Finally an update about the presentations

Hello, everyone. How are things going? I hope that everyone is well. I am sorry that I have not updated in a while. To be completely honest, last week I was not feeling very well and I felt that I could not do my best. After that I just kept on procrastinating.

First, the presentation were awesome! I was really impressed with how good they were. I especially liked the presentations were the speaker clearly wrote the presentation and really connected with the audience. I hope that it was a good experience for everyone. I really enjoyed it.

There was quite a lot of new/hard words that came up during the presentations. Some of them were:

status What is your marital status?

underwent Paris Hilton underwent extensive plastic surgery.

violate Many people violate the “no-Korean” rule.

community service He had to serve 100 hours of community service for his mistake.

elect Do you think that the American public is ready to elect a woman?

committee Hillary Clinton is a member of the Armed Service Committee.

autograph Lisa got Won Bin’s (sp?) autograph.

black hole The ship got caught in a black hole and it was lost forever.

senator Hillary Clinton is the junior senator from New York.

pirate Johnny Depp plays a pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean.

acquainted I am aquainted with some aspects of Korean culture.

acquaintance She is not really my friend, I just know her, she is an acquaintance.

wisdom Solomon is famous for his wisdom.

triumvirate The first triumvirate was Julius Caesar,Pompey the great and Crassus.

assassin John F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin.

heir Paris Hilton is an heir to the Hilton family fortune.

backnumber Wayne Rooney’s number for England is 9.

Along with many words there were also some errors that should be covered. Here they are now:

He has good shape. >>> He is in good shape.

He’s a very tall. >>> He’s a very tall guy./He’s very tall.

She’s joined the group 2000. >>>> She joined the group in 2000.

She is a wonderful singer in the world. >>> She is a wonderful singer.
She is the best singer in the world.

My chose person was ____. >>> I chose ____./The person I chose was ____.

I found the information in the internet. >>> I found the information on the internet.

Hello!

I hope that everyone is enjoying the holiday… I am getting some rest and feeling much better.

I just wanted to say that the presentations were fantastic! I am still looking forward to hearing Kate and Charles on Monday. Take care and have a good day/night/morning/weekend/whatever. I will see you on Monday!

Famous People

Do not forget that everyone has a presentation to do on Wednesday!

I wanted to give you more time to think about and talk about people so Wednesday and Thursday of week 15 were spent talking about people. We started the Wednesday off playing 20 questions. I was first. The person I was thinking of was J.K. Rowling. (I made a mistake–she is married. Sorry.) Next I turned it over to you guys in groups of 4 or 5. I did not expect to let you guys play so long, but everyone seemed to be enjoying it and there was lots and lots of English so I decided I could not stop you.

Some of the questions that I thought were useful were:

Is he black?

Is she a politician?

Is he married?

Is she pretty?

Is he tall?

Is she muscular?

Is he sexy?

Is she beautiful?

Is he famous?

Is she on TV?

Some sentences that we fixed were:

Is he CEO? >>> Is he a CEO?

Is she actress? >>> Is she an actress?

Is he musician? >>> Is he a musician?

Is she golfer? >>> Is she a golfer?

Is he get married? >>>Is he married?
(Did he get married= has he experiences a wedding–not the usual question)

Is she live? >>> Is she alive?

Is he work for ___? >>> Does he work for ____?

Does he have a hair? >>>Does he have hair?/Is he bald?

We also pretended to be different famous people (living or dead).

On Thursday we had a similar topic. The first question was, (other than your parents) “Who has influenced you the most?”

This question also provided a lot of answers. (____ has influenced me the most.) After a discussion about this everyone shared their partner’s answers (____ influenced him/her the most.)

Next we discussed the most influential people in the world. Both groups were pretty similar with both Bill Gates and Georgey Bushi George Bush.

After that, we talked about the TIME 100 (very, very useful site, with profiles and podcasts about the people I highly recommend it) I shared the results of the online poll where Rain was number one. We then had a few minutes to discuss the people in the top 10. Again, I did not expect you to know the people, I just wanted you to think about why they were at the top of the list.

The guy at number 2 is one of my favorite TV personalities from America. His parody of Rain’s music can be seen right here. (skip to 1:53 if you want to just see the music video) What do you think?

Who do you admire?

The question that we started out with on Tuesday was, “Who do you admire?”
There were quite a few answers to this question. I guess the most popular answer was parents. We were able to hear some interesting stories about people’s families. I was really expecting everyone to ask more questions about these stories but it is OK.

Some questions that were useful to talk about who we admire were:

Why do you admire ___?

