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Unit 7 The Chaser
Section One Pre-reading Activities
I. Audiovisual Supplement
Watch the video clip and answer the following questions.
Script:
Man: It has been three years since our first date.Time has really gone by fast.
Woman: Yep.
Man: And over the past few weeks, I have beendoing some thinking, mainly thinking about the human condition. A lot of lifecomes down to making sacrifices and deciding which direction is my life gonna go.Could you please leave? Thank you very much.
Woman: Are you OK?
Man: Yeah.
Woman: OK?
Man: Alot of life comes down to deciding what am I willing to sacrifice becauseobviously if you choose one path in life, well, you know, you can’t choose theother. That’s kind of where I found myself lately, ever since we, you and I, inour relationship, en, have reached that place.
Woman: That place.
Man: The upshot is “you win.”
Woman: “You win”? Was that a proposal?
Man: Youwin was just the last part of it. The whole thing was a proposal. The “you win”had a context. Aren’t you even gonna look at it?
Woman:But, first, can we just, can we retrace the mental steps that led to “you win”?Like when you say you and I have reached that place. What place?
Man: You know what I mean. Shit or get off thepot?
Woman: Did you really just say “shit or get off thepot”? Right here in the starlight room?
Man: What is a big deal?
Woman: Why can’t you just cay “fish or cut bait”?
Man: Because we always say “shit or get off thepot.” Everybody says “shit or get off the pot.”
Woman: Not in the Starlight Room!
Man: What is it with the Starlight Room?
Woman: Magic,Jimmy. Romance. You know, the whole reason why you come up here to propose. Yousee the lights in the city. You have a wonderful meal. You listen to beautifulmusic. And it casts this romantic spell. When you say “shit or get off the pot”,all the magic just suddenly disappears. Now all you have left is bowel trouble.
Man: I am sorry. I didn’t think you’d get soupset over a figure of speech.
Woman: It’s not the words, Jimmy. It’s the wholeapproach. God, it’s as if you deliberately …
Man: What? What?
Woman: You don’t want to marry me, do you?
Man: I just proposed to you.
Woman: Yeah,but the way that you proposed, you weren’t asking me to marry you. You wereasking me to say no.
Man: Just put it on. All right? Please.
Woman: Ifyou don’t want to marry me, Jimmy, I don’t want to be married to a guy whodoesn’t want to get married.
Questions （在每个问题下面设置按钮，点击以后出现正确答案）
1. Whydoes the man choose to propose to his girlfriend in the Starlight room?
2. Whydoes the woman say no to his proposal?
1. Proposal of Marriage
l Theproposal of marriage is an event where one person in a relationship asks forthe other's hand in marriage.
l Ifaccepted, it marks the initiation of engagement.
l Itoften has a ritual quality, sometimes involving the presentation of anengagement ring and a formalized asking of a question such as “Will you marryme?”
l Oftenthe proposal is a surprise.
l Inmany Western cultures, the tradition has been for the man to propose to thewoman.
2. Engagement
l Anengagement is a promise to marry, and also the period of time between proposaland marriage – which may be lengthy or trivial.
l During this period, a couple is said to be affianced, betrothed, engaged to bemarried, or simply engaged.
l Future brides and grooms are often referred to as fiancée or fiancés respectively(from the French word “fiancé”).
l The duration of the courtship varies vastly.
l Long engagements were once common in formal arranged marriages.
l In 2007, the average engagement time in the
