Multimedia Monday: Culture Shock

Usually foreigner-in-Korea blogs/"vlogs" make me cringe (like Eat Your Kimchi...seriously? seriously you guys?), but this girl doesn't make me crawl the walls, so that's a point in her favor.

Anyway, the topic in the book this week is "culture shock," which is a good one for conversation fodder. There were also a whole lot of foreigner-in-Korea videos about it, and all the assorted little things that are different when you come to Korea.

Speaking of "little things," it's too bad that I couldn't show them the infamous "Royale with cheese" dialogue from Pulp Fiction, but so it goes.

It seems Expat Kerri has a whole series of videos on this very topic. Normally I would write this off as an egregious and self-indulgent exercise in nihilism, but hey, it was good listening practice for my kids, so thanks Kerri!

Before I played this for them, I asked them two things:

1. What was confusing for her?

2. Why was it confusing?

This particular entry happens to be about the Korean expression, "밥 먹었어요?" but as I said, she has some other entries too.



It segued into a short little lesson about how in English we say "What's up?" or "How are you?" as a similar greeting: people don't say it because they necessarily care about the answer, but because it's become a convention among greetings. Likewise, I pointed out, if you're doing really bad, you still tend to say, "I'm okay" or "I'm fine" because you understand the person is just asking to be polite, not because they really want to know your sob story.

If you want to download this or other videos to use in class, I recommend using YouTube downloader HD. For other videos (some useful, some not), please check out my Multimedia Monday tag.

Multimedia Monday: Brush Up Your Shakespeare

The topic in my advanced classes' textbook this week is on the evolution of English as a language. Obviously it's hard to pack a whole linguistic history into a one-page essay, so the article in the book can be boiled down to: "Lots of people invaded England, so lots of languages are in English, and it's changed a lot over time." (Aside, I'm currently reading Globish, which is about essentially this story, as well as tracing its trajectory as a lingua franca. Good stuff so far.)

Because I'm an English (Creative Writing) major, I think it'll be great word-nerdy fun to play with some Shakespearian insults—if nothing else, to demonstrate in a clearer way than the book provides just how much English has changed. I printed out a worksheet/word list as soon as I got a chance to flip through the new text book, but just now I also found this TED Ed video. I haven't decided if I'm going to use it or not, but it's interesting nonetheless. At least for me, since I haven't studied any Shakespeare since high school. (I opted for Milton courses in university instead.)

Also for bonus points, here's what I was referencing to in the title (if you didn't catch it on your own). Why doesn't anyone write musicals like this anymore?

Multimedia Monday: CSI: Legoland

I'm early for the first time in a while with this! That's because after a string of mediocre essay topics, the advanced textbook really geared it up for the last chapter: "Crime Fighting Scientists." Of course, talking about crime and violence is always a little unsettling and awkward because inevitably things like rape and sexual assault come up. I'm fortunate enough that those aren't triggering concepts for me, but some of my advanced students are at the age where I'm not sure if they've had "the talk" with their parents about the mechanics of sex. Others are old enough to know, presumably, but there's still no way of knowing what kind of discussions they've had about boundaries and consent and "no means no" and so on.

So, I mean, there was that minefield.

Odd that I don't really have much issue discussing murder, though. I guess death is a bit easier to joke about?

Anyway, I started out the class with a bit more levity.

At least one of the CSI variants are ported over here, in addition to The Mentalist and probably other  crime shows I don't know about as well. I started off class by asking if they knew CSI, and what they thought about it and why. Sometimes we chatted a bit more about TV shows in general, if time allowed.

Then I told them I had a video that was like a CSI episode and gave them two questions.

1. Who did it? And why?
2. Why does the man put on his sunglasses?

After checking to make sure they understood the questions, I played the video. In retrospect, I should have pre-taught the words "lumberjack" and "convict," but I don't think it detracted too much from their understanding. The nice thing about whodunnits is that they're pretty straightforward.

I paused at the shot with all three suspects and took a tally to see who everyone thought was guilty, then let the rest of the video play out.

Obviously everyone could give me a good answer for the first question. The language is too quick and kind of too punny for anyone to have been able to answer the second one, I suppose, but I thought my more advanced students might have been able to catch the "axe"/"ask" joke.

