Korean Job Discussion Forums

[seonsengnimble]

Here are some bad habits I've noticed in my students. Some of these are present even in advanced students that have been studying for five or more years. What habits have you noticed?

I realize my use of punctuation is terrible, but bear with me.

1. Refusal to build their own sentences when answering questions about reading. For example: "How does Johnny feel?" Student finds the page where Johnny talks about how he feels and then reads out loud "I'm very tired."

This habit is pretty easy to fix. I usually make the students close their books when I ask them a question. This way they have to use their own words rather than just reading out of the book.

2. Insisting on adding "to be" to everything. "He is go to school." "She was eat an apple."

This one's a little harder to fix. I usually put a ban on the present continuous tense for a while until they learn to use "to be" correctly.

3. Not conjugating their verbs. "She speak Korean."

This one pops up a lot, and I haven't found any quick fix for it.

4. Laziness on vocabulary homework. Desk: "I have a desk." "I like desks."

For this, if most or all of their sentences look like this, I give them no credit for their homework. Yes the sentences are grammatically correct, but they don't require any knowledge of the new vocabulary word.

Anyways, those are the things that I've noticed in my time here. What have you noticed?

[alphakennyone]

1 and 4 I noticed a lot.

I also noticed some students would get a particular incorrect expression, and would just keep doing it over and over after I corrected them (this is with older students).

I had one who would always use this phrase "getter and getter" rather than "becoming more and more." I think maybe it was some mutated form of "better and better"

"Kpop is getter and getter popular recently." It didn't matter how many times I corrected it...


I guess that's a long winded way of saying...not paying enough attention to revisions in writing, probably something I was guilty of as well. But some of the errors just seemed INGRAINED. They did it once years ago, thought it was right, and kept on rolling with it.

[Straphanger]

Same things. That's why you're there, to teach them things they can't learn on their own.

"Where does Min-su sit?" "Fourth Position."

"Full sentence, please."

"Min-su sit in Fourth Position."

Then you write the sentence on the board, circle the "S" in "DOES" and say "Where doeSSSSSS Min-su sit?"

You get "She SITSSSSS in Fourth Position."

And you do it again, and again, and again, until they get it right.

To answer your question, "All nouns have counts." "I am reading book." "BOOK? And is book a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb?" "It's a noun." "Is it a person, place, thing, or idea?" "It's a thing." "And what do all nouns have?" "Counts." "So where's your count?"

"I am reading a book."

"And what's the count?" "One." "And what word tells me this?" "a."

And then you do it again.

[Privateer]

Just keep drilling it into them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8

[Alvy Singer]

It seems the majority of my students, when talking about where they are from, will say "My from is..." rather than "I am from..."

And the little snots can't keep from falling off their chairs.

[refikaM]

In my elementary school, I wanna scream each time I set down a paper on their group desks and ALL of them reach out as quickly as they can to pull the paper towards themselves sometimes tearing it when 2 get a hold of it at once... So, now before I set papers down, I hold them above their heads and say DON'T GRAB!! (they've learned the new word "grab")