Two of my classes today were wonderful; students joking but doing as part of their work, studying hard and trying to get things right, as well as pass the time in a pleasant way. I love classes like this. They’re usually mostly girls, but in these two cases, the boys in the class are all quite good-natured and eager as well. In a couple of cases, the boys aren’t so eager but their girlfriends (who happen to be fellow students) encourage them and they get into it and realize they can have fun in class. It’s so cute to watch …

Not for my LEC class. Ah well, the exercises do at least result in some interesting discussion. But I am working on ways to streamline the exercises to make sure students spend more time practicing useful structures and less time constructing way too complicated structures wrong in an attempt to “speak really well”. Ah, the endless challenge. I think I also have this problem in Korean. I guess I need a teacher to kick my ass into following simple useful structures when I sray, to get me into the habit. At least for now… Ah, the endless struggle of study…

I’m working on a summary of the trip so far, but I’ve been pretty busy so I am gonna try finish that tomorrow, and maybe post some pics if there is time… … but for now… Well, now that I’ve been in India for a week, it’s begun: emails from students asking me to fix their grades, check again to see if they really deserved an F, etc. Most of them are quite pitiful, but two were understandable. One was an honest mistake by myself, where I failed a guy who went to military and with whom I’d made an …

Last night I went for beer with some engineers I teach on Monday nights. It was an interesting talk we had, and I enjoyed it. Most flattering was when the students started comparing my teaching to that of their other instructors, both other foreign English instructors and also their Korean professors in their major department. As dubious as I am at taking such compliments at face-value (for flattery often seems to be a mere social grace here), their insistance and detailed comparison of my teaching style with other teachers made me feel good. I won’t name the others they mentioned, …

Wow! Well, it seems like the ESL section of my website is more popular than I imagined. There are tons of teachers out there doing what we teachers do best… stealing goodies from other teachers, namely me. It makes me happy to see it going on. Another teacher, in New Zealand, has sent me some more goodies and I’ve been too busy to look at them. These days I am working in a very different program, where minimal handouts are the best way to work… so I haven’t had a chance to add anything new. But it seems people are …

When I started teaching, as a teachin assistant in Montreal (which at my University meant I was the professor for a freshman class), I didn’t understand that I wasn’t quite supposed to be the same Gord in the classroom as, say, at home. I thought, look, my job is to show people how to do a job. I was teaching writing, something I was good at, and I was teaching students who were basically my own age, or only a few years younger at any rate. I felt that there was no way I could actually pull rank on them, …

Here’s article about how more attractive professors score higher on student evaluations. Now I am curious to see what my student evaluations will look like. In Montreal, I was a lot heavier and I scored pretty well, but I thought it was all the time and work I put into my teaching. Maybe it was just my beautiful eyes? Hahaha.

Here are some notes I’ve jotted into my brain about teaching English as a required subject to undergrad students. Coming Down Hard Can Help. The other day in the classroom I was trying to do attendance. There were a few students near the front who were very polite, went quiet and listened. Well, I halted the roll call. The people in the back kept talking. Finally, I yelled, “Yaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” which is the Korean equivalent of a somewhat harsh, “Hey you!” Then I wrote the words polite and impolite on the board and taught them what they were being, and what …

Here’s a double hit; a collection of crazy and funny jobs in a list, and a list of questions using “do you” to be used in question formation. This should be preceded by fifteen minutes or so of listening and practice. Then a short five to ten minute exercise where students try out the do you questions on one another, and try to form a few new questions (and follow-up questions). Then, spring the weird jobs onto them and see how they do. This works well at several levelsl; for intro-level the students can play guessing games and work on …

Here’s a slightly modified jobs list more suitable for roleplay situations. In this case it’s for telephone stuff, but many situations would be applicable.