Teaching English in Korea - ESL blog

Tough to get fired in US schools

We have a California teacher who accidentally sent a sex tape to 5th graders and their parents.

We have NYC school teachers being paid to do nothing.

What else have we got?

Raiders of the Lost Ark opening action sequence

Here's the video that goes with this lesson: Raiders of the Lost Ark passive voice

They cut out the first few minutes and you miss the donkey being tied up and Indy whipping the gun out of the guy's hand. But if you haven't got the movie itself...

Slowmo shopping in Home Depot

Slow motion shopping in Home Depot (in Manhattan). Kind of funny but I want to show my students what these big DIY stores look like because they don't exist in Korea:

Just a little extra just in case... Tony beats up Mikey, uses a stapler, and wipes the prints.

Link to Friends video for discourse activity

This is the middle 7 minutes from the season 3 episode, "The One Where No One's Ready". I use the phone conversation that starts at around 5:00 to about 6:50.

There's nothing wrong with playing from the beginning to give students more context. The whole episode is on Youtube divided into 3 parts. However much of the stuff won't actually help build context so you could just set the scene verbally.

Anyway the conversation is Monica talking to Michelle (after Monica calls Michelle and hangs up on her to check if Richard was seeing someone else - Monica had heard a message from a woman after beeping into Richard's answering machine and wanted to make sure it was his daughter Michelle rather than a new girlfriend. Then when she talks to Michelle, Michelle seems to be threatening to tell her father, Richard, Monica's ex, that Monica beeped into Richard's answering machine and listened to his messages.

Anyway, filling in the missing conversation bits is extremely tough, especially in the middle where Monica wanders off and students have to fill in both speakers' lines.

This is for advanced speakers.

Very tough questions on racism in America

In this article the author complains that the "Empowerment Experiment" - in which black Americans give all their business to other blacks - is being applauded while if whites decided to go only to white businesses they would be branded as racist.

The counter argument is that black Americans don't have the power to be racist in American society: "By definition, racism is the capacity/power to translate prejudice/bigotry into custom, policy or law. Black people have not had the predisposition or the power to oppress White people in this country. Hence the notion of "Black racism" is a contradiction in terms."

Possible discussion questions:

Is it acceptable for black Americans, white Americans, Korean Americans, or any other group to support "their kind"?

When minorities support minorities does this in some way "level the playing field"?

What would you call it if whites decided to "buy white" (give their business to other whites)?

Is black racism a contradiction?

How far behind are US schools?

There are some interesting points in this article. The author argues that the US is not as far behind as we have been led to believe and points out several ways the public has been misled.

However, the author also provides at least some misleading information when comparing the US and South Korea: "South Koreans do have a longer school year, measured in days. But Americans actually spend more time in school. The average U.S. eighth-grader has 1,146 instructional hours a year, compared with 923 hours a year in South Korea."

Before accepting this you might want to know that many Korean high school kids spend a ridiculous amount of time in school - an unhealthy amount of time in school. After the regular school day has ended they go to private institutes or stay in school and study. I often hear stories about students who wake up at 6:00 AM and get home at midnight. I also see high school kids fooling around so it's not all work and no play for everybody...

But my point is that this writer can not be counting the time spent studying after school, either in the school itself or in private institutions or with tutors at home.

More Youtube videos students can practice describing

The Sopranos scenes made for an interesting class. The scenes themselves were pretty surprising. Once I made it clear that I wanted students to be as detailed as possible in their descriptions and that the point was to stretch their vocbularies and use language like 'what do you call it when..." the language production was pretty good. I modeled descriptions of course.

Anyway here are a few more (not from the Sopranos though). The first is a wedding reception garter removal thing which doesn't happen in Korea and probably some other countries so it may interest your students.

The second is a drinking game, which will probably entertain college students. I always called it beer pong and never knew it had another name:

Just for fun, here's a Sopranos one: