The head teacher of my department (not the English department - the extracurricular activities department), also known as Mini-Me by her not-so-affectionate underlings, asked me today if I could use chopsticks.
Um. YES. What do you think I've been DOING in the school cafeteria all this time?
In other news, I'm constipated for the first time in 4 months. Turns out, that 3-day weekend where I cooked most of my own food wasn't so good for my bowels. The 3-pound chunk of cheddar cheese Mom sent me for Christmas might also have something to do with it. Tell me, please, what is it about Korean restaurant/cafeteria food that gives me the most satisfying poops of my life?
I've just finished the planning (minus making all the worksheets I'll need) for the winter English camp I'm teaching to students. Now, I have all of 2 days to throw together 15 lesson plans for the teachers' winter English camp. I HATE LESSON PLANNING. Also, I'm super-stressed about the teachers' camp. While I wouldn't say I'm confident at all about my teaching skills, I've long since reached the point where standing in front of a class of 25 students and telling them what to do is a comfortable place to be. It doesn't intimidate me anymore.
What does intimidate me is the prospect of teaching English conversation to 7 co-workers, none of them terribly good at English, all of them older than me (I've told you that age is a huge deal here, right?), 5 of them very experienced teachers (the other 2 are support staff at the school). Their levels of English are extremely different. Sung-Min (tech guy) is probably at the highest level (and coincidentally, also the youngest person in the class, at 30 years old). While the conversations I have with him are slow-going, he is able to communicate most of the things he wants to after a bit of mutual brainstorming and (sometimes) dictionary consultation. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Kim Yeon, the supercilious teacher I've told you about before. Her English consists of "Hello" "How are you?" "I'm fine." and "Touch later!" I've tried telling her that "Touch later!" isn't a common expression (or at least, I don't think it is? Sometimes I get so used to how people use English here that I lose sight of how most of the native speakers I've been around use English). But try though I might, I couldn't convey to her that she should say "See you later!" instead. She still says "Touch later!" every time she leaves my presence. She's 65, and if this is all she's absorbed of English at this point despite studying it through university, I have serious doubts about whether I'll be able to teach her anything substantial in a 3-week camp.
The point is: how can I teach all of these people effectively? Surely I have to make the lesson material simple enough that the lower levels will be able to follow it, but what if it seems too childish to them or makes them feel condescended to? What if they finally realize that I am a terrible teacher?
**I use "these days" to excess these days. Every Korean speaker of English loves to say "these days," and I'm ridiculously hooked on it. Part of that is that I often purposely alter my natural speech into expressions that I know are more likely to be understood (i.e. "lately" --> "these days"), but part of it is that I have always absorbed the language usage I hear from people around me really naturally. It's inevitable; I knew it coming here, and as much as the people I am here to teach want me to speak "authentic" English, I cannot help but be influenced by what I hear here. And anyway, I refuse to correct people every time they use an expression that I've never heard before but makes sense anyway - after all, isn't the different ways that language can be used what got me interested in it in the first place?
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