Unit 7  The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

Before Reading

An English Song—Let’s Roll

Introductory Remarks

Blank Filling

Questions and Answers

Word-web

Discussion

Background Information 

September 11 Attacks

Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda

The Taliban

The Kamikaze and The Attack on Pearl Harbour

Percy Bysshe Shlley

Jean de La Fontaine

Global Reading

 Part Division of the Text

 Further understanding

 For Part 1  Questions and Answers

 For Part 2  Table Completion

For Part 3  Blank Filling

For Part 4  Interview

Detailed Reading

After Reading

Useful Expressions

Sentence Translation

Discussion

Debate

Writing Practice

Talk about the Pictures

Proverbs and Quotations

Supplementary Reading

Culture Notes

Reading

Comprehension Task

Before Reading

1.  English Song—Let’s Roll

Introductory Remarks

The song you are about to hear was written to pay tribute to the passengers on the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11. “Let’s Roll” was inspired by the words of passenger Todd Beamer, who made a call from the plane and told of the passengers’ plan to storm the cockpit to overpower the terrorists.

Young, Neil (1945~ ), Canadian singer, songwriter, and guitarist, who became one of the most distinctive and independent artists in rock music. He was an influential leader in developing the new styles of country rock and folk rock in the 1960s and 1970s. Young's use of sounds from the punk-rock and hard-rock genres of the 1970s and 1980s makes him a precursor of the 1990s grunge style, which combines folk melodies and harmonies with hard-rock instrumentation and the energy of punk rock.

Todd Beamer, an Oracle Inc. executive from Hightstown, N.J. and a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 which crashed in Somerset County. His phone was connected at 9:45 a.m. on Sept. 11. He talked about 13 minutes on the phone. He and other passengers foiled hijackers bent on crashing the Boeing 757 into what authorities say might have been a second target in Washington, D.C., possibly the Capitol or the White House. The phone line from Flight 93 was still open when an operator heard Todd Beamer say “Are you guys ready? Let's roll” before the plane crashed.

.Blank Filling

Let’s Roll

             Neil Young

I know I said I love you

I know you know it’s ______(=true)

I got to put the phone ______(=down)

And do what we gotta do

One’s standing in the aisle way

Two more at the ______(=door)

We got to get inside there

Before they kill some ______(=more)

Time is runnin’ out, let’s roll

Time is runnin’ out, let’s roll

No time for indecision

We got to make a ______(=move)

I hope that we’re ______(=forgiven)

For what we gotta do

How this all got started

I’ll never ______(=understand)

I hope someone can fly this thing

Get us back to land

Time is runnin’ out, let’s roll

Time is runnin’ out, let’s roll

No one has the answers

But one thing is true

You got to turn on ______(=evil)

When it’s comin’ after you

You got to face it down

And when it tries to ______(=hide)

You got to go in after it

And never be denied

Time is runnin’ out, let’s roll

Let’s roll for ______(=freedom)

Let’s roll for love

Goin’ after Satan

On the wings of a dove

Let’s roll for ______(=justice)

Let’s roll for truth

Let’s not left our ______(=children)

Grow up fearful in their youth

Time is runnin’ out, let’s roll

Time is runnin’ out, let’s roll

Time is runnin’ out, let’s roll

Questions and Answers

1.    What do the words “one” and “two” refer to?

(=They refer to the number of the terrorists.)

2.    What does “roll” mean in your opinion?

(=It means to take some actions.)

3.    What is the message of the song?

(=He would sacrifice himself for justice.)

2.  Word-web

Look at the following cartoons, can you think of some words that are related to the September 11 Attacks?

terrorist, Laden, hijack, World Trade Center, crash, debris, firemen, Bush, Pentagon, New York, collapse, fire, the camp, four planes, 3000 deaths, north tower, south tower, jump, escape, 9-11-2001, shock, cry, mourn, Washington D. C.

3.  Discussion

Watch the video and look at the pictures. Form groups of four or five students and discuss the question, “How much do you know about the September 11 Attacks?”

