Unit 5. Dreams
- The Interpretation of Dreams
Somer’s Letter Telling Her Dream
Dear Steve,
I had a dream the other day about the end of the world seeing I were in a spaceship with two other people. They pushed a button and everything on the earth was destroyed. When we got out of the spaceship we were in Michigan at the Great Lakes. We went in a hotel and this room had a chair nailed three feet high to the wall. My boyfriend sat upon it talking to me as if it was normal. I went outside with him to look at the house that was on a dock in the great lake. We were going to buy in from the two people who blew up the world. Then I awoke.
Do you know what that means?
Sincerely,
Somer
A Letter of Reply
Dear Somer,
Let's break down（解析）the various symbols in your dream.
The "end of the world" scenario（情节）in your dream implies a sense of powerlessness.
You may be feeling helpless and just want an easy escape from your daily responsibilities.
You indicated that you, your boyfriend and your friends survived the destruction of the
earth. These people symbolize your support system.
The spaceship in your dream signifies your spiritual journey into your subconscious andthe unknown. And the notion that the spaceship lands at the Great Lakes is no coincidence. The Great Lakes, being bodies of water, symbolizes the subconscious and unknown. It is also ironic（讽刺的）that after having destroyed the world you find yourself at the Great Lakes because water happens to be a natural analogy for the flow of life energy and fertility.
Although you are expressing some helplessness in the beginning of your dream, you still have the will to live life to the fullest. Things may look bleak at the present time, but tomorrow is a new day. With the support of friends and loved ones, you will find that your problems are conquerable. Your dream is telling you to take a new perspective on how you see things. To see a hotel in your dream signifies a new state of mind or a shift in personal identity. You need to move away from your old habits and old way of thinking. When you were at the hotel and there was a chair nailed three feet high from the ground, that was a literal interpretation of how you need to look at things from a different viewpoint.
And here are other common associations for you to refer to.
Food Associations
Generally speaking, food in dreams usually refers to food for thoughts, ideas, new beliefs,etc. They are ideas you take in and digest mentally.
To see apples growing in a tree in your dream symbolizes wisdom and great prosperity.Well-earned rewards will be promising in your future. Consider also the common phrase, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" which may imply that you need to take better care of your health.
To see a cake in your dream indicates that you need to learn to share and allocate yourworkload instead of trying to do everything yourself. Consider also the metaphor（隐喻）"a piece of cake”or some situation that is easy.
To see or eat eggs in your dream indicates that something new is about to happen.
To see or eat grapes in your dream represents wealth and prosperity. Your hard work will pay off.
To dream that you are eating ice cream denotes pleasure and satisfaction with your life. It is also an indication of good luck and success in love.
To see raw meat in your dream signifies that there will be many obstacles and discouragement in achieving your goals.
To see onions in your dream signifies that you will be a target ofjealousy, spite, and envy as result of your success.
To see or eat pizza in your dream represents abundance, choices, and variety. It may also indicate that you are lacking or feeling deprived of something.
To see potatoes in your dream symbolizes laziness and/or stupidity.
To dream that you are making or drinking tea represents satisfaction and contentment in your life.
Body Parts
In some cases, your dream may forewarn health problems or concerns of a particular body part when it is different than usual. For example, to see your legs in your dream signifies that you have regained confidence to stand up and take control again. It also implies progress and your abilityto navigate through life. If your legs are weak, then you may be feeling emotionally vulnerable.
To see your arms in your dream may represent the struggles and challenges in your life.Consider the pun "arm yourself' which implies that you need to protect yourself, be more aggressive and take a firmer stance（姿态）on things.
To dream of your back may relate to stress and pressure that someone is putting on you.
To see rosy-colored cheeks in your dream signifies life energy, enthusiasm and vitality.
To dream of pain in your ear indicates that you will receive some bad or offensive news.
To see your own eyes in your dream represents enlightenment, knowledge, comprehension, understanding and intellectual awareness. The left eye is symbolic of the moon, while the right eye represents the sun. To dream that you have something in your eye, represents obstacles in your path.
To dream that you are washing your hands represents a worrisome issue that you need towork through.
To see lips in your dream are seen as a means of communication as in the familiar phrase"read my lips".
To dream that your tooth is lost signifiesfailures and bad news. To dream that you are
brushing your teeth, signifies that you will undergo a hard struggle in order to hold on to yourfortune.
