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Always Present
Everyday, I take a 30 minute bus ride from my small town, Jeongok, north to an even smaller town called Daegwang. The ride is pleasant enough and barring any delay in the schedule, the buses don’t get...
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The Classroom Management Charade
Back at the beginning of October, I spent three days being oriented to teaching in Korea at a nice little conference resort place…thingy. I’m not going to go into details about the event, suffice it...
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The Altruism Paradox
[Nearly every Thursday night for the last two years, a few of my friends and myself would go out to eat and talk. It was a social experiment of sorts, but it became for me a place of refuge where I...
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Giving directions –“How to draw a Chibi”
I’ve been wanting to document some of my better attempts at teaching by providing the basic lesson plans in this space. Some of my more elaborate plans are still in the writing stages, but I had a sort...
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American Culture – Thanksgiving
–It has been awhile since I have uploaded anything and so I thought I would share a little of what I have been working on. The great “American Culture Project of 2012″ has been, mostly, a...
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American Culture – Indie Music
Lesson Plan – Indie Music Background Indie music in America is gaining in popularity and is an interesting contrast to pop music. If you were to ask an American who the biggest music stars are, they...
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Korean Pop Culture, its Dissidents and Authenticity
To the uninitiated, the music scene in Korea can seem a little… well, homogeneous. Especially if you spend your days around middle/high school girls. They literally stand on their chairs and scream if...
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The Courage to Teach – Part two: Covering the Field
Parker Palmer – probably teaching the shit out of something *right now* See Part 1 here For the last week or so, I’ve been relegated to pacing my classroom as my co-teacher preps the students for the...
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On Teaching Culture and Culture Tourism
My work developing “culture” lessons for my co-teachers assignment from the school district has me thinking a lot about what it means to teach culture. I remember when my co-teacher asked me to do the...
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Finnish and Korean English Education and the role the Native English Teacher
I recently watched a documentary about the Finnish school system called The Finland Phenomenon. Finland ranks #1 in education by almost any worldwide standard or test and it was interesting to get a...
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The language-learning distance of Finnish and Korean to English
I’ve received some interesting correspondence in regards to my last post about the different between the Korean and the Finnish ESL education models. Some feel that I have over-generalized my...
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The Hero’s Journey – Winter English Camp Plan
This week, I am supposed to be conducting a one to two week English camp here in Northern South Korea. Part of an NETs contract here is to organize and run a winter and summer English camp. These...
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The Hero’s Journey – Winter Camp day 2
Day 1 Lesson here For me, my winter camp finished today. It was a four day mis-adventure, but my co-teacher was really pleased with how it went. My version of “The Hero’s Journey” involved some...
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A descriptivist fixes your grammar
Mocking signs like this is a common past-time of native English speakers with nothing better to do than not think about the beauty of English and how or why it changes over time. I’ll admit, though,...
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On metaphor, meaning and the paralinguistic
The first time I saw this cup at one of the cafés that I frequent, I nearly laughed out loud. Specifically, I am talking about the line, about half way, that says, “Only ‘hot’ passion for ‘hot’...
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‘going to’ vs. ‘gonna’: The Cagematch
I was eating out with some friends the other night when one of them stopped the conversation to announce that she needed to leave. (It isn’t as strange as it might sound, her English is about the...
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Pigs, Bears, and 9th grade philosophy of love and death
After a very comfortable two weeks away from the school, I am back to desk-warming until the new school term starts (sometime.. soon?). I spend my time alternating between thinking about planning my...
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African American English in the media
This week’s This American Life took on an interesting topic, having to do with identity and projection. I recommend it to all. But this is (mostly) a language blog, not an interesting-subject-npr...
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Learning Names
A struggle for NETs, particularly those who have many students, is learning the names of all your students. I guess I am lucky in that regard, I have under 80 students altogether and in some classes,...
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Authority in Language
– I have made note over the past few posts a desire to attempt to write on the idea of “Authority” in language. This essay, and the one or two that will follow, will be that attempt. Language vs....
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