How are you, again?

Many of the students finished their Speaking Tests this week. One of the questions for the 1^st Grade was simply: “How are you?”

Simple, isn’t it? You would think, but the trick is that I had a full lesson about not just saying the go to “I’m fine, thank you, and you?” (A-eem pine 10 Q N new?) I wanted students to say something else. Pretty much anything else would have been fine with me. 95% of the students would open with this and I would reply “No ‘Fine thank you’. Change.” The next answer would mostly be the annoying no meaning “I’m so-so”, and there they would stop.

The reason I didn’t want “A-eem pine 10 Q N new?” is because they say this without even thinking. The moment I ask them to change it they don’t understand what they are saying. Even when, after “I’m so-so”, I point to myself with a questioning look, they still do not add “and you?” (or something to that effect). I had high level students who, after many prompts, and after they actually added “How are you?” would be unable to string the two together when I ask the question again.

I honestly understand that a lot of English is just repetition, but this was a whole lesson, we did a review, I made sure they had the correct answers on the review papers and then asked those exact questions in the test, and still they throw “A-eem pine 10 Q N new?” at me.

(When people ask me how I am I generally answer “I’m OK”, or “Good-Good”, but I will very often change that. I do this because when you ask me that I assume you actually want to know, so I think about the answer. I find it rather annoying when I ask someone how they are and they say “I’m fine thank you and you?” while blood is dripping from their ears, and when I start telling them how I am they pretty much ignore me.)

Paragraphs exist, kind of.

Yesterday I was wondering what the story is with the students never using paragraphs. One of my Co-s explained to me that they do, in fact, learn what paragraphs are, but the teacher basically don’t have time to worry about it. There are too many students to effectively do any sort of writing assignment. Also, writing is not something that is needed for the exams, and since the parents and the system only care about student scores in exams, the teacher generally spend all their time on things that will improve said score.

Train of thought don’t stop me now

After reading another load of speeches, I have come to the conclusion that Koreans generally don’t understand the concept of paragraphs and might not actually be taught what these things are.
Students write their speeches starting each sentence on a new line.
And, they insert words like “Because, So, And” in the most random places.
And there never seems to be a natural break in what they are talking about almost as if they just produce a stream of thought.
And plonk it down on the paper before they forget what it was that they wanted to say grammar be damned.
It also appears as if they don’t understand that they are the only speakers. If you literally have the stage, then you don’t need to taaaaaaaalk, and end before a pausuuuuuse, with long voweeeeeeeeeeeeels, to indicate to people that you are not finiiiiiiiiished, and that they should not interrupt you yeeeeeeeeeeeeet , because…

I do understand that the style usage of “…, because…” is not the same in Korean (“Because,…” instead of “…, because…”), but surely they use of paragraphs is something a language teacher should be able to pick up on? This is a speech, after all. If a student can’t even make his own thought clear and keep them in some sort of order, and teacher checking their work don’t bother helping them, or heaven forbid, don’t even know that they are supposed to do it, then how will they be able to present it convincingly on stage?

You find it, I find it, we all find it.

It is almost Speech Contest time in this part of the world and along with the other teachers I’m tasked with reading speeches and fixing small mistakes and what-nots. My Co handed me this speech today, asking me to look at it and pointing out the difficult words used. This was what she handed me:

The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886. The statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue has become an iconic symbol of freedom and of the United States.

The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933 it has been maintained by the National Park Service. The statue was closed for renovation for much of 1938. In the early 1980s, it was found to have deteriorated to such an extent that a major restoration was required. While the statue was closed from 1984 to 1986, the torch and a large part of the internal structure were replaced. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, it was closed for reasons of safety and security; the pedestal reopened in 2004 and the statue in 2009, with limits on the number of visitors allowed to ascend to the crown. The statue is scheduled to close for up to a year beginning in late 2011 so that a secondary staircase can be installed. Public access to the balcony surrounding the torch has been barred for safety reasons since 1916.

Pretty impressive for a 1^st grade middle schooler, isn’t it. Well, no it isn’t. Any teacher under 40 should know how to use Google effectively. A little older and some don’t, but most do. Just type in the first sentence of the speech, up to about “sculpture”, and Google spits out two exact matches in the first two results. The student copied and pasted it, just removing a large paragraph in the middle, and handed it in.

