Saturday, June 20, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
Today has been a long day. I started with a class at 9:10 and I stayed busy for the most part from then until 8:30pm. I got home around 8:45. Because of the holidays and campus events, I had to make up one class tonight (a Friday) and I have to make up more classes next week. I will be glad when this semester is over.
Sometimes I am glad to be doing what I am doing and sometimes I am not. I’m motivated to stay here because of the financial package and the interesting conversations I have with students. But sometimes, many times, I wonder if I should stay here. Even though the financial side is beneficial, I don’t see a lot of fruit coming from what I am doing. The students this semester have been very difficult to work with. I think this is a combination of poor teaching methods, language and cultural barriers and a lack of motivation on the students‘ part. It makes me wonder whether I am making much of a difference.
The difficult thing about teaching is that there is no litmus test for the progress that students could make. I think that students are better at listening and perhaps speaking, too, but that doesn’t mean that they can have a conversation in English very easily. I learned tonight that one student doesn’t know the English equivalent to the Korean words for who, what, when, where, why and how. He knew a few of them but not too many. I shocked me to realize I didn’t know this even though the semester is almost over. When he took the oral mid-term test, he seemed to do okay at speaking in English but when it comes to a regular conversation, he can’t seem to manage that. I’m inclined to give an oral exam where all students can do is study the subject but they don’t know exactly what kind of conversation will take place.
Sometimes I am glad to be doing what I am doing and sometimes I am not. I’m motivated to stay here because of the financial package and the interesting conversations I have with students. But sometimes, many times, I wonder if I should stay here. Even though the financial side is beneficial, I don’t see a lot of fruit coming from what I am doing. The students this semester have been very difficult to work with. I think this is a combination of poor teaching methods, language and cultural barriers and a lack of motivation on the students‘ part. It makes me wonder whether I am making much of a difference.
The difficult thing about teaching is that there is no litmus test for the progress that students could make. I think that students are better at listening and perhaps speaking, too, but that doesn’t mean that they can have a conversation in English very easily. I learned tonight that one student doesn’t know the English equivalent to the Korean words for who, what, when, where, why and how. He knew a few of them but not too many. I shocked me to realize I didn’t know this even though the semester is almost over. When he took the oral mid-term test, he seemed to do okay at speaking in English but when it comes to a regular conversation, he can’t seem to manage that. I’m inclined to give an oral exam where all students can do is study the subject but they don’t know exactly what kind of conversation will take place.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Finding Fulfillment when I Don't Fill It
I had a difficult time at church today. This should not be surprising since we are trying to figure out what to do about the English service. It seems that we are not on the same page as far as the leadership of the service is concerned. One person things we should let lying dogs lie and one person thinks we should keep going regardless of who shows up. Both of these are valuable perspectives, I think. Though I am verbally closer to the person who says to let the thing die, I can also respect the person who finds fulfillment in the service. This experience makes me wonder about fulfillment, something I may not think accurately about in my mind.
To me, if something is worth doing, there is some evidence of fruit. It doesn’t mean that there has to be lots of proof that something is worthwhile but some type of evidence would be nice. As one leader and I were discussing the service, it seemed that we weren’t getting anywhere. We were both probably being too abstract in our thinking. A third person seemed to bring us down to earth. He pointed out that the main reason why people are coming to the service is to learn English. He further suggested that we do something less formal.
The stress on learning English makes me want to shy away from this responsibility. That’s why I wanted to go the other direction after my lunch appointment yesterday. There is a part of me that doesn’t understand why people are so concerned about learning English. Yet there is another part of me that can see why people are so interested in learning English. This does seem curious to me, especially in light of the fact that people come to our English service to learn English. I would think they would go to hagwons or something like that but they seem to be coming to church for that.
I’m not sure what to do with this especially in terms of fulfillment. I have never had someone come up to me telling me how much they appreciate what I do, unless the person was directly involved in the service. I’m reminded of one analogy someone gave me a long time ago, that this dilemma is much the same as the person who runs sound. Nobody goes to the soundperson when everyting is going well to express gratitude to that person. They only go to that person when there is something wrong. I wonder if there is something to this analogy that is applicable to my own life, that sometimes there isn’t the life-fulfillment that I have changed somebody’s life but that I am doing something well. What motivates one to do things that are worthwhile when one does not fulfilled in them? Right now the most fulfilling thing to me is going to sleep. I have gotten a lot of work done today and I am officially out of steam.
To me, if something is worth doing, there is some evidence of fruit. It doesn’t mean that there has to be lots of proof that something is worthwhile but some type of evidence would be nice. As one leader and I were discussing the service, it seemed that we weren’t getting anywhere. We were both probably being too abstract in our thinking. A third person seemed to bring us down to earth. He pointed out that the main reason why people are coming to the service is to learn English. He further suggested that we do something less formal.
