Tag: teaching in Korea

Whilst Nature Was Busy Making Cabbages: The Woman in White

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Of all the places to find a euphemism for baffling passivity! This is from Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White: A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that she had been actually alive since the hour of her birth. Nature has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at the same time. Starting …

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Mark Majcher’s Twenty Four Game Poems as a TEFL Resource

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I recently picked up Mark Majcher‘s book Twenty Four Game Poems on Bundle of Holding (which is basically the Tabletop RPG gamer’s equivalent of Humble Bundle). I actually bought the bundle mainly for this book, because it intrigued me so profoundly, and I have to say, I’m glad I did. A “game poem” is basically just a short, simple pick-up game of some kind, for which the rules and mechanics are simple, and the game is focused on a single, straightforward idea, theme, or mini-arc. For example, players might adopt the role of a bird flying around to some purpose, and narrate their flight’s beginning, middle, …

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Bizarre Stuff Korean Parents Say To English Tutors (ie. Us)

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The following is a translation of a post my wife, Mrs. Jiwaku, made to Facebook. It was just too priceless not to translate and share in English. A word about the contents of the list: These aren’t things that one mom once said: they’re things we’ve heard time and again, and which, when we hear them, always cause us to flinch a little… to the complete bafflement of the people–mostly moms–saying them. So, no, we’re not cherry-picking the really crazy stuff… all the below is from the solidly average, not-extreme-by-general-standards parents. (Yes, mostly moms, because that’s who mostly manages the day-to-day stuff related to their …

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Killer Mini-Campaign

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I’ve posted before here about using RPGs as a learning tool with students. One of the things that’s important when you do this is to (a) choose a story structure that emphasizes communicative tasks: your students should have to talk a lot, whereas combat is something they want to avoid, or something that must be coordinated when it’s absolutely necessary. That is to say, pedagogically, it’s better for students to end up having to negotiate treaties or beg for their lives than it is to have them running around doing hack’n’slash adventuring, or dungeoneering of the type epitomized in the phrase, “kick in …

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TEFL RPGing Aplenty

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So, a while back I posted about using an D&D-like role-playing game as part of my teaching with one of our students. (See: Youngmin and the Magic World.) I recounted the story, and promised an update, but I haven’t followed through… Not for want of RPG action, of course. Youngmin has since rhyme-battled a forest ogre the size of a high-rise, teamed up with a goblin and a dragon to beat his nemesis, then teamed up with a mysterious capoerista girl (yes, capoeira has made its way into the game) and the goblin village’s witch to take on the dragon …

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