Last year a student gave a piece to me that was written in Korean and translated online without even checking the results. His teacher didn’t pick it up, but I just handed it back with a note asking: “Please write an English speech, not a NAVER speech, please.”

Side note, the statue is currently being restored. Cant wait to see what it looks like new. I wonder if they are putting shackles on it to conform with the new policies in the Land of the Free?

.

Have some more points. It’s on me.

My 2^nd grade students were on a roll, never shutting up and generally just ignoring whichever teacher was talking. As punishment I gave them all 100 word essays to write. Needless to say, most didn’t even try and basically just went on making noise as if nothing was wrong. I told them, and even explained it on the board, that if they gave it to me that day, or before a 7 day week had passed, I would give them bonus points. Anyone not finished would receive penalty points, with the amount increasing cumulatively every week. The penalty point system is something some schools use.

It has been tree weeks now. I’m only counting two, giving them one, because we had holidays in between and some students missed a class with me. By right, I should still count that as a week, but without anyone to kick them in the arse and tell them to hand in the paper, they will just not do it.

Yesterday I handed in the group point sheets to the home room teachers, and boy, were the students upset. They are complaining that they lost the essays they wrote (Three weeks! Rewrite it dipshit!), that they haven’t had class with me until this week (Well why didn’t you hand it in this week, after having three weeks, dipshit?) or that they just didn’t know. (I know for a fact that I reminded you dipshit, more than once for some classes.)

It does not really matter what they say. It was punishment, they had three weeks to do it already and it is still not done. Even worse, they receive the marks yesterday and today they are still complaining, with no effing work to show!

.

F***! F***!F***!

After 5 minutes of trying to explain that the class is mixed and the test is now done with said mixed class, but also telling me that I should only test one unmixed class at a time when I am actually testing a mixed class, is just confusing. Then I make the mistake to mention that the students should bring their worksheets to the test. They should bring it so that I can check and make sure they did it. In other words I want to see if they kind of, just maybe, prepared for the test.

Me: Please ask the students to bring their worksheets next week so that we can check it.
Co: Blank expression
Me: (Slower) Please ask the students to bring their worksheets next week so that we can check it.
Co: Still blank expression
Me: OK?
Co: I don’t understand
Me: (pointing at the spare worksheets) Those worksheets. They must bring theirs to the test… next week.
Co: (more blank expression)
Me: (no idea how to say it otherwise)
Co: Please say it again
Me: The worksheets. These. Please as the students…to bring…these things…to the test.
Co: Bring what?
Me: (F***!) THESE! (Pointing)
Co: I don’t understand
Me: (Taking a worksheet and handing it to her) What is this?
Co: Last week’s lesson.
Me: (FFS! Taking the first lesson of the year) OK, then what is this?
Co: A lesson.
Me: These things. Students must bring to test.
Co: Frangswaa …You meean…students….must bring… paper to test?
Me: Yes, so we can check it.
Co: Frangswaa …You meean…you want students….to show paper? (What the F***did you just as me 2 seconds ago?)
Me: Yes.
Co: Frangswaa …You meean… (Basically saying the same thing with almost the same words)

This repeating thing will happen a few more times, sometimes repeating the “Frangswaa …You meean…” part with exactly the same words from earlier. In the meantime my internal dialogue is cursing and just trying to get this over with so that I can actually get to help my students who are supposed to be busy with a lesson, doing review work for this very test.

Why must it take 5 minutes for every little piece of information to be conveyed, and why, after I already said I understood, twice, three times, do we have to go over it again, and not even change the description? Or why, after you already confirmed the right thing, and I indicated that you understood correctly, does it need to be repeated 4 more times?

.

Just want to help.

I opened this video and saw something new. I was presented with  two options. The first, to watch an advert immediately and then watch the video you chose, and the second to be interrupted during my viewing.

I have no problem with advert as it allows me to view content without having to pay with my own money. However, I do have a problem when the "advert" is a 45 minute video of a Korean teacher giving a lesson for the TOIEC test. I'm in Korea, so I get Korea related adverts (that are all useless to me). This, however, is not an advert.

Easily remedied though. Reload and choose another option, this time actually paying attention to the length of the "advert". The frustration came when I thought I would be a nice user and try to help out by letting YouTube know that there is a  mismatch here.
Being sent circles to irrelevant pages to find a non-existent email for support is no fun at all, and I'm sure most people would agree.
.