Unit 15 The necklace.Teaching Goals:1.Talk about drama and theatre.2.Use the modal verbs:must,can/could,may/might(1)ask for permission;(2)ask about possibilities3.Write and act a simple play.Teaching Time:Five periods.Background Information：1.About the AuthorGuy de Maupassant,the well-known French shortstory writer and novelist,was born on August 5,1850.When he was young,he had a great interest in literature.He practised writing literary works under the guidance of the famous novelist Flaubert.And Balzac was another teacher of his.So he wrote in the tradition of 19th century French realism,and became one of the most famous French critical realists of the late 19th century.Maupassants stories were built around the everyday life of the simple humble people.He had a fine use of irony.His style was direct and simple,with attention to realistic details.He saw clearly the toil,sufferings and the bitterly ironic happenings in human lives.At his best,he was able to put into a few pages a life story which would take other writers a whole volume to describe.Most of Maupassants works are about the peasant life in Normandy,the France-Prussian War and the life of the petty bourgeoisie.As he had held a number of government positions in Parice since 1871,he became familiar with the life of the government workers.And this experience helped him create his best short story“The Diamond Necklace”,from which our present text is adapted.Almost a hundred years after its first publication the story still touches the readers deeply to their hearts.Maupassant suffered a great deal from illness in his late life.Yet he struggled to continue writing with tremendous will power.He had but a short life,and died at the age of 43(on July 6,1893).2.About the TextThis short play is a stage version of The Necklace,one of Maupassants best-known short stories.It tells about a vain woman,wife of a small clerk,who borrowed a diamond necklace to go to the palace ball.But unfortunately she lost the necklace.Then she and her husband had to work ten long years to pay for it.The heroine was named Mathilde,who used to be a pretty girl.Being born in a clerks family,she had no hope of marrying a man of wealth and position.So she let herself be married to Pierre Loisel,a small clerk in a government office.They were not rich and lived a simple life.One evening her husband brought home an invitation for the palace ball.It was the first time in their lives that they had been invited to an important occasion like this.But the wife did not feel happy at all,because she had no dress for the ball.As the ball was very important to Pierre,he decided to buy her a new dress,which cost about four hundred francs.That was all he had saved.But Mathilde had no jewellery and she didnt want to go to the palace without jewelley.Her husband suggested that she should go and borrow some jewellery from a rich friend of hers,Jeanne Forrestier.Jeanne was very kind and friendly.She brought out her jewelry for Mathilde to choose from.Mathilde borrowed a diamond necklace.Mathilde was the prettiest woman that night at the palace.She was a great success.All the men wished to dance with her.She danced madly,forgetting herself,her husband,her home and all.On the way home Mathilde found that the necklace was gone.She and her husband returned to the palace and looked for it in every room but couldnt find it,and they never saw it again.They had to borrow thirty-six thousand francs,buy a diamond necklace exactly like the one they had lost and return it to Jeanne.Then they worked hard for ten years to pay for the money.At the end of ten hard years,Mathilde had changed a great deal and looked so old that Jeanne couldnt recognize her when they met in a park one day.When Jeanne heard Mathildes story,she was amazed.She told Mathilde that the necklace she had lent her ten years before was made of glass.It was worth five hundred francs at the most.The First PeriodTeaching Aims:1.Learn and master the following words:footprintshoeprintfingerprinttiremysterymysteriousscarydormitory2.Do some listening.3.Do some speaking by acting out some short plays.Teaching Important Points:1.Do listening and speaking practice.2.Improve the students listening ability.3.Improve the students speaking ability by acting out some short plays in English.Teaching Difficult Points:1.How to finish the task of speaking.2.How to make up short plays.Teaching Methods:1.Warming up to arouse the students interest in creating good stories.2.Listening-and-choosing activity to help the students go through with the listening material and understand it.3.Making and acting out simple plays to practise the students speaking ability.4.Individual,pair or group work to make every student work in class.Teaching Aids:1.a tape recorder2.a slide projector3.a computer for multimedia useTeaching Procedures:Step . GreetingsGreet the wh