Essentials When Writing English

Despite me still having a huge stack of evaluations to write, the kids dutifully handed in their journals today. Because more of the kids are in the higher-level books, there are more and more journals to correct. But just because they're in the higher-level books doesn't mean that they're at a high level of ability. It's painful to read many of them. How am I supposed to even begin to correct them?! With some students who routinely leave out important things (like periods or VERBS) I've started using my reddest red pen and marking a few or circling the place where the absent verb should be and writing in huge block letters the problem at the bottom of the page. If the handwriting is bad, I don't waste time anymore trying to read it, but just put a big "X" on the entire page and write, "I can't read this. Write neatly!" I also sometimes draw a frowning face just in case the "high-level" kid can't figure out written English.

I took a brief look at one kid's journal as he handed it in to me, saw not a single period on the entire two pages, and so gave it back to him. I told him to put the periods where they belong and then give it back to me the next day. That's my big thing now--punctuation. In Korean the verb is always at the end of the sentence so punctuation isn't important. When you get to the verb, that's the complete thought. But in English with all its varied sentence structures, punctuation is ESSENTIAL. Maybe I seem cruel, but I'm tired of them spending ten seconds writing meaningless drivel (often right before or sometimes even in class) and expecting me to spend time trying to figure out what they mean and then fix it. Other students get in trouble for not having written the journal as homework so their Korean teacher keeps them after class to write it. Of course they want to get away from academy just as quickly as possible, so you can imagine the wonderful quality entries that they write.

Monday evening Julian and I were discussing Jennifer--she wasn't at work on Friday or Monday. (We were wondering if she had gotten fired.) Well, she was back at work on Tuesday. I guess making such a horrible scene in front of the students isn't such a big deal here.

Today I reminded Mr. Kim that it was time to pay me--in fact, actually 6 days ago. I didn't check if he had paid me until Monday night, then he wasn't in on Tuesday. He had that sort of clueless look on his face like he thinks my payday doesn't fall on the same date every month but just randomly jumps around so he's justified in missing it EVERY MONTH.

I taught Sally and Olivia the definition of "brown-noser" today. We weren't even in class, but I was getting water and they came up and started asking me about Tanya, the new teacher. They said that she was pretty, but not as pretty as me. They went on to say what a good teacher I was, and thin, and pretty . . . I didn't bother telling them that I'm not writing their evaluations this time; Julian is!