I had textbook material to cover, so I left it that, but I'm sure you could exploit the hell out of this. Simple past and sequencing words spring to mind. Putting aside the content, you could also talk about how to create stop motion animated features and review imperatives and giving/following directions as well.

For more videos (with and without lesson ideas), check out the Multimedia Monday tag. If you don't have Internet access on your classroom computer, I recommend YouTubeDownloader HD.

My EFL Arsenal

Having taught a small variety of EFL classes, I've assembled a short list of things that go a long way towards making my job easier. Feel free to add any more (or any thoughts) in the comments.

• Good alphabet flashcards. Preferably, ones that are cute, durable, use short words, and that address the multiple sounds of letters in English (short and long vowels, hard and soft consonants, etc). Ones with separate diphthongs and digraph cards would be ideal, but I'm not sure such a set exists? Until then, this PDF set of printable alphabet flashcards is pretty good.


• Good vocabulary flashcards. What constitutes good in this case? Not culturally-specific, unambiguous pictures, addressing variances within English (American versus British English, so listing both "truck" and "lorry"), and containing important, basic words: people, places, animals, important verbs, classroom words, colors, and so forth. If you're teaching business English, or academic English, you obviously have more specific needs.


• A die (or two dice).


• A soft ball, or stuffed animal, or something else you can safely throw indoors. Get a large plush dice and combine this one with the above point, plus you get the bonus of a dice that rolls quietly. My wooden one is kind of loud, which can drive me up the wall.


• A watch with a secondhand, or a stopwatch.


• Extra pencils.


• A small notebook.


• Small little somethings that little hands can easily manipulate (I use a set of wooden Jenga blocks in one of my classrooms).

What else has made your teaching life easier?

This also is brilliant, though perhaps too bulky to tote around with you while globe trotting. Certainly, you could MacGyver one up yourself (or alter it for preferred vowel pronunciations), or convince your school to order one: The Color Vowel Chart.

The Seat of My Pants: Biographies Game and Corners

When I was doing my CELTA (check the tags if you're interested in reading about that experience), one of the instructors cautioned me not to rely too heavily on improvising in the classroom.

"You're extremely good at it, but you shouldn't rely on that instead of lesson planning," he told me during one of my evaluations. He's right, of course. Occasionally, though, I have a class where I really have no other option other than to go in flying blind. I have become a master of endlessly modifying ESL/EFL games, and occasionally creating new games on the spot.

Like today: a review class where, for the moment, the two students (Max and Jerry) were on completely different pages. The Jeopardy! game I had based on material I knew Jerry had studied would not be fair to Max.

I ran through my stable of EFL/ESL games: Pictionary, Simon Says (in the form of "Please Game," to hopefully teach some manners), and Corners (which I'll explain in a minute). Fortunately, the boys were happy and excited enough to not even mind fairly dull sentence drilling, which I used to stall for time until I came up with: Biographies.

Biographies

Goal: To practice third person singular conjugation and vocabulary; forming questions; it can probably be an okay ice-breaker (but honestly I think there are better ones—maybe use this to follow up "Two Truths And A Lie").

Materials Needed: Blackboard/whiteboard; flashcards (totally optional)

Levels: All.

Ages: All.


Procedure: Choose one student to sit in a chair facing away from the board. The other students come up to the board and write sentences about the other student. For example:

"Jerry likes chicken."
"Jerry doesn't like puppies."

If you have a lot of students, you can do this in teams, or figure out a way to take turns. When you have a predetermined number of sentences on the board, have the subject of the sentences turn around. Another student then turns the sentence into a question. You can make the question yourself, of course, if the students are as low as Max and Jerry are.

"Jerry, do you like chicken?"

If he does, the student/team that wrote, "Jerry likes chicken." gets a point. If he doesn't, no one gets a point. If you want, you can also award points for writing a perfect sentence, forming a perfect question, or correcting a mistake. It's up to you.

My examples here are pretty simple English because I was working with young, low-level students. Obviously the only limit to this game is the level of your students' English. More ideas off the top of my head:

"Jerry has a large family."
"Jerry wants to travel to Europe."
"Jerry thinks Lee Myeong-bak is a great president."
"Jerry ate a frog in France."

For the flashcard variation, you can give the "subject" student a pile of flashcards to rifle through. She can hold up ones she likes (or doesn't like!) to give the other students hints (or to try to trick them).