Why do you love ___? 

What did ___ do? 

Some words that came up during this class were:

scholars  Mike said that King Sejong’s scholars made hangul.

myth     Is that true, or is it just a myth?

legend   Changbo loves the legend of Dang-gun.

affect    My parent’s hardworking style affected me greatly.

effect (usually a noun)  His speech had a powerful effect on me.

influence  My high school teacher influenced me a great deal.

admire  Charles and Anni really admire Warren Buffet.

obstacle Helen Keller overcame many obstacles in her life.

hardly  I hardly ever study these days.

hard  I haven’t been studying very hard these days. I am too lazy.

What do you think about these sentences?

He was study hard. 

What did she said? 

The problem here is with the past tense.
I know everyone loves Top Notch. If you skip ahead to unit 8 you can see some simple examples that might help you.

Corrected versions of the above sentences would be:

He was study hard. >>> He studied hard.

What did she said?>>> What did she say?

We also talked a lot about your assignment. Next Wednesday, almost everyone will give a speech/presentation about a person. I do not know who each person is planning on doing. I just know that Anni is going to teach everyone about a model/actor that the boys did not know. Who is your choice to talk about?

Some questions to consider when you make your presentation are:

What’s his/her name? 

Why did you choose ___? 

What does/did he/she do? 
What did he/she do during his/her life? 

How does/did she affect you? 

What does he/she look like? 

What do you think about ___? 

What is his/her philosophy? 

What is his/her style? 

How do you know about ___?

What do you know about ___? 

What obstacles did he/she overcome?

Do you want to be like her/him? Why/Why not?

Good job with the questions. What else should you consider when making your presentation?

I have one hint. Use ENGLISH websites to help you prepare. Do not, do not, do not using Korean sites. You will see and learn much more English by using English to find the information! Good luck!

Free Monday

We had another Monday without a topic. Again, I was very impressed with how much everyone talked and the variety of topics that were discussed.

Kate was asking about the  phrase  face price. This just means the original price.

Anni asked about canker sores. These are the sores that open up inside our mouth when we are sick.

Jason and Changbo were talking about having a cold/being sick/being stuffed up.

Monica was talking about shopping (I think). I think she likes shopping, but she said that she doesn’t go shopping very much. Many people have problems talking about big numbers in English. I think that this is because they want to count in 10,000. We do not count like this in English. My advice is to learn the numbers for each place and count that way. Totally thinking in English will make this much, much easier.

Some sentences that I would change are:

Yesterday I am happy. >>>  I was happy yesterday./Yesterday, I was happy.

I don’t angry.    >>> I am not angry./I was not angry. 

I am forget. >>> I forgot./I can’t remember. 

Is this mean ____? >>>  Does this mean ____?

I made cook last night. >>>  I cooked (food) last night. 

Very good job. The time really flew by!

Dealing with common errors

On Thursday, we began the class by teaching a partner some words or sentences that we learned lately. I was surprised because I did not hear the same word or sentence from any two people. I am sorry that I did not get a chance to write down everything that I heard because I think that these words/phrases/sentences would be very useful for everyone to review.

The main points of the class were to consider some common errors and to practice explaining words to a partner in English. The word combinations that we talked about were:

drunk/drunken

(dead/died/death)

cook/cooker

see/look/watch

hear/listen

put on/wear

trip/journey/travel

envious/jealous

shadow/shade

for sale/on sale

beat/win

appointment/promise

say/tell/speak/talk

lend/borrow

fun/funny/interesting

Which of these are still problematic for you? Please let me know and I will try to explain more fully. I am a little worried that the book that I used is not great, because I noticed some strange sentences. Also, Monica told me that the explanation of jealous and envious was different than what she learned from Matthew.

So, you have 2 things to let me know.

1) What you think about my plan to extend class on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday

2) Which of these word groups do you want a complete explanation for?

Have a great weekend. Enjoy.

Take Care!

Excuse me…just a minute, sorry to interrupt…can I say something?

On Wednesday, we talked about a very important skill in another language-interrupting.

We started off the class talking about what we did the night before. This was mostly so we would be ready to talk about this topic later when our partner continually interrupted us.

Next, we talked about how to interrupt in Korean and in English.  Some of the ways to interrupt were:

Shut up!
Hey!
Sorry.

Excuse me.

Just a moment/minute/second.
Wait a moment/minute/second.
Could you wait a moment/minute/second?
Would you wait a moment/minute/second?
Can you wait a moment/minute/second/sec? 

(Please) Hold on. 

Could I say something/ask you a question?

