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, …