4.  Background Information

September 11 Attacks:

     It is a series of coordinated terrorist attacks upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 militants associated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airliners and used them as weapons. Two of the airliners were intentionally flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Both buildings collapsed within two hours. Everyone on board and many others working in the Twin Towers were killed. The third airliner was crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania after its passengers and flight crew tried to retake control of the plane. 2,973 victims and the 19 hijackers died as a result of the horrific attacks.

Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda

     Osama Bin Laden, considered the world’s foremost terrorist, is the founding leader of al-Qaeda or “The Base”, an international organization that calls for the use of violence and force in bringing about the end of non-Islamic governments and disrupting the economies and influence of Western nations. Laden is the alleged perpetrator of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He has also been blamed for numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian targets. Since 2001, Osama bin Laden and his organization have been major targets of the United States' War on Terrorism.  

The Taliban

     It was a radical Sunni Islamist movement that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001. It was removed from power in December 2001 by the U.S. military and Afghani opposition forces in response to the September 11 terrorist attack. While many of the Taliban's most radical leaders and supporters were killed, imprisoned, or fled, many former members of the Taliban returned to their homes and continued to work for the Taliban's goals. In 2003, after the United States shifted its military resources to the war in Iraq, the Taliban began to regroup. As of 2009, a strong insurgency continues in the form of ongoing, increasingly frequent guerrilla attacks.

The Kamikaze and The Attack on Pearl Harbour

Key Words:

suicidal crashes

"divine wind"

loaded with

military strike

     Kamikaze is a word of Japanese origin, which refers to any of the Japanese pilots in World War II who made deliberate suicidal crashes into enemy targets, usually ships. The word means "divine wind" . The practice was most prevalent in the final year of the war. Most kamikaze planes were ordinary fighter aircraft or light bombers, usually loaded with bombs or extra gasoline tanks before their suicidal dive.

     On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese navy launched an unannounced military strike against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The surprise attack destroyed much of the American Pacific Fleet and resulted in the United States’ entry into World War II.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792~1822)

      Shelley is one of the major English Romantic poets and the finest lyric poets in the English language. He was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron.

     Shelley is most famous for such classic anthology verse works as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy, which are among the most popular and critically acclaimed poems in the English language. His major works, however, are long visionary poems which included Alastor, Adonaïs, The Revolt of Islam, and the unfinished work The Triumph of Life.  

     "Grief returns with the revolving year" is abstracted from Shelley's Adonais: An Elegy On The Death Of John Keats

Jean de La Fontaine and his famous fables

Jean de La Fontaine (1621~1695)

     Jean de La Fontaine, French poet, whose celebrated fables place him among the masters of world literature. His fables, moral stories of the human conditions told through animal characters, were extremely popular and were widely translated and imitated. He was the first to collect and publish Aesop's fables, basing many of his own stories on those of the earlier fabulist.

Two famous fables

Global Reading

1. Part Division of the Text

2. Further understanding

For Part 1

 Questions and Answers

1. What is the “grandest illusion” the author refers to?

 (=It is the illusion that America is strong and invulnerable.)

2. What, in the eyes of the author, did the twin towers of the World Trade Center once symbolize?

 (=They symbolized the power and the invincibility of the USA.)

3. How did New Yorkers feel when they realized that the twin towers were the targets of deliberate attacks?

 (=They felt angry and shocked. )

4. In what sense are the 9/11 terrorist attacks a second Pearl Harbor?

 (=The 9/11 attacks and the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor were both surprise attacks on a massive scale which should be considered as acts of undeclared war. )

For Part 2

Table Completion for part 2

For Part 3

Blank Filling for part 3

Supply the missing information according to the story

     One year time is not enough for New Yorkers to        (=fade the memory of ) what happened. They        (=remained haunted by ) what they have lived though. Fortunately, the wounded city        (=rose from its knees ). A new generation of firefighters and cops tried to       (=fill the shoes of ) those who were lost.

For Part 4

Interview

Form groups of three students. One will be the reporter, the other two are witnesses of the September 11 Attacks. On the one year anniversary,  they recall the past and look to the future.