Survey week

Hello everyone.

I hope that things are going well for you.

First, I need to give you some homework for this week. Please take a survey about this course. Click here to take the survey. Thank you for your help and honesty.

In the last two days we took surveys about books and music. I found it quite interesting to hear about everyone’s interests. For me, it was good fun. We were able to learn many things about our classmates.

Today (Thursday) I asked if people like scary novels. Most people did not. My second question was if people knew who Steven King is. About half of the people knew him and a few people had just heard his name. I guess he might be most famous in Korea for his stories that became movies like The Shawshank Redemption(one of my favorites) and The Green Mile.

One problem that I heard today was confusion with two very similar words, read/read.
They are so similar that you cannot see any difference when you look at them. You need to use the context to know which pronunciation to use. The word that sounds like “reed” is the verb. The past tense and verb3 (PP) sounds like “red”.

So, in the question:
Have you ever read an English newspaper?
the read would sound like “red.”

but in the answer:
I read an English newspaper everyday.
The read would sound like “reed.”

OK? I hope this is easy to understand…because the next point is not sooo easy.

Today I heard a few questions like:
Have you ever been read a book in English?

Can you see the problem in this sentence?
(There are two PP verbs in a row.)

The sentence:
Have you ever read a book in English?
is perfect.

Have you (ever) + PP?

Have you ever been to China?
is perfect grammar, but
Have you ever been read an English book is not.

At the end of class today and yesterday we focused a bit on some pronunciation.
Some words that we practiced were:
strange (just one syllable)
rich (just one syllable)
question (sounds like kwestion– )
month
months

I wanted to show you a video that I think is funny. This video shows how important pronunciation can be. Please click here to see it. Enjoy!

Have a great weekend I will see you next week. Take care. Thanks again for your time on the survey.

Movie Survey

In class today each student gave a survey about movies and interests. This certainly gave many chances to speak. I hope that each student learned about their classmates also. What interesting things did you learn?

The questions that we asked each other today were:

How often do you rent DVD’s?

How many DVD’s do you own?

How often do you go to the movies? Who do you usually go with?

Where do you usually go to the movies? How much is a ticket?

Do you usually watch Korean movies or Hollywood movies?

What percentage (%) of movies that you watch are Korean?

What is your favorite movie ever? How many times have you seen it?

Who is your favorite actress? Why do you like her?

Who is your favorite actor? Why do you like him?

Do you have a favorite director? What movies has he/she directed?

What is the best film you’ve seen recently? Who was starring in it?

What is the worst film you’ve seen recently? Who was starring in it?

Do you enjoy sci-fi movies? What was the last sci-fi movie you saw?

Do you enjoy action films? Is it OK for young kids to watch violence?

Do you like to watch comedies? What is the funniest movie you have ever seen?

Do you enjoy horror movies? What is the scariest movie you have ever seen?

What was the last movie that you saw? What was the first movie you ever saw?

I thought it was quite an interesting time to hear everyone’s answers to these questions.

One (new?) word that came up in class today was:
subtitles-I explained to Royal that I read English subtitles when I watch Korean movies.

I think I heard the sentence, “I am Myeongdong” today as an answer for where someone usually watches movies. This is very strange, because Myeongdong is a place. I cannot be a place. I can only just do some action in a place. So, we could say, “I usually go to the theater in Myeongdong” or “I usually watch movies in Myeongdong.”

Good job and good singing!
See you soon!

“Whadjahdoo” this weekend?

In today’s class we mostly just focused on talking about what we did on the weekend. My weekend was pretty good. On Friday I just watched a movie. The I saw was the Pursuit of Happyness. I thought it was pretty good. I have it on a pirated DVD if anyone wants to borrow it. On Saturday, I met some friends in Sinchon, for my friend’s birthday. It was a good time.

I was interested to hear that many of the students in 1B hung out together this weekend. Sounds nice.

It was nice to hear what people did in their free time. I was surprised to hear that Rooney hit the (English) books.

If someone asks us what we did this weekend we would need to answer with simple past tense. If we use present simple that sounds like a usual plan.

