That Grammas Are Wrong

I mentioned in my previous post that I am playing a K-Pop quiz game this week with my high school classes.  It has been pretty successful with the high school students, so I decided to try it out with middle school today.  I chose my 8th graders, because my coteacher never shows up and their English level is low.  I thought the K-Pop game was a great way to keep them engaged for an hour.

The coteacher for that class, the vice principal, has not shown up for a single class in two months.  Unfortunately, he chose to grace us with his presence today (the one day he wasn’t needed).  He did a good job of staying out of my hair (I know, ironic) for the first half of the class, but he decided to butt in during the second half.  Instead of voicing his disapproval of my game in private, he stopped class to tell me that he was surprised by my poor grammar.

I was shocked.  I didn’t know what he was talking about.  Finally, he explained that my game was full of grammatical errors.  The students must read a song’s lyrics and guess the artist and title.  Because they are song lyrics, they sometimes don’t make sense out of context.  This is, of course, part of the challenge for students.

I tried to explain that I did not write the sentences – I simply copied and pasted the song lyrics into the game.  I could tell he wasn’t satisfied, but he let it go…until he saw this:

 

VP:  That grammars are wrong!
Me:  Yes the grammar is wrong.  Should I call the record company and complain?
VP:  No, you will correct the grammars in game.
Me:  Do you understand that these are song lyrics?  If I “correct” them, we cannot play the game.
VP:  But you cannot say “again” two times like this.  It is wrong grammars.
Me:  You can say it twice if you’re singing this song.
VP:  But the grammars are wrong.
Me:  Tell me exactly what you want me to do.
VP:  The grammars are wrong.  Make the grammars right.
Me:  Ok, I’ll change them before my next class.  *total lie*

If we weren’t standing in front of the students during that exchange, I might have blown a gasket.  I think their presence may have saved my job.   I definitely owe them one.

Until next time.

-Taft

No Wonder…

No wonder none of these kids can speak English.  Because I’m teaching summer school for a few weeks, I have a different schedule.  The vice principal and I take turns using my classroom, which is attached to my office.  This means that I can hear everything that he says.  I am constantly cringing as I listen to him do “Listen and Repeat” exercises with the students.

“The dog ate my leg and it is hurts.”

“I have appointment with my friends at the movies cinema.”

“Mr. Lee is the best.  He will come back in a victory.”

“The coffee store is where I meet my friend for appointments and fun.”

I tried correcting him a few times, but he likes to argue with me.  As it turns out, his three months of “accelerated Engerish speak crasses” that he received two years ago trump my life experience.  So, the next best thing is to listen carefully while he teaches and try to learn from the master.  I’ll share the wealth if he comes up with any more gems next week.

Until next time.

-Taft

Culture Clash

This morning, a student came into my office and asked for my help editing a speech that she wrote.  She is a nice student and she occasionally participates in class (which is exceptionally rare), so I was happy to help.  I took one look at what she wrote and realized that it needed a lot of work.  No problem, we’ll go over it line-by-line and get it fixed.  About three lines into the editing, during which we totally re-wrote all three lines, she told me that she had to go.  “Please hurry to finish, I return later.”

I turned to give her my “REALLY?” face, but she was already gone.  Before I finished formulating my tirade, one of my colleagues told me that I should hurry and finish the speech soon.  Final drafts of students’ speeches for the annual speech contest are due by lunch time today.  I was speechless (temporarily).

My colleague explained that it is vital that I correct her speech in time.  She has been pre-selected to win, so it must be edited well.  I was sure that the teacher simply didn’t understand the meaning of “pre-selected.”  I explained that pre-selected means that she was chosen as the winner before the contest, which is obviously not the case…because it’s a contest.  But no…I heard right.  If I understood the rest of our conversation correctly, it appears that this student’s father is a major donor to the school, and he decided that his child will be the winner this year.

This is one of those occasional situations when two cultures are at odds.  The Koreans couldn’t understand why this was so surprising to me.  Though this type of thing exists to some degree in every culture, I was taken aback by the fact that it was so openly discussed.

Though I want to learn Korean culture, and have no desire to force my ideals on my Korean colleagues, I also couldn’t compromise my personal ethics.  I decided to meet the student (and my colleagues) in the middle.  I agreed to continue helping her with the speech, but I refused to simply do it for her and hand it over.  I sent an email to the girl’s homeroom teacher explaining that I will be happy to work with her to edit the speech, and that the student may come to my office when she is ready to get to work.  Hopefully this paper trail will help me cover my ass if she doesn’t show up and daddy gets upset.

It is important to note that I am sharing this story not because I am upset, but because I think it is an excellent example of a culture clash.  Once I understood the dynamics of the situation, it didn’t bother me.  If this is OK in Korean culture, then I see no reason to get on my soapbox and try to impose my cultural beliefs on others in a totally Korean situation.

Until next time.

-Taft

Bad Feeling

Apparently sometime in the past few days I agreed to go on a trip next month.  This could have happened during just about any conversation with my coteacher.  I try not to do the “uh huh” game with him, but occasionally I don’t have a choice.

You may be asking, “But wait.  If you didn’t realize that you were agreeing to a trip, how did you find out?”

Good question.

Vice Principal: Wirriam, very excite that you go trip.
Me: Oh yeah, what trip?
VP: Yes.  Very excite.
Me: Where is the trip?
VP: Yes, it very fun.
Me: Ok…  When is it?
VP: The beach.
Me: OK.
VP: Have you prepare pop song yet?
Me: I don’t understand.  Prepare a pop song?
VP: Yes.  It is great!  See you.

So…it sounds like I may be doing some singing on a beach trip.  I imagine this trip will rear its ugly head right about the time I forget that I had this conversation.

Until next time.

-Taft

World Geography – Korea Style

I haven’t quite figured out why, but the vast majority of students in my school have absolutely zero geography knowledge.  For that reason, I decided to do a lesson on geography this week.  So far, it has been a big hit.  Color me surprised.

After we review cardinal directions and continents, we move on to countries.  I decided not to teach any country names this week.  I think that would be too much to take in at once.  Instead, we have a competition.  I break the classes down into teams of 6 and give each team a blank piece of paper.  They have to write the names of as many countries as they can in five minutes (in English).  I don’t count spelling, as long as I understand what they meant.

To help them along, I show the first five minutes of this video immediately before beginning the game:

To my surprise, not a bit of it sinks in.  In my first five classes, no team wrote down more than twelve country names.  It was incredible.  They simply couldn’t think of the names.  After a few classes, I decided to ask them how many names they know in Korean.  Same result.  They just don’t know the names or locations of other countries.

Then this morning, one of my students went all Seabiscuit on me and wrote down the names of 37 countries.  I couldn’t believe it.  He even managed to spell half of them right – which is rare.  The students do a pretty good job of spelling names phonetically, but it is incredibly difficult for a non English speaker to spell country names correctly.

I think this is going to have to be a two-week lesson.  Hopefully something will sink in.  Hell, I may teach these kids something after all.

Until next time.

-Taft