The points are optional as well, if you think your students might be the kind to purposefully throw the game for the other team. It's been my experience, though, whenever I find a potential exploit in one of my games, it simply never occurs to my kids. You might have to be mindful with the younger ones (or even with all ages, sadly) that they don't use it as an excuse to bully or tease anyone.

Never forget that you can also sit in the chair and make yourself the subject of their sentences!

Corners

Goal: Reviewing vocabulary; thinking about categories and ordering.

Materials Needed: A classroom; flashcards (optional)

Levels: All. 

Ages: Probably best with elementary age children; I find the older my students get, the less they want to get out of their seats. 

Procedure: Designate one corner of the room as one category ("fruits") and the other as another category ("vegetables"). You can use more than two if you want. Say a sentence, vocabulary word, or hold up a flashcard and have the students find the right category. If they're right, they get a point. If they're wrong, no point (or out). Or eliminate points and do it like reverse "Four Corners" style, only instead of students getting out at random, they get out if they make an English mistake (going to the "vegetable" corner when you say "banana"). If there's an intermediate or grey area and one student goes against the grain (you say "tomato" and she chooses fruit even though everyone else chose vegetable), she can even stay in if she gives a good argument about why her answer is right—in English, obviously.

When I played this today, I had two corners: "good" and "bad." We reviewed adjectives (okay, fine, terrible awesome, etc) and phrases (I like..., I don't like..., I can't stand..., etc). Really, the sky's the limit on this one. You can use it to review characters in a story, minimal pairs (have a P corner and an F corner and use words like "frog" and "piano"), and so much more. You can also choose a student to run the game and say the words/sentences or hold the flashcards—and see if they can decide who is right and wrong on their own.

Enjoy! Post any improvements you may have, and let me know how these go over in your classroom.

Multimedia Monday: "Careless Whispers" Interpretative Dance

To download this and other clips off of YouTube, I recommend, as always, the YouTube Downloader HD program. For other videos I've used and the skeletal lesson/activity plans I've built around them, check out the Multimedia Monday tag.

David Armand is one of the funniest comedians I've seen in a while. He's done a whole bunch of "interpretative dances," and while they're all hilarious, unfortunately only this one is unequivocally appropriate for a young class. (The others either have references to sex, genitalia, or both.) Any time I have a chance to show something in class that I like watching? Everyone wins.

You can print out the lyrics before, if you want—that's probably helpful for lower-level classes. With more advanced students, you could easily make this a game. It'll take a bit of advanced planning, though. Write "I'm never gonna dance again" on the board, cue the video up to the chorus (with sound), and hit play. In this video, it's at about 40 seconds in. It helps if you point along to the words: once I did that, my kids sussed out right away what Armand was trying to convey.

Then, back to the beginning, and kill the sound. Maybe watch it twice. Have the students write what they think the lyrics are based on Armand's mime routine, and then pass out the lyrics so they can see how close they got it. (I admit, I haven't done this part yet, as I don't really have the time for it in my advanced classes. But I've got it ready, just in case I ever do.) If you have the time, you can play the video one more time with the lyrics so they can try to match the mimes to the real words—have students circle the words at parts where they didn't understand the mime, and so forth. Considering how damn popular George Michael's Last Christmas is in Korea, I'm sure Korean students will take to Careless Whispers fairly readily.

Multimedia Monday: Annie Get Your Gun

Shamelessly repeating an old post from my CELTA days.  This time it has the benefit of hindsight: I actually did use this song in a lesson, and it worked very well—it was actually the first (and only) "Above Standard" I got on the whole course. The instructor just went bananas over it and the students liked it, too— though this wasn't the entirety of the lesson, it was the closing activity and, everyone agreed, the best part.

Before I started the song or even handed out the lyrics sheet, I put some assorted tasks from the lyrics (and some other random ones) on the board and asked the students to sort them by "what can men do well" and "what can women do well." If you have the time, it can be a fun debate.

Then I handed out the lyrics with the comparatives all blanked out.  They filled those in as best they could, then we listened to the song to check answers. Most of them found it pretty easy. The second time, we listened to see which things the girl could do better and vice versa, as well as which ones neither singer talked about.