The stress on learning English makes me want to shy away from this responsibility. That’s why I wanted to go the other direction after my lunch appointment yesterday. There is a part of me that doesn’t understand why people are so concerned about learning English. Yet there is another part of me that can see why people are so interested in learning English. This does seem curious to me, especially in light of the fact that people come to our English service to learn English. I would think they would go to hagwons or something like that but they seem to be coming to church for that.
I’m not sure what to do with this especially in terms of fulfillment. I have never had someone come up to me telling me how much they appreciate what I do, unless the person was directly involved in the service. I’m reminded of one analogy someone gave me a long time ago, that this dilemma is much the same as the person who runs sound. Nobody goes to the soundperson when everyting is going well to express gratitude to that person. They only go to that person when there is something wrong. I wonder if there is something to this analogy that is applicable to my own life, that sometimes there isn’t the life-fulfillment that I have changed somebody’s life but that I am doing something well. What motivates one to do things that are worthwhile when one does not fulfilled in them? Right now the most fulfilling thing to me is going to sleep. I have gotten a lot of work done today and I am officially out of steam.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
English: Children, Dinner and the Future
Today has been an interesting day. I started by working at home, trying to grade all the papers for mid-terms. I only got through one group’s presentation and I am nearly at the end of my rope, or the end of my day rather. Today has been a day of going back and forth between meetings and work. I thought I could get some work done tonight after all the events were over with but I ended up chatting online instead. Finally, I decided to go running after I had another frustrating conversation about the English service.
The first event of my day was meeting the guy for lunch that I met at the PC room last weekend. It turns out that he is a university student at another university in the same city where I work. I asked him why he wants to be friends with a foreigner and he gave the anwer I expected: I want to improve my English. I responded by saying, “So you want to use me for my English”. He didn’t like the way that sounded and I tried to get him to agree to it several times. I would say we had a half-way decent conversation. It was tiring though because of the language barrier. He insisted on walking with me to my home but I said there was no sense in going any further than the university where I work. As it were, he had to backtrack to the hair salon. He wanted to make sure I didn’t think he was trying to use me for my English. I said, “If that’s the case, let’s only speak in Korean from now on.” He agreed.
After that I went home for an hour to grade tests. I finished one group test but that was it. I arrived at the university about the time that my co-teacher suggested we meet. There was a staff person in the office where I met the Korean teachers (aka TAs) who does not speak much English. I had what seemed like a five-minute conversation with her, mostly in Korean, but it was probably only one minute. This made me feel good about my Korean ability which seems to be improving slowly but surely. But then there were other times today when people couldn’t understand my text messages which I typed in Korean.
My task at the university was to work with one of the Korean teachers, a university student, to teach English to a group of children. I can’t quite say that I taught them because the Korean teacher led them through the CCM songs that they will be presenting to their parents in a few weeks. I mostly engaged with the children during this time. A few of them tried to speak to me in Korean and I understood a little bit of what they were saying. Sometimes I was modeling the pronounciation for them and eventually we played the game, “Do you love your neighbor” and we finished with an airplane roleplay.
This was a lot of fun for me. It seemed that the students had a lot of fun and that they were very comfortable in the classroom. The other teacher and I seemed to work well together, too. The adventure continued as I went to dinner with the other Korean teacher (going together with both teachers would have been nice but one of them had to go to church). The meal cost less than 5 USD. We left earlier than we anticipated because it seemed that the people wanted to close the restaurant. I experienced this same phenomenon yesterday with a foreign professor. It was interesting how nobody came up to us to tell us they were closing but they sent us hints in other ways like closing the doors and turning off the air-conditioning (air-con in Konglish).
By the time I got home at 8pm I had a lot of excitement running through me. I thought this called for a celebration with some watermelon. I thought that after eating some watermelon I would have lots of motivation to work but this was not the case at all. I stared at my computer screen for several hours. I was thinking about going running but I didn’t want to leave my apartment so I was thinking of going to sleep. Then when someone called me to talk about the English service I got upset and then I knew I had to go running. So I went running and walking for what seemed to be an hour. Because of being angry, I probably ran harder at times than I have recently. After running I felt less stress, though I am still frustrated about what I should do.
The first event of my day was meeting the guy for lunch that I met at the PC room last weekend. It turns out that he is a university student at another university in the same city where I work. I asked him why he wants to be friends with a foreigner and he gave the anwer I expected: I want to improve my English. I responded by saying, “So you want to use me for my English”. He didn’t like the way that sounded and I tried to get him to agree to it several times. I would say we had a half-way decent conversation. It was tiring though because of the language barrier. He insisted on walking with me to my home but I said there was no sense in going any further than the university where I work. As it were, he had to backtrack to the hair salon. He wanted to make sure I didn’t think he was trying to use me for my English. I said, “If that’s the case, let’s only speak in Korean from now on.” He agreed.