For example:

I’m studied. >>> I studied.
I just hang out at home. >>> I just hung out at home.
I sleep. >>> I slept.
I just stay at home. >>> I just stayed at home.

An error in making questions in the past:
What movie did you watched? >>> What movie did you watch?

I heard that “Kate saw the movie.” I was very suprised because I wanted to know what the movie is. I think a more correct sentence is, “Kate a saw a movie. The movie that she saw was Music and Lyrics.” I also heard that Hugh Grant looks older now and has lots of wrinkles.

Some people had some drinks this weekend. The correct sentence is, “I drank with my friends.” Simple past for drink is drank, not drunk. Drunk is the feeling when we drink too much and feel tipsy.

Some people had Chinese food for dinner on Saturday. Actually I ate Chinese food for lunch today because I was thinking about Chinese food after class. I heard these two sentences:

I so like Chinese food.
I very like Chinese food.

Both of these sentences are incorrect.
We should say, “I really like Chinese food.”

It seemed that many people wanted to talk about movies, so we will talk about movies tomorrow.

By the way, the movies that I bought yesterday are: Perfume, Flags of Our Fathers, Number 23 (whichI heard was boring), Smoking Aces, Hannibal Rising, and Paris, je t’aime (Paris, I love you).

Whatsup? 1B!

The class project of making a CD compilation is going very well. I think most of the songs have been chosen and sent to the burner, Anni. I am worried that the songs I chose will not be popular. Anyway, they are in English and I like them so they should be OK.

Are you possible? 
This sounds quite strange, like I think you are a ghost and I cannot believe that you are really on this earth.  I think we would be much more likely to say, “Is it possible?” or “Is it OK with you?”

We worked on the project over three class hours and it was quite fun, even if many students were tired on Wednesday. Thursday was lots of fun. I really want to hear the song that we sang.

We started out Wednesday’s class with me giving out instructions about the project. I think that maybe I was not clear enough because some students thought I wanted them to make a CD, like as in making music. Royal thought it would be possible to make 2-3 songs in an hour. Amazing! That sounds like a project for another day.

At first, students made up questions that they would need to answer about the project.

Some of the questions were:

What is the purpose of this CD?
How should we make it?
When will we make it?
What should the title be?
How many songs should we have?
What kind of music should we have?
Which singers will we use?
How will we choose the songs?
How will we design the cover?
Who will design the cover?
Who will burn the CD?
Who will _____?

Some important words from this day’s lesson were: deadline and acknowledgment.

A common error that I heard was:

We haven’t many times. >>> We don’t have much time. 
This seems to be two errors at once. We would usually say We don’t have instead of we haven’t. Also, time is uncountable so we would say much time. Please don’t confuse time with times, as in, “I have been to Pusan three times.” This sentence is not about time on the clock, but the amount of occasions that something has happened.

Thursday’s class was like a big meeting that lasted for 50+ minutes. It was the first time that we never split into smaller groups to discuss something. We talked about all the important points about the project (and many other things) in a circle. I thought the conversation went very well. The captain did a great job to run the meeting.

There were some errors from this session that I think it is useful to think about.

Are you decide? 
Much, much more common would be:  Have you decided? 
or
Did you decide? 
Also, please be careful with  sentences like, “I don’t decide” because this means that you never ever make a decision. It would be very possible to live life like this!

I heard many problems with the idea of taking a picture. If you take a picture, you are the person holding the camera. If you have your picture taken, someone else is holding the camera and pointing it at you. I think some of the girls in the class do not like to have their picture taken. If they told me that they don’t like to take pictures I would think that they meant it is boring to use a camera to take photographs.

In the middle of class we suddenly started talking about bedtimes and what time we usually go to bed.  A useful question for this is, “What time do you usually go to bed?”

Remember: The early bird catches the worm.

Some (possibly) new words from this class were: receipt, compress, and upload.

I am very eager to see how the pictures came out. Everyone please take good care and have a fantastic weekend! Great job this week!

My song

Hello everyone…. I have been thinking long and hard about what song to choose. I finally chose.

My song is The Downeaster Alexa by Billy Joel. I hope you can find an MP3 of it.

