“You could have told me what I was from the beginning! Why didn’t you?”
this is confusion: why did you let me find out on my own…and like this
“You could have told me what I was from the beginning! Why didn’t you?”
this is horror: why did you let me, a frost giant, feel like i ever…
This is officially the best example of why teaching English is hard. I almost tried to attempt to explain how emphasis changes a sentence once on a tangent with the advanced class, but I felt a tickle on my brain and I knew that if I tried to continue my head would explode like a watermelon in one of them Gallagher shows.
Before I read the caption I thought this was a giant slice of cake. Upon finding that it is actually a dictionary as tall as a short stack of pancakes bricks I want it just as much. Mmmm, book-learnin’.
Fond memory from Korea: The time half the class didn’t show up (48/2=24) so I teacher’d 24 students into playing a single game of Scrabble. Epic-dary! Nothing amiss here. 6 people per team? Yes that’s how you play!
Anyway it was great as an informal skills practice because the higher level students could take the lead while all students were involved in picking words together. The best recipe imo for a good skills practice in Korean schools is teams + competition + on-level puzzle.
If you were to transcribe everything I said in a day, I’m sure you’d have quite a bit of the Exclamation Comma in there. And the Interrobang. ‽‽‽ @fivefifteen - Don’t show these to your students.
The amount of joy I got out of these new punctuation mark has nearly reduced me to tears. The exclamation comma would turn my crappy poetry into remarkably! crappy poetry.
Interesting sidenote. Do your students/did you ever see your former students do this? They’ll do the ^ mark, but they would make it upside down like a v and then write underneath the line rather than over it. They were not at all having it when I tried to tell them to do it like ^. I was watching eatyourkimchi today and they brought up the possibility of being trolled by students. I felt trolled by this. I also felt trolled by “Her-me-own” but you have to figure that’s Korea trolling the whole world in that case.
Pretending to laugh
students: -whispering- Ginny pig
me: -turns around on one foot in a sweeping movement-
students: pig pig -whispering-
me: WHAT?
students: Ginny pig!
me: WHAT?
students: You look like a Ginny pig!
me: … EXPLAIN
students: Ginny, guinea… GUINEA PIG!
me: … oh.
It’s better and somehow not better??
Going to play “Ninja” in Summer English Camp. Hope it works. Also I’m adding to the rules that shouting any variation on the word “MOTHERFUCKER!” is instant death. It’s school afterall.
Main goal: Slap opponents hand with your hand. Direct hit equals DEATH!!
Starting the game: One person counts down from 3 then the group jumps out of huddle and strikes their ninja pose.
The person who counted down has first move.
Once frozen in your ninja position you can not move unless it is your turn or while dodging an attack.
Two optional “house rules” about ATTACKING!! 1: you can jump with both feet to move/attack or 2: you are only allowed to pivot on one foot.
When attacking only a direct hit to someones hand counts as a kill. Body & or Wrist/Arm hits do NOT count as a kill.
Do not hit opponents in the Face or other vital areas it can result in disqualification.
Once you make your 1 fluid attack your turn is now over.
On Defense you can only move as a reaction to an ATTACK, you can NOT move your feet to dodge. You may only move your arms/upper body and once that dodge is completed your arm/upper body must stay in that position.
Optional “house rule” during a defensive move you hit an opponents hand other than your attacker it will count as a kill.
Objective of the game is to be the last man standing.
Or in groups of 5 or more make it to the last two people standing. These two people now go back to back, count down from three and jump into their final show down ninja pose. The person with the best ninja pose has first attack. Then they battle to the DEATH!!!
picture unrelated. I just really want to eat that.