After that I went home for an hour to grade tests. I finished one group test but that was it. I arrived at the university about the time that my co-teacher suggested we meet. There was a staff person in the office where I met the Korean teachers (aka TAs) who does not speak much English. I had what seemed like a five-minute conversation with her, mostly in Korean, but it was probably only one minute. This made me feel good about my Korean ability which seems to be improving slowly but surely. But then there were other times today when people couldn’t understand my text messages which I typed in Korean.
My task at the university was to work with one of the Korean teachers, a university student, to teach English to a group of children. I can’t quite say that I taught them because the Korean teacher led them through the CCM songs that they will be presenting to their parents in a few weeks. I mostly engaged with the children during this time. A few of them tried to speak to me in Korean and I understood a little bit of what they were saying. Sometimes I was modeling the pronounciation for them and eventually we played the game, “Do you love your neighbor” and we finished with an airplane roleplay.
This was a lot of fun for me. It seemed that the students had a lot of fun and that they were very comfortable in the classroom. The other teacher and I seemed to work well together, too. The adventure continued as I went to dinner with the other Korean teacher (going together with both teachers would have been nice but one of them had to go to church). The meal cost less than 5 USD. We left earlier than we anticipated because it seemed that the people wanted to close the restaurant. I experienced this same phenomenon yesterday with a foreign professor. It was interesting how nobody came up to us to tell us they were closing but they sent us hints in other ways like closing the doors and turning off the air-conditioning (air-con in Konglish).
By the time I got home at 8pm I had a lot of excitement running through me. I thought this called for a celebration with some watermelon. I thought that after eating some watermelon I would have lots of motivation to work but this was not the case at all. I stared at my computer screen for several hours. I was thinking about going running but I didn’t want to leave my apartment so I was thinking of going to sleep. Then when someone called me to talk about the English service I got upset and then I knew I had to go running. So I went running and walking for what seemed to be an hour. Because of being angry, I probably ran harder at times than I have recently. After running I felt less stress, though I am still frustrated about what I should do.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Is Something Wrong?
I haven’t journaled for the last two nights. I made up for one of these times the next morning but I didn’t make it up in time to do that this morning. Interestingly, it was the nights that I didn’t exercised that I missed journaling. It is ironic that excercising actually gives me energy.
I was expecting to meet a student later tonight to give him some paperwork that he needs to apply to a university in Seoul. Unfortunately, he got caught in traffic so we are going to meet on Monday. This is unfortunate since that is my research day but perhaps that will be good because I can do some reading in the library or I can just take a break at that time and come back home for a few hours.
Today was a much better day than the last few Fridays have been. I still found my conversation class to be a struggle. Personally I want to step away from the book but I think there is some value to it in helping students learn English grammar. Unfortunately, most of the students today didn’t do their homework so they had to spend a good amount of classtime doing homework. Perhaps I should’ve just moved on to the next task. I was hoping to have people compare answers. I find myself trying to pattern the way I teach after the Greek classes that I took in college and seminary. Unfortunately this is an entirely different setting since I am not speaking to students in their native language. Sometimes they end up teaching me as much about Korean as I teach them about English. The more I study Korean the more interested I become.
When I went to chapel today, I tried writing down words that the speaker used but I didn’t find this as meaningful today as I did on Sunday when I did the same thing. I’m not sure if it was the fact that the sermon was shorter, that I didn’t understand as many words or if my mood was just different. Sometimes I think it is more relaxing knowing that I can’t understand what the speaker is saying and therefore I am more relaxed because I can’t complain about something I don’t understand. At the same time, I think it would be nice to at least understand what the other person is saying.
Lunch with one of my colleagues was interesting as usual. We talked about a plethora of subjects ranging from university politics to media literacy to writing in my journal. Of course this included other subjects like church and Korean culture. He is always telling me to write, write, write.
Eventually I returned to my office to work on the recommendation forms for the student I already mentioned. I was happy to get this done in a relatively short amount of time. After that was all said and done, I tried to contact the department chair of one of the departments I belong to. Since I was told the professor’s English-speaking abilities are limited, I attempted to write the e-mail in Korean and English. One of my Korean collegues whose English far outweighs my Korean (I can’t really have a conversation in Korean) told me my Korean is great. I thought she was being sarcastic but she didn’t seem to back down when I kept telling her I am not good at Korean. I guess she is saying that I am making progress which is an important thing in learning another language. I try to send text messages in Korean as much as possible. Sometimes I text in Korean and other people text me in English. I guess this gives all of us practice, though sometimes we can have misunderstandings if I don’t understand the Korean or vice versa.