The hip thing to do among younger teachers is to break out the Daft Punk when they get to comparatives, but I think this one works much better. (Maybe use the Daft Punk for filler if the class catches on supremely quickly, but not for the bulk of the lesson.)

You can find other videos I've used (or considered using) at the Multimedia Monday tag; use the YouTube Downloader if your classroom computer is offline but you want to use videos from YouTube.

Multimedia Monday: Cat Stevens

Another lesson courtesy of Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. One scene features this song by Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), and I decided it would be a good change of pace to do a listening activity.

The lyrics are very straightforward, with relatively simple language.  I had my students work on a fill-in-the-blank activity with the lyrics beforehand, then we watched/listened to see if they got it correct.  I imagine you could easily play a memory game or have a writing activity after the video, as it has a rather cohesive narrative.  For my students, though, it would have been redundant.

The song went over surprisingly well with the younger intensive course.  I wasn't really expecting Yusuf Islam's mellow acoustic stylings to be at all popular, but we ended up listening to this song three times in class.   By the third time, they had the song pretty much figured out, and cheerfully sang along.

Again, if you ever want to use this or other videos on YouTube in an Internet-less classroom, YouTube Downloader HD always works very nicely for me.  Other videos and activities I've used can be found via the Multimedia Monday tag.

Multimedia Monday: Viral Marketing and Mummers

This edition of Multimedia Monday is brought to you by the first installment of my advanced students' new textbook: "Viral Marketing."  Great opportunity to bring in some real life examples.

(For other videos, you can find all of the Multimedia Monday posts at this link. As always, I recommend using YouTube Downloader HD to save these and other videos if your classroom doesn't have Internet.)

After some beginning of class chit-chat ("How was your New Year? What did you do?"),  I played this clip for my kids.  Before I hit play, I asked them to think about what the ad was trying to sell.

They were pretty much horrified; at thirty-five seconds in they started really losing their shit.  If you're going to do this, please find a discreet way to take pictures of your students' faces because seriously, the reactions are priceless.  After it finished, I asked them a quick follow-up question.

"What is this commercial for?"

"iPad?"

"Mm, not quite.  Here's one more."

"Teacher, why he smile?"

"He really likes his blender."

I asked them again what the commercial was selling, and one of the more vocal students sussed on it right away this time.  "Ah! Mixer."

"Do you like these commercials?"

"Yes!"

"Why?"

I put some of their answers on the board, because in the book they have a mind map on the topic (eg, viral marketing) to fill out and they always like to do that part together.  I got responses like "funny," "unique," and "surprising."  We also talked about whether or not they're popular commercials, why they're popular, where we would see them, if they would show a video like this to their friends, and so forth.

I'm sure you could expand on it from here (have students write [and film?] their own "Will It Blend?" or other ad, eliciting Korean examples of viral marketing), but after this I just worked through the requisite pages in their textbook.  We also watched some more "Will It Blend?" videos.  All of these got really popular responses:

The iPad was the most popular one, but this was a pretty close second.

Also very well-received, plus it has brand recognition (SPAM) and gross-out factor.  This, the glow sticks, and the two I mentioned earlier were the most popular ones.  (I actually let them watch the iPad one again during a break.)

This is pretty talk-y in the middle, as he reads excerpts from Justin Bieber's autobiography.  Lower-level students might tune out, but intermediate and advanced students shouldn't have a problem.  The presenter has good enunciation and let's face it, it's Justin Bieber's autobiography.  We're not talking about Ulysses, here.  You'll want a camera for their reactions at 1:36 or thereabouts.

This one is also pretty talk-y, so lower-level students might disengage while the salesman is yammering on about the Fiesta.  But they thought the green-screened projections and final shot were pretty funny.

BONUS CULTURE POINTS FOLLOW-UP

(maybe not relevant if you're not from [near] Philadelphia)

Of course, not all of my students are in the advanced class with the textbook.  Since today was kind of a lost day (I can't really review anything on the first day of a new movie),  I also had a  Mummers Parade lesson.

I drew a grid on the board.  On the left hand side I put: "EAT," "DO," and "WEAR" each in their own row.  On the top I put "U.S." and "SOUTH KOREA" in their own column.

