Tests

The adults were funny. Four of them arrived at 10:40 for a last-minute cramming session. When I was a student, I never found those helpful for anything besides raising my anxiety level. Grace said she woke up at 6:30 this morning to study, and she made her husband and son make breakfast for themselves. Vivian arrived a little late. I gave them a full hour to take the test, and at the end they said it was difficult. Well, at least a few of them did, while a couple remained silent. I decided to make the essay part worth 15%. Immediately following the test I graded the other part, and the points (out of 85) ranged from 69~85. That's not too bad. I saved the essay for this weekend--how to fairly grade it while not making them discouraged?

While they took the test I sat in the front of their classroom and prepared for my afternoon classes, then looked through Sandra's TESOL book. I didn't find anything for the meeting, but I did find some good stuff for my special class. Matt gave the summary of his special project to me, while Tanya gave hers directly to Joelle.

In the 3 PM class Ally and Jenny did an excellent job in the mock telephone conversations. Because it's a small class (only 5 students now) I let those two "call" each other several times. When they're begging me to practice English more, something's working how it's supposed to! One time Jenny invited Ally and her family over for dinner, another time Ally wanted Jenny to turn the TV on to a funny show, another time I scolded Ally for not saying goodbye to Jenny, but Ally explained that Jenny had already hung up, so she couldn't say goodbye. It was really cute, and a great job for 3rd-graders.

In the next class the air conditioner is still not working. With no windows, Pineapple classroom reaches temperatures of 90+ degrees. Luckily that's a small class, too, but it still made me incredibly sleepy. The next class woke me up--that air conditioner has been repaired, and the two fans were going, and there were only two students, so I sent Allan to buy ice cream for us. They did a good job talking, yet we were still able to get through a lot in the book. At 6 they did great at speaking only English, even during the pair activity. Billy came up with the strangest pronunciation ever for "errands," and after explaining what that was, I used the dictionary to make sure they completely understood. At 7 it's up to the maximum of 12 students. At one point Brandon was giving me problems, so I did what I've seen Kara do with him: grab him by the ear and drag him to stand in the corner. It's amazing how quickly someone will move when you're exerting force on his ear!

I finally got around to cracking the books tonight. My Korean test, which will probably be more like a quiz, is on Saturday. The teacher asked us to have the 40 descriptive verbs memorized and know how to turn all of them into adjectives. I made flashcards tonight using half a 3 X 5 card for each word. I'll carry them around tomorrow and study all I can--while eating, on the bus, between classes, on the bus again. Then on Saturday the 50 minute (since the class changed locations) bus ride will hopefully have most of the verbs stuck in my head.

The adults seemed less whiny about their test when they heard that I also have a test this week. The kids thought it was funny that their teacher had to take a test. Sara asked me, "Why do you learn Korean?" I explained that it makes it easier to live here to be able to speak some of the language. I think it makes me a better teacher, too, because I understand the difficulties of learning a language so different than your native language. Sometimes I'm still not patient enough, but more and more I'll be in Korean class and be struck at how I'm doing the same things that I hate my students to do, or I'll be teaching an English class and understand the frustration my Korean teacher feels sometimes, or why my students are making a certain mistake.

Unipeak.com is working again, so apparently something was wrong with their server yesterday. The Korean government is still stupid to have not figured out what we're doing. I find it a lot easier to surf using the other way, and can view and leave comments, so I'll continue turning on the slightly slower option to access the blocked pages.