During the afternoon time, I also had another Korean colleague visit my office. He expressed interest in visiting around the same time every Friday. He showed me the memory verses he has learned in English from the Bible. I was impressed at his intonation as he quoted the verses to me.
I didn’t meet with the Korean professor that I usually have dinner with on Friday nights. This was a nice break. I am usually worn out by Friday nights and we often have difficult conversations (because of language and cultural barriers). This enabled me to come home and make some dinner. For some reason, by the time I got home I was feeling really good. I suppose it may have had something to do with getting more sleep last night. It may also be because I am doing something with children tomorrow. It seems that I thrive on doing many things. Apparently it gives me something to look forward to. I would imagine that tomorrow night I will feel the letdown that I usually feel on Friday nights.
I’m wondering whether I should continue blogging as I have been or if I should change it slightly. I would imagine it is getting boring to read about the same types of events everyday. For me, being able to put this on a blog helps me to keep on track with doing this. At the same time, I am reticent to say everything because of a fear of offending someone. I worried about that with my last post since I addressed an issue that could be quite controversial.
I was expecting to meet a student later tonight to give him some paperwork that he needs to apply to a university in Seoul. Unfortunately, he got caught in traffic so we are going to meet on Monday. This is unfortunate since that is my research day but perhaps that will be good because I can do some reading in the library or I can just take a break at that time and come back home for a few hours.
Today was a much better day than the last few Fridays have been. I still found my conversation class to be a struggle. Personally I want to step away from the book but I think there is some value to it in helping students learn English grammar. Unfortunately, most of the students today didn’t do their homework so they had to spend a good amount of classtime doing homework. Perhaps I should’ve just moved on to the next task. I was hoping to have people compare answers. I find myself trying to pattern the way I teach after the Greek classes that I took in college and seminary. Unfortunately this is an entirely different setting since I am not speaking to students in their native language. Sometimes they end up teaching me as much about Korean as I teach them about English. The more I study Korean the more interested I become.
When I went to chapel today, I tried writing down words that the speaker used but I didn’t find this as meaningful today as I did on Sunday when I did the same thing. I’m not sure if it was the fact that the sermon was shorter, that I didn’t understand as many words or if my mood was just different. Sometimes I think it is more relaxing knowing that I can’t understand what the speaker is saying and therefore I am more relaxed because I can’t complain about something I don’t understand. At the same time, I think it would be nice to at least understand what the other person is saying.
Lunch with one of my colleagues was interesting as usual. We talked about a plethora of subjects ranging from university politics to media literacy to writing in my journal. Of course this included other subjects like church and Korean culture. He is always telling me to write, write, write.
Eventually I returned to my office to work on the recommendation forms for the student I already mentioned. I was happy to get this done in a relatively short amount of time. After that was all said and done, I tried to contact the department chair of one of the departments I belong to. Since I was told the professor’s English-speaking abilities are limited, I attempted to write the e-mail in Korean and English. One of my Korean collegues whose English far outweighs my Korean (I can’t really have a conversation in Korean) told me my Korean is great. I thought she was being sarcastic but she didn’t seem to back down when I kept telling her I am not good at Korean. I guess she is saying that I am making progress which is an important thing in learning another language. I try to send text messages in Korean as much as possible. Sometimes I text in Korean and other people text me in English. I guess this gives all of us practice, though sometimes we can have misunderstandings if I don’t understand the Korean or vice versa.
During the afternoon time, I also had another Korean colleague visit my office. He expressed interest in visiting around the same time every Friday. He showed me the memory verses he has learned in English from the Bible. I was impressed at his intonation as he quoted the verses to me.
I didn’t meet with the Korean professor that I usually have dinner with on Friday nights. This was a nice break. I am usually worn out by Friday nights and we often have difficult conversations (because of language and cultural barriers). This enabled me to come home and make some dinner. For some reason, by the time I got home I was feeling really good. I suppose it may have had something to do with getting more sleep last night. It may also be because I am doing something with children tomorrow. It seems that I thrive on doing many things. Apparently it gives me something to look forward to. I would imagine that tomorrow night I will feel the letdown that I usually feel on Friday nights.
I’m wondering whether I should continue blogging as I have been or if I should change it slightly. I would imagine it is getting boring to read about the same types of events everyday. For me, being able to put this on a blog helps me to keep on track with doing this. At the same time, I am reticent to say everything because of a fear of offending someone. I worried about that with my last post since I addressed an issue that could be quite controversial.
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