Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Tiberious aka Sparkles]

I have a poor memory. I think. And it's only downhill from here on out. I remember reading the Lord of the Flies in elementary school and, afterwards, asking my mother if she had read it. She told me she had, but when I began asking her questions about the plot, she admitted that it had been a very long time since she had read it, and that she barely remembered the story. At the time I was shocked. I even questioned whether my mother, who has a PhD in literature, was going senile. I know better now, of course. My memory of Lord of the Flies is pretty shoddy; I've only read it twice --the last time in 11th grade -- but there are a bunch of other novels (not to mention movies, TV shows, and let's not even get started on actual important stuff like world history) which I have a difficult time remembering. For example, I've read The Great Gatsby perhaps a half-dozen times, and everytime I start it again, it's almost as if it's for the first time. All I can really recall clearly, besides the characters names, is that (*spoilers*) Gatsby is dead in a pool (or is it a pond?) in his back yard at the end, Nick lived it either East Egg or West Egg, and that symbolic optometrist's sign on the side of the road. That's pretty much it.

That said, ask one of your Korean students/acquaintances/etc. what they had for lunch yesterday. If they can tell you in less than 10 seconds, color me surprised. From my experience, most of them will tell you they don't remember.

Then again, they have to keep 5000 freaking years of history in their brains, so there's gonna be some leakage somewhere.

Sparkles*_*

[indytrucks]

Nick Carraway lived in West Egg.

Jay Gatsby's real name was Jay Gatz.

He was shot in his pool by the auto mechanic.

Damn, what was the name of the glasses billboard guy?

And, although I am not a Korean student, had a tuna sandwich and dill pickles for lunch yesterday.

Tomorrow, I'm asking my students.

[the eye]

...if you remember...

[schwa]

As it happens I did a little memory exercise with a class yesterday & it worked really well. Instead of asking 'What did you do on the weekend?' & getting the usual responses I made up a simple worksheet along the lines of:

What were you doing at ..

7 o'clock this morning?
10:00 last night?
2 pm yesterday?
noon Sunday?
9 o'clock Saturday evening?

etc & gave them a few minutes to write simple answers. It led to lots of new glimpses into everyday life & questions about practical vocabulary. I only intended it as a warmer but the class got right into & we spent 2 hours getting halfway through the list. I'll use it with all my groups this week -- I think it will work at any level.

[the_beaver]

[Harin]

This is a true story.

One day, my boy called his mum.

Boy: "what's that noice?"
Mum: "it's my birthday, son...."




oh...Sparkles, last year I went to spend one week at the island in Puerto Rico where they filmed the movie, the lord of flies. The film crew even named three local beaches. Guess what their names are....Red, White, Blue....how orignial.

[yemanja]

[schwa]

I should have attributed that. I adapted the idea from www.esl-lounge.com

[manlyboy]

Here's a good one for past continuous:
Get the students to leave the room for 30 seconds and observe somebody outside, or in another room (if you don't trust them, just have them look out the class window at somebody). Then have them sit back down and answer: "What was that person doing?"; "What was he/she wearing?"; "Where was he/she going?" etc.