Can I say one thing/something?

Sorry to interrupt, but…

After discussing and practicing these ways to interrupt we changed partners and discussed what we did last. This time, the parter continually interrupted. I thought that everyone did a good job to interrupt and ask lots and lots of questions.

Next, we thought of ways for the speaker to return to the point.  Some of these phrases were:

To continue,…

As I was saying…

I’ll go ahead.

Anyway, …

Where was I?

Where were we? 

What was I saying?

While repeating these phrases we took a much needed break. When we came back we practiced the sentences a bit more and then one partner tried to explain about their last night while the partner who was originally interrupted got some revenge.

To finish the class we worked with some worksheets with 2 partners, where one person would ask a question, one person would try to answer the question and a third person would  continually interrupt. This seemed to be pretty good practice and everyone was interrupting a lot by the end of the class. Actually, I am worried that we might interrupt each other too much!

Tuesday’s Class–What is happening with _____?

I was worried that we were not going to have enough topics to talk about on Monday so I brought something with me in case the conversations broke down. As I said earlier, they did not and I was very impressed. The information that I brought with me for Monday’s class was a list of the ten most searched words on Naver. A link to the article can be found here. I thought this list was quite interesting, even if I was only familiar with two people on the list. (I had heard of the K-1 fighter before.)

There was not a full class on Tuesday, and energy levels were pretty low. I was surprised because I thought this topic was a pretty interesting one. These were the people that were most searched, so I thought that they might be hot topics. Were some of the people new to you? I guessed that talking about the people that were most searched might be most like what people would talk about in Korean. I am thinking that maybe Tuesday was just not a great day…. no problem. (I think I will bring a new list on Monday just in case our new system of “no topic” breaks down.)

There were not many corrections in this class. I talked about using, “happening” as a noun. As you can see from the dictionary, it is not wrong. I think I would usually use “event” in the situations that I hear you guys say happening.

However, “What’s happening with ____?” is a very usual and useful question in this kind of situation.

Also, “What’s happening to ____?” is a good question. This sounds more like something is going on with them that they cannot really control. It is happening to them.

There was one story from the list of famous celebrities that caused some errors. Do you know the gagman gagwoman gagartist gagger comedian Kim Mi-Ryo? (I hope you can see that gagman is Konglish–the English word is comedian.) Someone said that, “She wants to singer.” We can’t really “singer” we can “sing” or “be a singer.” So in this case, we should say, “She wants to be a singer.” Or, “I want to be a cowboy” and “Royal wants to be a gangster. “

That is all for Tuesday…

Week 14

Hello! Howzit goin? What’s up? Well, this week we had a few different topics. I think Jason is still waiting for the review about the classes that he missed. I am sorry but you will have to wait until tomorrow. I promise that tomorrow (Friday) afternoon I will update for the whole week. Have a nice evening/morning and I will see you soon.

PS–I have a new idea. Please let me know what you think. I was thinking that from now, because we only have 5 more weeks, that if you guys want, we could extend the class time on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday by 10 minutes so that we have more time to study. If you are not interested, that is fine. Please let me know what you think about my idea.

My throat hurts and I’m hungry

–This was my favorite answer to the question, “How do you feel after speaking in English for 45 minutes?” Very nice.

Today was the first Monday of 6 more “no topic Mondays.” Originally, many students said that they wanted practice free-talking. We will try to do this each Monday. The other days we will have a skill to practice or a topic.

I thought today was fantastic. I only felt for a few moments that it was difficult to talk without a topic. After changing partners and making groups and asking everyone to not talk about the weekend it seemed as though things were very easy.

Most partners started out the class talking about the weekend.

“What did you do this weekend?”
(Whadja do this weekend?)

The conversations started from there and changed into many different conversations. It was very interesting to walk/slide around and try to catch what everyone was talking about. I think many people have seen Spiderman 3 by now.

Charles was asking Monica about her friend. He wanted to know how they met, so he could ask, “Where did you meet (each other)?”

Rose was talking about buying an item. She said that it was expensive but it was valuable. She could say, “It was worth the cost/money.”

Jason and Changbo were talking about their condition. One of them was not feeling well lat night, so he could say, “I was (feeling) sick last night.”

Royal and Nana were talking about a military base or barracks.

We changed partners and then formed a bigger group. A very popular topic of conversation was about summer plans. I cannot believe that this course is coming to an end so quickly. Time is really flying. Let’s try our best to stay focused for the next few weeks and remember the goals that we had originally. I am very, very proud of everyone so far and I know that you can do even better.

Great job!