Blogging Instructions for My Students

Here are the instructions for my students during the Korean Thanksgiving Holiday (Chuseok).

1. Read through any or all of what you see on this blog.

2. Click on "comment".

3. Type in the box to the right.

4. Click the box next to "anonymous" (Or you can set up an i.d. with Google or another source).

5. Click on "submit".

6. As more students post, please respond to what they write.

7. Please don't use your dictionary for this activity.

8. If you don't understand, ask, "What does ~ mean?"

9. The important thing is for you to read and write.

10. When you don't know how to say something in English you can use Konglish.

11. I will post examples on each of the articles I have written for you.

12. Here is what I mean by "Konglish": I 먹었다 rice.

Trying to Speak in Korean in Class

It seems that I am always humbled regarding my Korean skills during the semester. Person to person conversations in Korean are much more comfortable than when I try to speak Korean in class. And there is still a percentage of students who can understand me while there is also a percentage of people who can't seem to understand me. When this happens (Being humble as far as my Korean ability is concerned) there is always a process of soul-searching for me.

So I'd like to invite my students to join me in this quest. What do you think of my effort to speak Korean? Does it help you understand what I am trying to say in English, better? Is it sometimes as difficult to understand as when I speak in English? Does it keep you from learning English? Do you feel like I am trying to learn more about speaking Korean than I am trying to teach you in English?

Free-talking

This is the second week that I have free-talked with all of my students in English Conversation and Screen English classes. I decided to do this instead of assigning homework that they have to write and I have to read and correct. I am mostly satisfied with this process. I am finding that I have far too often misjudged my students.

The challenge of this is that it is difficult to have natural conversation but playing "games" works much better. This seems to help students focus more on speaking without being overwhelmed by difficult conversation. As this blog demonstrates, it is very difficult for me to speak in simple English.

I would like to know what my students think of free-talking. How does it compare to class-time? Do you feel like this is helping you improve your English skills? How do you perceive me during this time as opposed to class time? What do you think of the methods I have used so far to free-talk with you?

Correcting Newspaper Headlines

I was surprised in my English Conversation classes how difficult it was to correct headlines. Students were supposed to correct newspaper headlines that omitted the "a", "the" or no article at all. I thought this would be a breeze but it was more difficult than I thought. Thinking that there was no such thing as "the" in Korean, I didn't talk about it from that perspective. But I learned in my second conversation class that this does in fact exist in Korean. One of the ways it exists is with "그". This can mean "that house (그 집)" if a person can see the house. But it can also mean, "The house" if the house is not visible.

During this Chuseok holiday, I'm asking my students to think about how to talk about the food they eat. For example, rice cake, kimchi, the table (Koreans don't eat tables of course, but here is an example of "the").

What's in your home?

It seemed rather difficult for my Screen English students to talk about the arrangement of their dorm rooms or the home where off-campus students live. I suppose this was for two reasons. The first is that they had to think about how their homes or dorm rooms are arranged. The second reason is that they had to think about how to say this in English. The difficulty of this exercise is in using prepositions. But in many cases students didn’t know how to translate prepositions from Korean to English. For example, 옆에 (next to), 아래에 (under), 미테 (down). I would like my students to try this again on this blog while they are home with their families. They can pick any room and write about this as a comment. I want to see if this will be easier if they are in the room than it is trying to think of how the room looks. Don’t forget to describe aspects like “The couch is in front of the window” as well as arranging issues like, “There is a stack of laundry on the floor in my room.”

Teaching with Tools

Next week marks the beginning of the third week of the semester. I'm feeling better about classes this semester with the books that I purchased. It's unfortunate that I didn't do this sooner. I am learning about some better methods to use to teach class. In former days, I didn't do much with games, partly because it is difficult to explain them. Instead, I would stand up in front of the class and try to get people to talk. This would often result in frustrating the students as well as myself. It seems that the students are more interested in English than I thought. They just need to have more opportunity to "release" at their own pace when everybody in the class is not watching them.

Another aspect outside of the class that I am playing with is free-talking. The university where I work only requires 6 hours of free-talking. This could mean that I only have to meet 6 students outside of the class. I decided to free-talk with my students, all 110, instead of giving them a writing assignment. I think it is important for students to practice speaking English outside of class. But I don't think writing is the way to help students improve English Conversation skills, for instance. This is a tiring task but it seems to me to be a valuable one.

Feel free to leave a comment about whatever class you are taking, or if you are a student or whatever. I'll try to post the names of these books that are making these classes more delightful, or so it seems to be.

Homework: Freetalking

This is my first entry on this blog since the semester started. I'm hoping to do more work on this blog so that you students can leave your comments.

So far I am very pleased with free-talking. Although this is difficult for students, I am enjoying getting to meet my students and feeling more fulfilled this way than if I were to assign you all kinds of projects that I would have to read at night which would take away from the time I can spend free-talking with you.

I'm sorry for the long sentences. I'll try to keep them shorter so you can understand me better.

I am also pleased with the classes I have taught so far. My only complaints are the difficulty of getting students to understand how the activities work and the fact that I couldn't show more videos in class today due to technical difficulties. I hope to have that problem fixed by the time my next class rolls around.

I also want to recommend the Cambridge Language Learning Library. I received some positive feedback from a student on behalf of other students regarding the new format. I'm not using an English Conversation textbook. I'm also not doing my usual "stand in front of the class to get people to talk" format. I usually protest being put in a classroom with no computer but I've decided to try using a classroom without a computer and I think it is working well so far. If I can continue what I've started I think things will go well.

I hope you students will be honest with me about your perspective on this class. Thanks for listening and hanging in there between my high-level English and my poor Korean pronunciation and grammar. I'm excited to see what happens with your English and our teacher/professor-student relationships.

Don't forget. YOU CAN DO IT (Speak English well, I mean)!