Colors
Before consulting definitions of what the color in your dreams signifies, first consider yourown personal and special associations with the color. Does the color remind you of a particularperson, a body part, a childhood toy, or some object? For example, the color yellow may remindyou of the childhood school bus you rode in or the yellow house you grew up in.
To dream in black and white suggests that you need to be more objective in formulatingyour decisions and need to consider the opinions of others.
Purple is the color of royalty, high rank, and dignity.
The color red has deep emotional and spiritual connotations(内涵). It is also the color ofdanger, shame, sexual impulses and urges.
Silver represents justice and purity.
Emotions
Fear and anxiety are the most commonly expressed emotions in dreams. Anger ranks next.Fear, anger, and sadness occur twice as often as pleasant emotions. It is important to note that thefeelings we experience in dreams are not symbols of something else but reflections of our realfeelings. Such feelings may have been repressed during the day and as a result are coming out inyour dreams.
Best regards,
Steve
(1,184 words)
Time taken:____ minutes
Exercises
- Decide whether the following statements are True or False.
_____1.The passage mainly talks about the associations between dreams and real life.According to Steve, Somer should depend on herself to make breakthroughs in solving problems in her life.
_____2.Food in dreams is usually associated with food for thoughts in the interpretation of dreams.
_____3.Seeing an orange in your dream indicates that you are feeling a severe strain._____4.Seeing legs in a dream implies a lack of balance in your life.
_____5.There is little connection between personal experience and colors in dreams.
_____6.Anger appears most frequently in dreams next to fear.
B.Translate the underlined sentences into Chinese
- Blogs
Blogs and Bloggers
Do you know what a "blog" is?
The word "blog" is a short way of saying web log, or personal web site. It is used as both anoun and a verb.
As a noun, a blog is also known as an online journal or a web diary, as well as a contentmanagement system or an online publishing platform.
As a verb, "to blog" means to write on one's web log.
There are millions of blogs on the Internet today. They provide news, information and
ideas to the many people who read them. They contain links to other web sites. And they provide a place for people to write their ideas and react to the ideas of others.
Essentially, a web log is a chronologically(按时间顺序地) organized site with the latest
entry appearing at the top of the page. It is updated by an individual (or a group of individuals)using these main items in each entry or post:
●Main Body--where personal commentaries, ideas, and/or stories are typically written in the first person “I”.
●Date/Time Stamp--to show the day and/or time of the entry.
●Title--to give a general idea of what the entry is all about. However, this is not always used byall blog users.
There are other items incorporated（包括） in various blogs depending on what each bloguser may want in their own blogs.
Depending on the blog host/software, various blogs have different parts or components.Some of the most common parts/components are: blog title, main blog entry, date stamp,comments and permalinks(永久链接).
A "blogger" is a person who writes on a"blog". Anyone can start a blog, and they can
write about anything they like. Bloggers are asvaried as the types of blogs available. However,they may be categorized into four maintypes: personal bloggers, business bloggers,organizational bloggers and professionalbloggers.
Personal bloggers often create blogsthat contain diary or journal-type entries. Some
focus their blogs on specific themes or topicsthat they feel passionately about like sports, technology, education, news, politics, pets, writing, art or photography.
It is estimated that there are approximately three million blogsbeing tracked by mid-2004. And, that number is continuously growing as blog software, tools and other applicationsmore accessible to individuals.
Starting a Blog
There are many blog hosts, applications and software systems available to people who wish to start their own blogs. Do a search and check out each one's features. Depending on your requirements, here are some points that you need to consider when choosing where to blog.
●Purpose-What are you planning to use your blog for? If it's for personal use, you may not require a lot of functionality (多功能) and features. On the other hand, if you wish to set up a group blog, you should look for a blog host/system that has administrative functions that will allow you to add authors/bloggers and moderate(控制) posts.
●Technical Mastery-How good are you with the computer and the Internet? If you're not sure what FTP, CGI and CHMOD mean-and you don't really want to bother with them-then youshould choose a blog host/system that requires the least possible technical requirements to set up.
●Value-Many blog hosts/systems are available for free.
Blogs and Websites
There are three things that blogs and websites have in common: 1) both are ways to
publish information and other data online; 2) both can be started and kept by any individual who is inclined to do so; and 3) both have URLsthat anyone with an Internet connection can access. However, the similarities end there.
