John Taylor Gatto knows a thing or two about the American school system… and, I’d argue, his points translate to all kinds of other school systems. Here are a couple of worthwhile, angering, stirring essays: The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher How public education cripples our kids, and why
Category: KOREA
Writing Your Own Reference Letter
I guess this is normal practice at a lot of Universities, here, or so I’ve hard from other teachers. You write your own reference letter and then email it, and it gets printed and stamped by the person who is or was your supervisor. I suppose it’s one way to make sure you get the reference letter you want, but it’s odd. Doesn’t this result in other people basically knowing you’ve written your own reference letters? Doesn’t it mean that people all read them knowing you’re writing about yourself? I find it kind of interesting, though, since, as a blogger, …
Robert Lowth, thou art mine enemy
Finally, the evidence against the prescriptivists that I have longed for all these years is here, in the biography of Robert Lowth (provided by Wikipedia).
craigslist seoul
For those of you in Korea, there’s a craigslist for the city. Not very full, since it’s English only, but it’s something. via c(h)ristine. C(h)ristine found something funny there, too. Brrrrrrrr.
Poems on Hangeul
Myung Mi Kim is a Korean-American poet, and you can hear her read poems about some of the various consonants in the Korean language. This is a link from the previously mentioned Factory School link I put up a few days ago. I think she gets the names of a couple of consonants wrong, by the way, but I’ve only listened once. Anyone notice this?
Conversational Moments I Want To Remember
Gord: Wait, is this a multiple choice question? Lime: No, choose only one answer. I’ll be quite happy when I can make such an interpretive error in Korean. I mean, when you think about it, if it’s an unknown term, her understanding of “multiple choice” makes sense: you would choose multiple answers, rather than just one “correct” answer. Fascinating little turn of conversation, and just shows how potentially counterintuitive terminology (like idioms and other features of language) can actually be. Another example is pronunciation I was trying to get right earlier. I encountered the word “꼬마” and discovered it means …
The Book Hocker and the Real Percentage
Well, I can’t REALLY complain, I got a new book to scam exercises from, but I tend not to enjoy the kinds of “presentations” that some guys make which really consist of them hocking books. I can usually tell within a few minutes of silent scanning whether or not a textbook will be useful to me or my students, and all the talk in the world won’t change how I perceive my students’ needs. Of course, it might be thatI’m generalizing about students and that in fact, many classes could sort-of handle the kind of text we looked at today, …
At What Price English?
The best speech I saw at the KOTESOL conference this weekend was one that a lot of people seemed to skip, one that a friend said he wasn’t all that interested in, but which I found fascinating and explanatory of a lot of things I’ve seen in Korea. It was Language Policy and the Construction of National Cultural Identity, delivered by Amy B. M. Tsui, from University of Hong Kong. Professor Tsui discussed the history of English study — encompassing English as a foreign-language subject of study, as well as English as a MOI — that is, as a medium …
If You See “Gord”
A bit later today, I’ll be heading off to Seoul for my first KOTESOL conference, which starts tomorrow and runs till Sunday. If you see a “Gord” walking around looking confused, amused, or starved for online access, it’s probably me. Walk up and say hi.
The Globe and Mail: Canadian teachers caught in S. Korean crackdown
Here we go with another newspaper misrepresentation. But this time, it’s not the Dong-Ah or the Joongang or the Chosun Ilbo, or even the Korea Herald. It’s The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper thant just ran a story titled: Canadian teachers caught in S. Korean crackdown. I got an email from my accountant in Montreal asking if I am okay. I got another email forwarded to me from a reporter in Saskatchewan who wants to talk to a Canadian in Korea about “the Canadian crackdown”. Well, as far as I know, it’s not a Canadian crackdown. It’s just a …