Student Antics

In teaching the kids the page on, "Are you OK?" "Not really, I have a . . . " I learned a few new Korean words. The book had the typical words--earache, stomachache, toothache, cold, sore throat, and a new one for me to see in a TEFL book, flu. I thought of what else I could add (they're older kids, and the book is a little too easy for them). "Cut" was completely left out of the book, and that was easy enough to explain. "Bloody nose" I could explain using first English and then Korean to make sure they understood (코피, or literally, "nose blood") because it seems at least one student has one every day. (What does that say about their health?!)

Then the kids wanted to know what 눈병 was in English. I knew 눈 was eye, but didn't know the other part. Uh, I don't know, explain it to me. They didn't do such a great job, but I finally had a basic idea, so explained it a little better back to them to make sure I had the right thing. "If my eye is red, and if I touch my eye, then touch you and you touch your eye, then your eye is red, too?" OK, that's called "pink eye," or literally in Korean, "eye sickness."

Then the final thing I did (perhaps it was a mistake because it took so long to explain), was "blister." I only thought of that because my feet have a couple of painful ones right now. I explained, "If you walk a long time, maybe 100 KM (written on the board), your feet and your shoes rub together (hand motion) and make a blister (hand motion AND drawing on the board) with water inside. FINALLY one of the brighter students asked, "물집? Water house?" Water house! That makes perfect sense! Yeah, I think so. Later I asked Miro to make sure the kids got the right Korean word for pink eye and blister, and it was fine. Tonight I looked in the online dictionary and found "거푸집" for "blister." Hmmm. I guess there could be more than one word for the same thing, and the kids would probably use the easier, more literal word. I already knew the word 아프다 (sick, hurt, ache, etc.) and how the kids confuse the English words. I made sure they knew that you are sick, but that your arm is NEVER sick, but that it hurts or aches.

At 5 PM I had ONE student of my normal eight. The rest were studying for middle school tests. The one student came late (after raising my hopes that I'd have a free hour) and we talked for about 10 minutes. That was about all the time I could keep him talking, considering that he's a middle school boy and has no idea how to carry on a conversation with an adult foreigner. I'd ask a question, he'd make his reply as short as possible, and never ask a question in return or add any extra info. When I ran out of topics I asked him if he had any questions for me. Yes. The first question was, "How much money do you have?" That's a personal question! Pass! "How much money this academy give you?" That's also a personal question! Come on!

We then spent 30 minutes working on an internet scavenger hunt (the same one I used last week with another partial class). It's a list of weird animals and you have to find where they live using only English websites. The kid had no clue how to search. He didn't know how to look at the site summary on the search result page to see if the page was worth clicking through to, and once he was on the website, he either looked at the lines of text wide-eyed, or started reading word-by-word, line-by-line. I showed him how he could look at the first sentence of every paragraph, or if the page was numbered or had bold print, the stuff that stood out, to scan the page to find the info he wanted more quickly. Along the way I asked him questions about where different things were (Antarctica--he had no clue, Amazon rainforest--no idea) or added extra info about the animals. I think he enjoyed it, and I liked doing something different than normal.

In the following class I asked Harry why his palm was pink, and he explained, "Ink bomb!" He then went on to explain how a pen had exploded in his hand. Then he and Zach told me about their Boy Scout trip to Kyungju for "training" and how great it had been, and how delicious the food was, and that the head teacher was really strict, and that the hotel was poor, and . . . STOP! We have to study our book sometime today! It seems that the students either don't talk at all, or talk too much. Where's the happy medium?!