The main difference between the two is that blogs tend to be a lot more dynamic than websites. Blogs are updated on a regular basis with posts or entries that usually contain date/time stamps. Websites, on the other hand, are designed to be static.So, there is no need to update regularly and/or to add the date/time of update. Also, websites are updated with pages rather than posts or entries. Even with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tools, some form of formatting knowledge is still required for designing and updating websites.
Another point of difference is in communities. While websites may maintain community-based tools like message boards and guestbooks, blogs encourage community building much more than websites.
Blog Cases
A research company called Perseus has studied more than three-thousand web logs. It says that blogs are most popular with teenage girls. They use them to let their friends know what is is happening in their lives. The study also says that more than one hundred thousand bloggersstopped taking part in the activity after a year.
However, some people develop serious blogs to present political and other ideas. For
example, the Republican and Democratic parties in the southern state of Kentucky recently startedtheir own blogs. And American companies are beginning to use blogs to advertise their products.
At the same time, some long-standing blogs have ended. Last week, blogging leader DaveWiner closed his free blog service, weblogs.com. He says the site became too costly to continue.He started the blog four years ago, and thousands of people had written on it. They are now upsetbecause they did not know that the site was closing.
One blog that is still going strong is called Rebecca's Pocket. Rebecca Blood created theweb site in 1999. She wrote about the history of blogs on the site. That article led to a book calledThe Weblog Handbook. It has been translated into four languages so far.
Miss Blood says Rebecca's Pocket gets about thirty thousand visitors a month. She writesabout anything and everything-politics, culture and movies. She recently provided medicaladvice. And she wrote about how to prevent people from stealing money from online bankaccounts. (994 words)
Time taken:_____minutes
Notes:- FTP = File Transfer Protocal 文件传输协议
- CGI = Common Gateway Interface 公共网关接口
- CHMOD = Change Mode 改变文件模式
- URL = Uniform Resource Locator 在互联网的WWW服务程序上用于指定信息位置
Exercises
- Skimming and Scanning
Directions: Choose the best answer to each of the following questions.
1. The author's purpose in writing this article is to____
A. highly praise the development of blogs
B. introduce the development of blogs
C. call on people to support blogs
D. make comments on bloggers
2. A blog means all of the following EXCEPT____
A. a web diary
B. a content management system
C. a chat website
D. an online publishing platform
3. Entries of a web log are arranged according to____
A. place
B. time
C. characters
D. importance of events
4. The main items in an entry include____
A. main body, date stamp and comments
B. title, main body and main blog entry
C. main body, time stamp and title
D. main body, time stamp and main blog entry
5. Personal bloggers often provide entries of____
A. essays
B. introductions
C. advertisements
D. journals
6. The number of bloggers keeps increasing because____
A. blogs started long time ago
B. bloggers are on friendly terms with one another
C. more and more organizations support personal blogs
D. blog applications are becoming more and more convenient
7. If you want to establish a group blog, you should find a blog host____
A. that has been given great credit for its functionality
B. that has as many bloggers as possible
C. that can add bloggers and take control of posts
D. that has many skilled bloggers
8. We can infer from the passage that____
A. websites are more difficult to be updated than blogs
B. website entries need to be updated
C. blogs should be updated every day
D. blogs are only encouraged to develop in communities
9. Dave Winer put an end to his free blog service because____
A. it was not fashionable any more
B. he couldn't afford the expenses
C. he was so tired that he wanted to retire
D. many people were upset about it
10. The Weblog Handbook is about____
A. everything including politics, culture and movies
B. how to avoid online money stealing
C. the history of blogs
D. medical advice
- Expanding Vocabulary
Directions: The following is a summary of the selection you have just read. Read it through carefully and select one word for each blank from the list given below. Change the form if necessary. Do not use any of the words more than once.
account technological regularly financial prosperousorganize technical occasionally compose react
scientific accessible classify decline similar
The word "blog" is a brief form of web log. There are a great number of blogs on theInternet today. Not only can they provide information to people but enable people to write and 1 to all kinds ofideas on them. Entries on a blog are 2 in a time order with thelatest one at the head of the rank.
Bloggers are people who write on blogs. They can mainly be 3 into four types:
personal bloggers, business bloggers, organizational bloggers and professional bloggers.