Korean Job Discussion Forums

[tomato]

On an earlier thread, we started to discuss ways of getting students to do creative writing.
But since that was not the topic which the OP had in mind, I decided to start a new thread.

On the previous thread, I mentioned a class which is studying Brick's Reading. Each chapter contains multiple choice, true-false, and fill-in-the-blank questions, which the students do splendidly, and an essay question, which they leave blank.

I believe that the essay question is the most important.
When the students travel to Anglophonia, they will not be asked to fill in the blank or choose correct answers.
Rather, they will be asked to make original statements.
When they get in the cab, they will have to tell the cab driver where they're going.
When they go to the doctor, they will have to tell the doctor where it hurts.

So I tried asking open-ended questions of all of my classes, and I find that the problem is widespread.
So now I am on a campaign to elicit original communication from all of my students, not just this class.

Here are some measures which I am going to try:

■ art appreciation

For the price of a few ink cartridges, I am Google searching and printing famous art work, which I shall ask my students to describe.



I am killing two birds with one stone by getting an art education for myself. At the present time, I can't tell Manet from Monet, but give me time.

■ SOV books

The Korea Froebel Company publishes a 4-volume series entitled 그림으로 문장만들기. On each page, there is a picture denoting a subject, an object, and a verb.



In the original picture books, there is a Korean sentence underneath.
I have found 3 of these books in community libraries, and I ran those pictures through the scanner, cropping out the Korean sentences.

This is not ideal for teaching an SVO language, but it is good enough.

■ Korean picture books without words

There is a series entitled 내가 쓰는 동화.

Every other page is illustrated and every other page is blank.
At the 춘천 library, I checked out a book about an elephant family playing hide-and-seek. One Korean child, not realizing that one should not write in a library book, filled in the blank pages.



I showed the book to my students and then compared their description with that of the youthful library patron.

■ English picture books without words

There are some good Websites which list non-verbal picture books published in English-speaking countries. You can find them by Google searching "stories without words."



I am tempted to hop on the Amazon site and commit myself to hundreds of dollars of postage and handling fees, but first I shall try the 춘천 library and the English bookstore.

[patongpanda]

I got a good speaking response by showing them M.C. Escher's work and some optical illusions off the web.

[GreenlightmeansGO]

I tried to use music, but that was in a hagwon and it was just a one-off class. I think if you start off with a track a day you could get some people speaking and writing (descriptive and opinion). I wouldn't try something too serious or unfamiliar. I played them really popular songs and some stuff I knew they would find weird (like a Hindi song).
Some discussion of adjectives or examples beforehand might be needed. You could figure out some additional questions, like 'what would you change' or 'compare this to your favourite songs'.
It can be a fun way to start. Sometimes you can supply the lyrics and they can also learn some vocabulary.