If you cannot find it, my second selection is American Pie by Don Mclean. (it is very long).

Updates coming soon!

take care,

Mike

Desert Island

Today we talked again about being stranded on a desert island.

The question that we started out with was:

What else (other than the items from yesterday) would be useful on a desert island. 

We then made a new list of other items. Some of these items were:
coffee,  medicine, animals (camel, sheep, horse, cow), a flare gun, a boyfriend, a girlfriend (useful?), Wilson, a sand board, an mp3 player, a refrigerator, a tent, a fan, a heater, a notebook laptop, some books, DVD’s, a satellite receiver, and a PSP.

Most of these items were battery powered, or solar powered.

The next question was:  What books would you bring? 

And then: What DVD’s would you bring? 

The next question was: If you could only bring 8 songs which songs would you bring? 

(The answer should be: I would bring blah-blah….)

The final question was: If you could only bring 1 CD, which CD would you bring? 

We will talk more about music on Thursday.
Take care and see you then!

Castaway

Today, we talked about which items would be useful if we were stranded on a desert island.

The items that were on the list were:

bug spray, soap, toothpaste, an axe, a notebook, a pen, a raincoat, a knife, a magnifying glass, a box of matches, a spoon, money, a water purifier, a piano, a bottle of soju, a pack of cigarettes, a parachute, a mirror, GPS, a raincoat an umbrella, a camera, a bottle of water, sunscreen, rope, and a stapler.

Students then used these items to make a list of what they thought were the top 10 most important items. There were lots of different answers about this. Next, students talked with the members of their “trip” group and decided which items were most necessary. I thought this was quite interesting because there were many differences of opinion between the group members. Finally, at the end of class we tried to make an agreement about the most important items for everyone. This was more difficult than I expected, but it was an interesting conversation.

The final top 10 for the class was:

1. a water purifier (if it doesn’t use electricity)
2. a bottle of soju
3. a box of matches
4. an axe
5. rope
6. bug spray
7. a parachute
8. a mirror (for reflecting the sun’s light to get help)
9. GPS (to use a satellite to find out the exact location)
10. money or a pen

The conversations were very good, with lots or explanation and disagreement. Students really did well to communicate their ideas about why certain items were valuable or not. Of course, there were some small errors. Here they are:

We haven’t water.
This is one that I hear very often. In American English we would much, much, much more commonly say We don’t have water.

I want to soap.
If we say I want to ____, the ____ should be a verb.
I want to play soccer.
I want to eat lunch.
I want to have soap.
I want to use soap.
Or, we could erase the to, and just say I want soap, which is also OK.

Similarly, the sentence, We need to fire is incorrect.
Better sentences would be: We need to have fire/We need to make a fire/We need fire.

Good job and good luck.

PS-Here are some hints for surviving on a desert island.

MT* planning

*please remember that MT is Konglish and is not usually used or understood by native speakers. I think we would usually just say trip (class trip, company trip, school trip, or something like that).

In today’s class students talked about their MT experiences and planned a class outing.

The first few minutes were spent talking about past experiences with MT.

The starting question was:

Have you ever been on MT? 
The answer was, “Yes, I have/No, I haven’t.”
If the answer was yes, a good follow-up question was, “How many times have you been on MT?”

Other useful questions are:
Have you (ever) been to ___?
Where did you go?

I was very surprised to learn that Rooney has been on MT about 8 times. I think that maybe I did not really understand how often this events occur because that sounded like a lot to me.  Jason assured me that this was normal.

The second part of the class was planning the trip in small groups. Some of the questions that were discussed were:

Where will we go?
When will we go?

Why will we go (there)?

How will we get there?

How long will it take to get there?

How long will we stay?

What will we do (there)?
What games will we play?

What will we bring?

What kind of food will we bring?
What kind of food will we make?
What kind of food will we eat?

How will we make the teams?
What will the teams be?

Who will _____ (do something) ?

(important question?)
What kind of alcohol will we buy?
How much alcohol will we bring/buy? 

How much (money) will we spend?
How much do we expect to spend?

