Korean Job Discussion Forums

[AbbeFaria]

I've got a section in one of my text books that goes over this subject, but it's really not very helpful. I'm kind of fumbling through it, but I'd like to know if anyone has any good lesson ideas for this sort of thing.

Thanks,
-S-

[poet13]

I do this thing where I draw a cute puppy dog on the whiteboard or blackboard. We choose a name for it. Put a collar on it.
Then I draw a blender around it.
Then I turn the belnder on.
Kind of shocking, and good for a laugh.
Then I ask them, "Why not?", and listen to the anguished protests and laughs.
Then I draw a package of chicken wings and drummies on the board, and we talk about how they are the same concept. Then we talk about "some" vs "a".
The puppy dog thing helps it stick in their minds.
I dont try to teach them lists of countable vs count.
I teach them one concept.
Unit.
If you can add a unit to it, you can count it.
If you take away the unit, you can't count it.

I spend a good bit of time getting examples from the class of each type of noun.

(yes, I'm sure someone can show me an exception, and I would be delighted to hear about it)
The nice thing about that LP method is that it works for almost all levels.
Hope that helps.

[Captain Corea]

I use food as my examples; how chicken can be countable (the bird) or uncountable (the meat).

[gweilo_farang]

[poet13]

gweilo_farang...

Cool. Some of your examples at the end were ones I've known for most of my life, but never thought about. Maybe it's the dumbing down part of teaching ESL. I don't mean that in a disparative way, but as a person who writes poetry, and given the level of English I teach, I would never dream of mixing the two.
As for using the puppy dog, you make an interesting point, because in this country, I have been asked exactly that, albeit jokingly, "Would you like/have some more puppy dog?" (yes please). So this culture DOES use dogs in that fashion, even though many of the generation I teach don't eat it as commonly as their parents. Even though they are all aware that dog is eaten here, and in my classes, perhaps 20% have actually eaten it, the shock value, and hence, concept recall value of using such an example, is worth perhaps for some people, the "disgust factor".

[gweilo_farang]

[poet13]

Please stop using such big words. lol. I'm not a trained teacher, I dont have a degree in education, I dont' have a TESOL, TEFL, TOSEL, .....I'm not even actually qualified to teach (that damn degree doesn't qulify anybody to do anything) but in a way, I feel more qualified than most of the people here I meet. And that's only because I love sharing. Teaching? Not sure what that is. That's a huge concept. Rather, I love sharing the little bit of what I am pretty sure about. Fortunately (agghhhh, here come that damned ego), I am sure about a fair number of things.
To me, units is the most fundemental way I can think about count vs non-count.

[poet13]

In re-reading, how is the concept of dog breaking the rules of grammar. you mentioned it twice, but i still dont get it. I mean, if you can chop it up into constituent pieces, then you have a non-count "thing". I think it would be a more shocking example in the US or Canada, but then again, the idea of chopping up a horse for food would be more natural to a frenchman than an American (US,CA,ME,....). If I have broken a grammar rule somewhere there, please DO tell me where so I can at least tell my students I am breaking a rule to make a point.... You obviously know a lot more about this stuff than me, so at this point i'm guessing I missed something...

[gweilo_farang]

[Privateer]

Cutting (or using a blender) is a good way to conceptualise it: cut up a tree and you no longer have a tree. Cut up some wood and it's still wood. Ergo 'tree' is countable and 'wood' is uncountable.

It works for concrete nouns anyway, so it's a start.

[gweilo_farang]