Winding up my student

Today one of my students leapt out of his skin. Well not quite but he produced a physical burst of emotion at something I said.

At the moment my last class on Tuesdays and Fridays has just four students. Four boys. Four Middle school boys who, being honest need a lot of help as their vocabulary and grammar are both not so great. But they try, they always do their homework, do what I ask them and communicate to the best of ability. On my part I try to make class as fun as possible, sometimes play games and make it fast paced so they don't get bored. I think we all enjoy the class right now.

On Tuesdays we have a listening class. We have a quick test, go through some practice sentences and then listen again to the CD where I in turn ask comprehension and discussion questions often tenuously linked. I have mentioned before that I believed I was close to running out of questions and continually repeating things (not noticeably to students) so now I try and make up some ridiculous scenarios and quiz the students on what they think or would do should this happen to them.

Last week I asked one boy - my favourite in the class because he really is a great lad and very funny too so I like to wind him up - what he would do if his family had a disaster, all their money was gone and he had to marry someone to bring money back into his family. I then added that he only had a limited selection of people to chose from and mentioned some Korean women who society here dubs as 'unattractive' physically. He flipped out, and rejected the suggestion of marriage and said he would rather starve, well I am paraphrasing him as he doesn't know the word starve.

Today, purely because he couldn't pronounce the letter 'C' and instead, on and off for forty minutes insisted it was pronounced 'she' I offered up another scenario. He is on a plane for ten hours and must choose between two seats. One is next to Korean Olympic champion weightlifter Jang Mi-Ran and the other is next to Korean President Lee Myung-bak. Or rather, preposterously, Lee Myung-bak's daughter (I don't know if he has one) and Jang Mi-Ran's (fictional) twin sister. I then described the women as looking exactly the same as their father/twin sister facially but body-wise they would have what Koreans call an S-line figure.

What followed first was a bit of a leap in the air as he couldn't quite believe the question. Then came a facial tick that can only be described as looking like a centipede buried deep beneath his skin manipulating his entire mouth and jaw. We had the obligatory "OH MY GOD" several times as he rocked back and forth in his chair. I thought his head was going to spin off. I felt like I was watching one of those Korean dramas where the acting is sometimes hysterically over the top. Of course he said he wouldn't get on the plane. Just like B.A. off the A-Team.