More lovely Korean notebook Konglish

Korean English notebook

I don't Chinese!

Whilst collecting some test papers the other day I noticed something on the reverse side. Sometimes my school tries to recycle paper used in previous tests but I never look at those. I chanced upon this piece of Korean English grammar on the second line. *I don't chinese*

Wednesday class artwork in Korea

Here are some more pictures from one of my Wednesday classes. Three of the students are levelling up so it's almost certain I won't teach them again. With the 'artistic director' and 'creative controller' moving on, I doubt there will be any more pictures like this on future Wednesday's. Perhaps we will do some actual studying in class next week. Though I will perhaps miss some of their fun and unique personalities I am glad I am not their grammar teacher.

It's last!

Unflattering picture!

Cooking Man and Big Man's girlfriend

Garbie house

Gavig - I don't know why I am surprised to see another wrong spelling of my name

What a charming expression. It's a common phrase amongst cheeky Korean youngsters

I think this is my favourite picture from this class

One in a million

According to some people, the millionth new English word has been declared. Highly unlikely indeed, but here is a link to a story about it. I just don't believe this. An interesting discussion on this can be found here. Bravo Jeremy Paxman. I wonder how many words there are in Korean. The words I hear at work and in the classroom (in Korean) appear to be pretty much the same week by week, day by day. But they can't be, can they? One particular word drives me mad.

One thing is for certain, the average Korean has a very poor English vocabulary. No matter how much money the country throws at learning the English language, the low level ability will continue until someone realises it's time to change the way people study and puts less emphasis on studying to pass exams and more on actually communicating with people. Perhaps I will pay more attention to trying to give my students more words to learn. Perhaps they will listen

Is Web 2.0 really a word? I have my own favourite English words that change from time to time. 'Lenticular' and 'Decorum' always sound nice to but nothing beats 'Yes'.

My Vietnam

The battle is over. We lost. The fight to correct pronunciation is in tatters. Finishee.

Now onto the war. And Kickerly. Oops, I mean quickly. If the first casualty of war is innocence then somewhere down the line sanity ends up in the hospital. I am not only losing my temper but my faith in humanity right now. The persistence of some these kids in refusing to accept my pronunciation or to simply not be able to say some words is driving me crazy. I swear some are doing it just to drive up my blood pressure. Incandescent with rage, I persist with the struggle knowing that one of us has to lose.

Despite Korean students apparent love and flair for mathematics, they are failing to add this one together. Q+U produces a /KW/ sound, however they are coming up with /KI/ or /KEH. As an example, many of my students cannot say "Question" they say "Kestion".

Kestion? Kick, kickERly. KIEAT!! I KIT!

Failure. But whose?

I found this last week in one of my classes and one of my more likeable kids. It took the student one minute to figure out his mistake. I'm not taking the blame for this one!