the gap for economic participation stood at
56%. Today, it’s 60%. While that’s progress, it’s too slow – if we continue
at the same pace,we
won’t achieve gender parity at work until 2095. That means most of us
reading this won’t live to see workplace gender equality.
While statistics on the gender pay gap – and the
slow pace at which things are changing – can seem depressing, moves like the
UK’s mandatory gender pay audits are steps in the right direction. As David
Cameron, the British prime minister,said when he announced
the new measure,
transparency will go a long way to closing the gap: “Casting sunlight on the
discrepancies will create the pressure we need for change, driving women’s
wages up.”
Asia’s
women are taking one step forward, two steps back when it comes to gender
equality. Family structures and entrenched
notions of what constitutes women’s work are holding back the region’s female
population from scaling the
corporate ladder, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO).
The
proportion of women graduates who studied construction, engineering and
manufacturing has stagnated or
even fallen in some countries, including Malaysia, Mongolia and Japan, UNESCO
data show.
A standout is South Korea, where the
proportion of female graduates choosing these fields has slumped to almost one in 10 in 2013 from more than one in five in
1998. Korean women also make up a smaller share of construction, engineering
and manufacturing graduates compared with previously.
There
can be a negative feedback cycle
when female graduates in these fields find it difficult to find employment or
stay on the job due to gender bias in areas traditionally dominated by men,
according to the ILO.
While
women own and manage almost 30 percent of businesses in the Asia-Pacific
region, female employers are mainly confined
to micro and small enterprises, the ILO said in a report. The share of women
bosses increased in countries such as Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines
from 2008 to 2013, despite many major companies still lacking female voices
on their boards.
“The
major obstacle we still find is that gender stereotyping is still there,
perhaps linked to the fact that family responsibilities are still mainly
assigned to women,” ILO Bureau For Employers’ Activities director Deborah
France-Massin said. “The glass ceiling
is cracked, but it is still far from broken.”
Pay disparity also remains an issue in
Asia. Men in India and South Korea make more than 30 percent more than their
female counterparts, the ILO said. Yet, there are exceptions: In the
Philippines’ matriarchal society,
women actually earn more than men on average.
Questions
1.What factors help create the “glass
ceiling” for female workers in Asia?
2.Which countries are the worst? Why do
they have more pay disparity or less women in traditionally male jobs?
3.Which countries are the best? Why do
they have less pay disparity or more women in traditionally male jobs?
