Summary of the email Marty's story

■There are not many people in the world like me.

■I have a muscle disease that sometimes makes me very weak.

■I have learned to adapt to my disability. My motto is: live one day at a time.

■Up until I was about 10 years old, I was the same as everyone else in my class.

■One of the worst things about my disease is that I don't look any different from other people.

■My ambition is to work in the computer industry when I grow up.

■In many ways my disability has made me grow stronger and more independent. 2. Learning about the Infinitive

Infinitive

An infinitive is the simple present form of a verb used as either a noun, adjective, or adverb. The verb of the infinitive is normally preceded by the word to. When the infinitive follows some verbs as the direct object, the "to" may be dropped.

　　An infinitive phrase is the infinitive plus any complements and any modifiers of the infinitive and complements.

As a Noun: He helped to write the program.

As an Adjective: Lydia was looking for a way to earn money.

As an Adverb: He shouted to get our attention.

To Dropped: He helped write the program.

In the above examples, the infinitive is italicized and the infinitive phrase is underlined.

3. Listening, reading and completing

Now you are going to listen to a short paragraph about Zhang Haidi.

The model status of Zhang Haidi (Shandong Province, 1955), widely publicized in print and in propaganda posters from 1983 on, is an interesting one. Zhang Haidi, also known as Ling Ling, became a paraplegic at the age of five following four operations for the removal of tumors in her spine. When she received news that her illness was incurable, she was reported to have attempted to commit suicide by taking sleeping pills, an action usually considered as a betrayal of the revolution and as evidence of discontent with socialism, and therefore as the act of a coward. She never went to school, but through diligent self-study, she learned to read books on politics, literature and medical science. She also learned foreign languages, including English, Japanese and German. She did not only function as a model because of her intellectual accomplishments or her devotion to serving others, but also because "... In Lei Feng, Chinese youths had to reach for communism. In Zhang Haidi, communism reaches for Chinese youths."