A conversation with students who are renting movies out from the English Zone.
me: we have Wallace and Gromet if you…
student: Oh! Like-euh like-euh! -takes it out of the case-
student who apparently understands more than she can say: have… Skins? [Koreans pronounce it like it rhymes with “Since”]
me: … you did not just say Skins.
understanding student: Yeah! Yeah Skins Skins!
me: NO I DO NOT HAVE SKINS. You should not watch that!
both of them: Why not? It’s so funny!
me: … it’s too sexy?!
both of them: HAHAHA! -laughing in the face of sex-
I like how Skins is just foreigners doing funny things. It’s the American version they’re after, btw. We shall not begrudge them their taste…
Some of you might remember that I posted this video before, but that was about 100 followers ago, so… I’m showing it again to my classes this week [different students of course] as a questions for candy video. Question : what’s one difference between Simon’s school and your school? My students really love to watch it, especially the scenes where the kids are harassing each other one way or another. Me, I like to put it on because “Lisztomania” by Phoenix is my favorite song of all time.
I’d really like to put together one of these videos myself before I leave… going to have to get the camera out a lot more. I like the trick that Simon seems to have used: telling them it’s just a picture and then filming them trying to pose for it.
I feel really happy now.
So I don’t know what that [last week I had a meltdown] was all about exactly, but now that I am going home at the end of this contract I feel so much lighter. I am no longer in a mood, and it’s hard to get me into one, which is as things should be.
It was kind of sudden, and the details are still kind of shaky [and as long as they are shaky, my ass is staying put] but I should be going home soon to take college courses to get myself a stronger footing for grad school. I figure, since I’m young I can do something like this, and since I’m young, I should. I can always come back to Korea, thanks to that… youngness.
I’ve been telling my parents about how young people should chase the white whale and my white whale is grad school. They’ve been listening politely. I just feel like… there was so much pressure to do well here, and I never felt that I was doing well enough. I know that I worked really FUCKING hard for two years, and that is almost enough for me to accept that I have done a good job. And I will continue to do that good job until my contract is up, and if I ever come back I will do even better.
Why don’t I feel like I was good enough? because that’s just the kind of person I am. I am the kind of person who struggles to feel that they are good enough and needs a lot of reassurance. If I had to give advice to new teachers I would say this: Koreans play their cards close to the chest, and therefore you should never work your ass off to please them. That doesn’t mean don’t work hard, just that you shouldn’t expect praise for a job well done, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up assuming the opposite is true because of their silence. More advice? develop a network of friends in the same job as you [elementary to elementary, high school to high school] so you have someone else to gage your performance against, and get advice from if you need it. Also, don’t bitch too much. When you bitch, problems seem to get bigger.
That’s all. I hope things work out. I still haven’t decided what to do completely, but like someone told me last week — shut up and you’ll figure out which way you are leaning. I think I’m leaning this way now.
What are some popular games you play in your classes?
Because my “let’s all be serious and learn something together” approach isn’t working. And it’s making me very angry. So what are some games you play — what’s the language point behind them — how do you get the students to participate — and what do you do with the ones who refuse?
A disembodied head who talks about writing a lot circa 2012.
Formerly and still often about teaching English to high school girls [high schoolgirls? maybe not as likely here] in South Korea, and also sometimes pictures of cats, and also occasionally helpful resources. And diversions. Lots of diversions from around the web.
![picture unrelated. I just really want to eat that.
A conversation with students who are renting movies out from the English Zone.
me: we have Wallace and Gromet if you…
student: Oh! Like-euh like-euh! -takes it out of the case-
student who apparently understands more than she can say: have… Skins? [Koreans pronounce it like it rhymes with “Since”]
me: … you did not just say Skins.
understanding student: Yeah! Yeah Skins Skins!
me: NO I DO NOT HAVE SKINS. You should not watch that!
both of them: Why not? It’s so funny!
me: … it’s too sexy?!
both of them: HAHAHA! -laughing in the face of sex-
I like how Skins is just foreigners doing funny things. It’s the American version they’re after, btw. We shall not begrudge them their taste…](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lm7dpskLJf1qezzfso1_500.jpg)