If there had been more time for me to prep, I would have made up one of those "mix and mingle" worksheets, where each group has a select few pieces of information in a grid and they have to talk to everyone to fill out the whole thing.    Instead, we just talked it out: what does each country eat, do, and wear for New Year's?  (You'll probably also want pictures of funny hats, the ball in Times Square, noisemakers, and so forth.)  (I'll probably do all of these things tomorrow, assuming I have time to prep some things before I leave for work.)

This was a good opportunity to introduce myself, actually, since in my first two classes today I had a few completely new students who only knew my name.  I had them guess where I was from, and then explained that this is a New Year's tradition in my home (or "home") town:  people dress up in fancy costumes, play music, dance, and have a big parade in the city. (I skirted the fact that many of them are probably still wasted from New Year's Eve.)  I found this clip after a bit of digging (many of the other ones online are people's home videos so the quality isn't so great; this is an excerpt from the news coverage so there's very little ambient noise and the announcers are thankfully silent throughout).

I asked them basic "what" questions throughout to keep them from zoning out (while this was popular in some classes, it wasn't as popular as "Will It Blend?"): "What is his job?" and "What is that?" and "What animal is that?" and so forth.  I taught every single class today the words "mermaid" and "merman," productive!  I don't think I'll be teaching them to strut, but maybe we'll sing "Golden Slippers." ;)

The Mummers Parade is one of those things I don't realize I miss until it rolls around and I realize I can't just veg out in front of the TV on January first to watch it.  Of course, when I'm home, I don't park myself on the couch for the whole thing, but it's nice to be able to drift in and out of it.  So I do the next best thing I can: find clips from last year's parade online.

Happy New Year! 
새해 복 많이 받으세!

A Typical Day

I still think that teaching is pretty much the least "blog-worthy" part of my life, but since my dad has been asking and since the school is a bit different than most other hagwons, I figure a brief rundown of my day isn't entirely vacuous narcissism.  BEHOLD, MY LIFE:

My day officially starts at 2, but I try to get to work at least ten minutes early because I dislike arriving later than the Korean teachers (who all start at 1.50).  It just makes me feel privileged and pampered.

The first hour of the day is given over to time for lesson planning.  If I have to, this is when I hammer out the Power Point presentation I'll be using for the next couple of days.  Otherwise, I correct written assignments or plan activities for my more challenging classes: making worksheets, generating puzzles,  downloading relevant videos from the Internet, etc.

At 3, we all have lunch.  One of the moms or other relative of a student prepares lunch for us, presumably in exchange for a discount on tuition.  It's pretty good, there's a nice variety (though it's obviously always Korean), and there's plenty of it (as opposed to Cassandra, which always had the same lineup of kimchi, jjigae, and rice, and never enough for the teachers).  I do miss my daily dose of Kimbap Cheonguk and dolsot bibimbap, but I'll gladly take a free lunch!  Especially when the free lunch has a good chance of being budae jjigae, as done properly by a Uijeongbu ajumma.

After that, it's back to planning until my first lesson, which is anywhere from 3.40 to 4.35.  The curriculum at this school is largely based around pop music and American movies.  They watch one movie every two months, for November and December it's been Elf.  My job is to review scenes of the movie with the students and make sure they understand what's going on.  Since the clips are never longer than like ten minutes (and mostly falling in the three- to six-minute range), there's not a whole lot of content and I teach in short twenty minute blocks.  With most of the classes, I put together a Power Point with screen captures from the movie and questions from the students' homework book, and then tag on a Power Point game at the end, usually Bingo but I'm always on the lookout for something else.

I have two of these movie classes that are forty minutes in length, so I spend a bit more time prepping those.  It can be difficult to stretch out a three minute movie scene for that length of time, but on the other hand, it's nice to have the time for proper warm-up activities, giving feedback, etc.

Three of my classes are advanced beyond the point of the movie curriculum.  Instead, I teach them from  a "Speaking and Writing" textbook.  It's a pretty low-budget affair (typos, no proper bookbinding, WordArt graphics) and the topics can be hit and miss.  "Identity Theft"?  Not really that interesting or relevant to a 13 year old Korean.  "Green Profits"?  Lots of  stuff about the environment to talk about.  "One Laptop Per Child"?  Great time to talk about charity, poverty, and the ethical and moral obligations surrounding wealth.  These are the classes I show videos in: first of all, they're forty to fifty minutes long, so there's plenty of time.  Second, sometimes the topics are boring, so the videos help maintain interest.  And sometimes I think they're just good for cultural awareness, like the ad campaign for One Laptop Per Child.  The more access Korean students have to other cultures and accents, the better.