I do not remember the answers to all the questions (sorry).  I do remember that the trip is planned for just after midterm exams.

As usual, it was a very good job and I was wishing that class was longer than 50 minutes. Thank you all for a great week. Fantastic job. Have a great weekend! Enjoy St. Patrick’s Day!

Planning a trip

On Wednesday we planned an imaginary trip in groups. There were many questions that we had to consider to plan the trip. Some of the questions were:

Where will you go?
Where are you going to go?
Where do you want to go?

Why did you choose ____?
Why do you want to go there?

What do you want to see?
What do you want to do?
What do you want to eat?

When do you want to go?

How long will you stay?

Who will you go with?

How will you get there?

How will you travel when you get there?

How much do you expect to spend?

Have you been there before?  How many times?

Will you take a tour?

How do you usually like to travel?

What will you bring?/What you will pack?

The last question was very important for my “trip” to India.

The class was able to help me by suggesting many items that I should bring with me.

Some of these items were:

a spoon, a whistle, my passport with a visa, a first aid kit, lots of money, a map, a money belt, bug repellent, a camera, clothes (including underwear and socks), a handkerchief, a hat, a watch, toiletries (washing/bathroom supplies), a guidebook, some sunscreen/sunblock, lip balm, vitamins, a pair of sunglasses, my father, a compass, a towel, a bag, a notebook, a walking stick, an Mp3 player, a knife, a water purifier, a backpack, and a razor.

After we discussed what I should bring on my trip to India students made a plan for their own trips. I think the most exciting trip was to the Philippines, but that is just my opinion.

In this class there was not much time to talk about common errors because the students spoke so long about their plans and asked many follow-up questions. Good job! I will talk about the common errors here.

One phrase that I hear quite often is much money.  This is not exactly incorrect but it sounds strange. Much more common would be  a lot of money,  or  lots of money. Americans would usually only say much money when making a question, “Do you have much money?”  or a negative sentence, “I don’t have much money.”

I guess that this problem comes from being taught over and over again that we use much with uncountable things (like money) and many with countable things (like desks). This is true. It is MUCH easier to use “a lot of”  because we can use it for countable and uncountable things.

Another phrase that I heard in class was another information. As in, “Please give me another information.” This is incorrect. It should be more information. Information (like data) is uncountable. If we wanted to make it countable we would have to say something like a piece of information.

Two other common errors that I heard were in using past tense.

Sentences that I heard in class were:

Did you went to India? 
Matthew went go India. 

What is wrong with the first sentence?
I can think of two ways to change it:

Have you been to India?
(talking about life experience)   or

Did you go to India? 
(talking about one specific/exact time)

The correction for the second sentence is easy.
Matthew went go India. >>>Matthew went to India.
We never say “went go” in English!!

Thanks for reading.

Trips

Hello everyone!

Good job today. Lots and lots of talking. The topic today was traveling. We talked first about where we would like to go. Everyone made a list of 3 countries that they would like to go to and then discussed why they would like to go there. By the way, my list is 1) India 2) Argentina 3) Italy.

After we discussed what countries we would like to go to, students discussed where they went on their last trip. There were many very good discussions and lots of good questions. There were also some errors that I wanted to talk about. They are here:

How feeling there? >>> How did you feel when you were there?

Why do you want Egypt?   >>>Why do you want to go to Egypt?

I want see pyramid. >>> I want to see the pyramids.

I want to Pompeii. >>>I want to go to Pompeii.

He tripped to China. >>>He took a trip to China.

I went go to Tanzania. >>>I went to Tanzania.

It was better than I think. >>> It was better than I thought (it would be).

How long you stayed? >>>How long did you stay?

Why did you choice China? >>>Why did you choose China?
*remember that choice is a noun and choose is a verb.

We also heard many interesting travel stories today. I think Jason’s story was the most interesting. Wow!

We heard that Rose ate the roots of flowers when she was in China.
Jessica and I heard that David’s classmate drank too much and threw up (vomited)
Kate and I think there are many beggars and pickpockets in India.

Again, very good job today. Tomorrow we will plan an imaginary trip.