Adventures in Teaching

Over the holidays, I seem to have forgotten some important classroom tips. The other day I leaned against the board during my lecture. It wasn’t until after I got home that I realized the words “I have the flu” could clearly be seen scrawled backwards across my back. Lovely.

Adventures in Chuseok

This weekend was what’s known in Korea as Chuseok, and is often described as the Korean Thanksgiving. It’s a time when everyone travels to their hometown, the women cook monsterous quantities of food and people tend to their ancestors tombs. It’s also a time when English teachers at Daegu University gather for a fantastic BBQ – since we have 3 birthdays in September that need to be celebrated in style. We had tons of food, some guitar music, some singing, and of course, a pinata. It’s so much fun to watch grown adults scrimmaging for a fun-size Snickers bar. Although, come to think of it, when the weather’s nice like this, we have a BBQ almost every weekend, whether there are any birthdays or not!

So, since I’ve been finished work since 9am last Friday, I’ve had plenty of time to clean, shop, make some pottery thingies, BBQ, watch some movies and play cards with my friends. Now, it’s 2:30 on a Monday afternoon and I’m thinking that after I wash up all the brunch dishes I’ll just curl up with my cat, a good book and a cup of tea for a little while…or re-decorate my bedroom. We’ll see how energetic I’m feeling after the dishes are done. Also, since it’s only been 2 weeks since the semester started, and now we’re enjoying a long weekend, it feels like summer again. I really hope I don’t forget to get up and go to work tomorrow morning!

Adventures in Writing.

Even though it may not be apparent from the hastily concocted literary belches on my Blog, I really can write. It’s one of my skills. It’s not one of those ‘cool’ skills like precision spitting or being able to burp the alphabet, but over the years it has served me well. I like writing. I like to read other peoples writing, and I figured I’d like to teach writing too. So, this semester I’m teaching a 3rd year Writing Composition class. My problem, as I discovered last class, is that although I’m confident in my own writing skills, I don’t know WHY it’s good writing. It just sounds right. After reviewing a few examples of a particular sentence structure in class, some students asked the dreaded question ‘why?’. I blurted out an answer that made sense to me, but I wasn’t really sure it was true. (I found out later that I hadn’t led them astray ~ whew!) Keep in mind, these students are sharp. They’ve been studying English Grammar since middle school. I don’t know if I ever studied grammar. I know that about 1/2 – 2/3 of my Freshman Linguistics class failed a 7th grade English Grammar test circa. 1950, and I know that many of our Korean students have a better grasp of grammatical principles than their native English speaking teachers. It’s a little intimidating. Here’s hoping I don’t make a complete chowder-head of myself in this course!

In other news, my cat is currently trying to crawl inside my printer.