People in the office were quite pleasantly surprised—and so was I!— this morning, and it was because of a good student. Yes, really.

I saw a movie once—actually, not long ago, though I can’t remember which movie it was—in which some characters attended a speed-dating meeting. The characters basically asked one another a series of questions on a timer and then were forced to move to another partner, in quick succession, until they’d made the full rounds and arrived back where they’d started. Well, if that doesn’t sound like something that could be adapted into a good exercise, I don’t know what does. Especially for today’s opening gambit, working through BE and DO questions. Do you like soccer? Are you from Kwangju? Do …

Well, another season, another semester. I got my schedule, and not to jinx myself, it looks pretty good as it stands… provided it doesn’t change somehow, suddenly, surprisingly. But I do have a number of other anxieties about the semester. And being the blogger that I am, I am going to go right ahead and get into them in public.

A student just sent me a completely garbled, incomprehensible email that had obviously been written in Korean and translated using a service like Babelfish. So here’s what I put in my response: 너가 이 원본에서 볼 수 있는다 대로, 전산화한 번역은 흔하게 아주 잘 일하지 않는다. 형은 불가해한 나오고, 기계가 사용된 독자에게 명백하다. 너가 그같은 프로그램을 사용하면 외국어 교사를 이메일로 보낼 때 특별하게 좋지 않다. 간단한 형 너자신을 쓰는것은 낫다. 이해하기 간단한 형은 쉽다. 너가 나에게 보낸 무엇을 어떤 이해되지 않는다. (As you can see from this text, computerized translation usually does not work very well. Sentences come out incomprehensible, …

One of my students today used the work “isomeric”. (Which I find now, looking it up, means “of the opposite sex”.) She was trying to say, “self control”. I couldn’t understand what she meant until she finally decided on the synonym “self-control”. This, I explained, is what makes dictionaries so dangerous. Heh.

My 8:30am morning class on Wednesday is a wonderful bunch of kids. They’re young, so very, very young. All college sophomores, advanced level, and really nice kids. They’re still getting used to me, and my class, but they’re the kind of students I dream of when I am teaching a class of unresponsive zombies. They get into the discussions, when they change partners it doesn’t feel as if they’ve been traumatized by the experience, they ask questions when they don’t understand something, or are having trouble expressing an idea in English for the first time… They’re a great class, which …

I’ve already written to exhaustive posts about this subject, but I have finally found the way to express my thoughts on certain elements of a program change we’re just starting in on, where I work. I’m going to use an analogy here.

… and then it was lost to the aether. It was about curriculum, program changes, and levelling programs, and how an educational institutions can effectively implement programs and program changes in a way that is centered on student benefit. It’s not really a whine-and-bitch session, but it does focus on the fact that realistic, honest assessment of negative factors is necessary if any real improvement is to be made. It also focuses on the idea of student-centered program implementation, and how this relates to interdepartmental politics. While it’s particularly true of the program change I’m witnessing now, it’s also true …