B4U5 To Lie or Not to Lie—The Doctor’s Dilemma

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B4U5 To Lie or Not to Lie—The Doctor’s Dilemma Powered By Docstoc
					       Unit 5 To Lie or Not to Lie—The Doctor’s Dilemma
Teaching Time:      4 hours
Students’ level:    Sophomores of non-English majors in the 2nd semester.
Teaching Objectives:
1.Get Ss to discuss whether a doctor should be honest or not to a patient on the
patient’s true disease.
2.About the text, Ss should grasp the text content, text structure, basic vocabularies
  and required grammar points of the section.
  Words:     dilemma, benefit, brutal, routine, document, betray, object, consequence
  Phrases & Expressions: lines of work, uphold a promise, differ sharply from, in
          turn, cope with, take part in
3. About the reading, Ss should know the reading strategy of guessing new words.
4. About the writing, Ss should get to know the writing skill—a good topic sentence.
5. About the listening, Ss finish the Unit 5 directed by teacher.

Teaching Procedures:

I. Pre-reading Activities
1.Background information
2.Introductory remarks:
3.Warm-up questions
  1) Do you always believe a doctor’s diagnosis?
    A doctor has training in treating the diseases and injuries of human beings. But
    nobody is perfect and doctors can be wrong.
  2)Do you think that a doctor has good reasons to tell lies?
    Only when he does so for the patients’ own sake.
  3)Do you tell lies for good purposes?
4. Key words and expressions:
  study of the words and phrases
new words and old words
teacher                               students
(old words and expressions)           (new ones)
a difficult choice                    dilemma
do good to                            benefit
cruel                                 brutal
regular                               routine
medical examination                   physical checkup
prove                                 document
deceive                               betray
oppose                                object
result                              consequence
proverb                             saying

English and Chinese phrases
Teacher (Chinese)                     students(English)
造福病人                                benefit the patients
加快康复                                speed recovery
各行各业                                lines of work
恪守诺言                                uphold a promise
大事化小                                minimize the gravity of
截然不同                                differ sharply from
保护性药品                               defensive medicine
转而,反过来                              in turn
对付                                   cope with
参与                                  take part in
俗话                                  the old saying
不知者不为所害                            what you don’t know can’t
根深蒂固                                                         be deeply rooted

                               sentence making in dialogues

lines of work
1. who takes part in the National Day celebration?
2. who do you think should work hard to protect our environment?
3. what do you want to do after graduation?
At times
1. how often do you have inter-class football games?
2. do you ofter go to the bookstores downtown?
1. if a person tends to believe what he is told, what is he likely to do when he talks
   with other people?
2. what will happen to somebody if he doesn’ have a plan for his expenses?
3. if a person is not resolute enough to get rid of his bad habits,what is he likely to
keep…in the dark
1. do you like to know everything about yourself?
2. did you ever keep your parents in the dark? When did you do so?
3. why did you keep them in the dark?

Take leave (of)
1. what do guests do when a party comes to an end?
2. you see your friend off at the railway station, and now the train is about to pull out.
   What do you and your friend do?
3. why do people go to the railway station?
4. what do people say to take leave after visiting or when seeing somebody off/
 in the long run
1. do you find it hard to learn English?
2. it costs a lot to build a subway. Do you think it wise to do so?
3. what would you say to a person who smokes a lot?

Take a stand for/against
1. do you know our government’s attitude toward interference in other countries’
   internal affairs?
2. what is your attitude toward deceptive practices in medicine?

II. While-reading Activities
1.Ss have the silent reading on the text (10 mins)
2.T explains the text in details.
Lines 1-5
1. what is the doctor’s purpose in treating his patient?
   To cure illness, speed recovery,save life and prolong life as long as possible.
2. can a doctor’s lie benefit a patient?
   We’ll find the answer in the text.
3. should people tell the truth if they’ve promised to keep it a secret?
   In most cases,no. they should uphold the promise of secrecy.
4. how can lies do good to the need to expose corruption?
   They can prevent the untimely alerting of the target,perhaps government officials,
   and avoid adding difficulty to uncovering their wrong doings.
5. do you agree that the requirements of honesty may be dwarfed by greater needs in
   medicine, law and government for good purposes?
Lines 6-12
1. what is a routine physical checkup?
2. if you were this 46-year-old patient, what would you like the doctor to tell you?
   I want the doctor to tell me the truth because…
   I don’t want…
3. if you were the doctor, would you tell the truth?
Lines 13-22
1. what is a self-serving lie?
   It is a lie which serves for the teller’s own interest. For example, a doctor
   exaggerates the seriousness of the illness so that he can charge more.
2. try to paraphrase the sentence “Ours is a profession…’as far as possible do no
3. we doctors have been following a principle that as far as we can we must avoid
   doing any harm to our patients. We should not tell the truth regardless of

Lines 23-27
1. what is a doctor’s deceptive practice?
2. what is a placebo?
3. what does “sound more encouraging than facts warrant” mean?
4. how does a doctor distort grave news?
5. how do these deceptive practices work on the patients?

Lines 28-35
1. how do you understand “the illusory nature…be documented.”
2. what does the author mean by “feeling betrayed”?
3. how is information humanely conveyed?

Lines 36-46
1. what does “advocates of benevolent deception” mean?
2. what is “the autonomy of patients”?
3. what are “informed choices”?
4. what does “choose to be a patient in the first place” mean?
5. how do you understand “we are becoming…”?
6. what does “kept in the dark”mean?
Lines 47-52
1. what is the difference between integrity and credibility?
2. how do you understand “the suspicion…”
3. what does “it”refer to in “it contributes to…”?
4. what are the lawsuits related to?
5. what is “defensive medicine”?
6. how can lies injure the entire medical profession?

Lines 53-60
1. what is “bills of rights”?
2. what are included in the patients’ bills of rights?
3. what maybe alternatives for treatment?
4. what does”the most eloquent bill of rights?” mean?

Lines 61-68
1. what issue is there urgent need to debate openly?
2. whom do “practitioners” refer to?
3. how do you understand “serious consequences seem avoidable only through
4. whom does “the public” refer to?
5. how do you understand “such practices are peculiarly likely to become deeply
3.T asks Ss to come out the main idea, structure of the text (10mins)
4.T summarizes the main idea and structure of the text (5 mins)
     summary questions and concluding remarks
1.what is the doctor’s dilemma?
2.what do many doctors choose to do?
3.what are the doctors’ reasons for telling lies?
4.what are some of the disadvantages of a doctor’s lying?
5. what is the author’s attitude toward this issue? why?

III. Post-reading Activities
1.Let the students do the exercises in the textbook which are related to the new words.
2.Ss hand in the summary of the text.
3.Ss discuss the questions on the topic related to the text.
4.Let Ss do the exercises in the text book which are mainly related to the new words
and topic.

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