Caution: It includes very very personal opinion. Don't be upset with this. :)
Speaking and Interactive Communication
As usual, we read an article and talked about it in group. It was sport events, and Nora brought up with Son YeonJae, the Korean rhythmic gymnastic athlete. She said that the player may be overly evaluated thinking about other Korean athletes who won medals but are not popular, so can’t be supported financially. To be honest, I don’t like this kind of saying. She is she and others are others. She has done great work as a Korean national player in the field which had been almost barren. Now, she has got fortune and chances to grow up more, others blame her for getting too much popularity. Why can’t Koreans just cheer and back up someone who does their best and get good results? On the internet, they always underevaluate what the player did and accuse him or her for being greedy for money. The player deserve everything and they need money to practice more! Others are unlucky and we should support them. Can’t you think like this? There are lots of low self-esteem people and They only say negative things like Man-association built by Sung JaeGi. He insisted that men are counter-discriminated by Woman-family Ministry and society that is friendly only to women. So he made the Man-association and get some donation from men on the internet. Moreover, the leader tried doing suicide performance as for a protest, but he did died by mistakes during the performance. What an idiot he was, and what idiots Korean males they are, who follow him. Woman right is still much lower than man’s. If it seems that women may have more power in society only because there are super alpha girls on the top. There is still huge gap between man’s payment and woman’s even for those who get the same job at the same time. Of course women usually have lower payment. Women still have to drop off their job when they are pregnant and it is absolutely not easy to come back to what they did before after one or two years. Still, men in Korea are so conservative that they think house choir and baby care is woman’s job. The problem is, teenage boys follow him without thinking. How badly do they impact on the boys! When I found out the association and many men support his opinion, I was so disappointed with Korean male creatures. They don’t deserve the word ‘man’.
Hm... I was too upset.
Also, we talked about Korean education, especially ratio of students who go to University and their study. Ah....haha. I don’t want to mention anything about this. I don’t think Korean education, especially from the kindergarten to high school, is bad. It is private institutes and tutoring that is really bad, crazy. And, some professors take advantage of their position and take some bribe from graduates students.. I heard this a lot and I don’t want to go back to my university. If I should study more, I must choose other universities or go abroad!
Pedagogical English instruction
Denis taught us fluency activities and those were really fun! I think I can use some of them right into my class after I go back to school.
Speaking fluency. Talking about one thing repetitively for 4-3-2 minutes each. Originally students are given time to plan what to say, but Denis didn’t give us anything saying ‘believing our ability’. ...So, how was it, Denis? haha. For the second turn, I faced Denis and had to talked about the book I read. It was lucky that it was SECOND time to talk it because for the first round I stammered a lot. For third turn with 2 minutes, it was much easier.
Next one was ‘the girl effect’. We must repeat after the words in the movie clip. The teacher can speed up or down. We read it three times, speeding up each time. I like the content, so I downloaded it.
Flash card activity also has time pressure. When the one person pulls cards the other one should name them. They can name/make phrases(I pick dog, or ‘orange lion’)/ or sentences.
He said that Role-playing, Telling jokes, Idioms/proverbs/analogies can be fluency activities, but I don’t know how they do exactly.
Anyway, I loved the listening fluency activity with “Witch Doctor.” It is a really fun and funny song. Denis, can I have the files? I want to sing it with my students. haha. Seriously!
Teaching Culture in the English Classroom
Clear communication. To do communicate clearly, you need visual input and feedback. And also you should know how to question to get information (the quality of questions).
We did three activities: following teacher’s instruction and do origami, one student reading story and the other asking questions to find out detailed information, and information gap activity of drawing.
Speaking and Interactive Communication
We did another dictowatch. We first, watched video clip and guessed the gist. Then we watched it again taking notes to construct the content ourselves. Lastly, we did filling the gaps. It was a so good movie clip, but she spoke so fast. I should watch those clips in TED after I come back from the USA.
However, the content was really good. Daphne Koller did amazing thing: Coursera. With the website, I can take some classes from very good professors in universities. It could be better than TED! I even get some certificates after taking certain courses.
As soon as I came back home, I looked through two sites. A little disappointed, it is not like having every subject for learning. However, there are some routes that I can use for my learning on the internet, and I am happy with the facts. As time goes by, I want more and more.
These are about the universities ranked within 100 top in the world.
