Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Today I had my zero block filler class with a grade 2 vocational class (sort of an excuse to fill up my schedule and theirs and show the school district that I'm seeing as many classes a week as possible, never mind the fact that with my special classes I'm already over-booked). We don't do anything very serious - usually a game, one lesson activity or worksheet, and then another game. Well, being the idiot I am I forgot my main handout today and decided to fill up time by playing the linking game, where students take turns coming up with a word that starts with the last letter of the previous student's word. I sometimes say of some lower-level students that I know more Korean than they do English, especially when I have to ask them things like 'Where are you going?' in Korean, but the actual English vocabulary they can come up with is really impressive. Students were coming up with words like 'experience' and 'available' and all sorts of things they've learned from mass media, like 'rent-a-car' and 'racing girl'. I was also impressed with how much vocab they've retained from my Picture Words Bingo set, a phonics bingo game (for "Ages 4 and up") I picked up in the ECE section of a bookshop and usually start off each class by playing.

If only there was an easy way to get them putting them together in a subject-verb-object order. Has anyone found really effective ways of doing this with students you don't see very often? I'm thinking next week of dividing the board into three parts, first nouns and pronouns, second verbs, and third nouns and adjectives, and just handing out candies to whomever can string the best sentences together.

[oneofthesarahs]

I have a class like that too. They have an insanely large vocabulary, yet they can't make sentences to save their lives. I once was teaching them about hobbies, and was trying to describe what "model planes" are, and one of the kids busted out with the word "miniatures."

I've found that sentences such as I like ______, I don't like _____, I want _____ are effective in helping them start to think in terms of whole sentences, because they can use their vocabulary to fill in the blanks.

Prepositions are also a fun way to get them to start thinking in sentences. Really simple things like "The cat is on the desk." I usually start with on, under, in, and beside. There are limitless possibilities for teaching those, and one of the most fun ones is to give them a worksheet that has a picture of a room on it containing a chair, a desk, a table, a box, etc. Then read out sentences like "The book on the chair," and they have to draw a book on the chair. Then encourage each student to come up with their own sentence which they say out loud for the other students to draw.

[Julius]

They get the random words and phrases from pop songs. Hence the "hey baby" thing etc.
I once heard one of them call the other one "you are stalker" which was vaguely amusing until I heard it on the radio a few times in the next few days.