My last class ends around 8.50 or so, depending on the day.  I go home at 9 or 9.20, depending on the day, but I usually stay a little later to finish marking written assignments I've accumulated through the day or to brainstorm lesson plan ideas for the next day.  Again, I feel like a huge jerk leaving at 9 when everyone else is stuck there until 9.30.

Everyone takes turns washing the dishes from lunch.  My day to do that is Tuesday.  Sometimes other miscellany comes up but it's never unmanageable: help some of the students practice for an English language speech contest, proofread and edit my boss' son's essay for his SAT prep hagwon, etc.  Then I come home, eat dinner, go to bed, and do it all over again the next day.

Everyone's a silver hero, everyone's a Captain Kirk

Since I've been back in Korea, I've taken to watching Star Trek: The Original Series. I just finished watching "Miri," which is honestly a terrible episode. (Seriously? A planet that looks just like Earth?  Were all of the model and miniature builders on strike?  Never mind that none of the drama or the pathos or plot in the episode is at all relevant to the fact that it's "Earth, Jim, but not as we know it.") (McCoy never actually utters those lines but it felt appropriate, allow me the artistic license.)

The premise is, on Earth 2, people were working on a way to manifest immortality.  The result was a virus that would age you extremely slowly (one month every hundred years) until puberty hit, whereupon you turned into a shrill, buboes-covered zombie thing and then died.  Result? A planet full of children.   Three hundred years (assuming, of course, that the Earth twin moves around its own sun at a similar speed) of nothing but children.  At one point the children try to foil Kirk and company's attempt to find a  cure vaccine.  One of them—the titular Miri, who at maybe age 14 is Kirk's creepiest romantic conquest yet—leads Kirk to the shrieking hooligans.  Amid the ironic-I-guess?  background of their "playing school" setting he does his best to get them to listen to him.  Naturally, they don't.

All of this is to say that watching that ninety seconds of footage was like a mirror into my own (not necessarily current) life, though with better English: dealing with a room full of hyperactive defiant children, struggling to communicate key ideas and concepts to these monstrous little hellspawn, dying of a deadly plague...all part of the hagwon job.  Alas I can't find it isolated, and don't feel like downloading and learning how to use a video editing program just for that, so content yourself with the few seconds in the original broadcast preview for this episode.



 The next time I'm frustrated in a class, I'll just think to myself: what would Captain Kirk do?

Unfortunately the show doesn't really give us an answer. Instead, through the magic of editing, Kirk and the children show up to save the day, sans all that messy "classroom management" business.

Tom Lehrer And ESL

I first came across Tom Lehrer in high school, and the combination of accomplished piano-playing and biting satire won me over immediately.

It wasn't until a few days ago, though, that I came across some educational songs he wrote and recorded for children's show The Electric Company. Surprisingly, there's very few hits for "Tom Lehrer" and "ESL" online. Whether due to obscurity or conflation with the much-lauded The Electric Company and the subsequent video shorts, I aim to rectify this sad situation! All of the educational songs Tom Lehrer wrote would work really well at an elementary level, with or without the videos (though the videos ARE cute). But the best ones, which I'm posting below, are:

Silent L-Y (about creating adverbs)
Silent E (how silent e changes vowel sounds)
N Apostrophe T (contractions with "not" and also some modals)



Silent L-Y


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB2Ff8H7oVo

Silent E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91BQqdNOUxs

N Apostrophe T (Not Tom Lehrer performing, of course.)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sScHUorw-Hc&

There are all kinds of old clips on YouTube from The Electric Company, with similar songs on other sounds and grammar topics (Good Old Apostrophe S, Thanks to TH, etc). I'm sure they're great too, but this is a blog entry about Tom Lehrer, not The Electric Company.

Those were all, as you can guess even from the titles, very elementary songs. I wouldn't use them outside of that context because really, how patronizing would that be? Instead, Lehrer's satirical songs might be better for intermediate or advanced classes. The only downside is that Tom Lehrer wrote and recorded music for an extremely short period of time in the very early years of the Cold War; many of his songs reference people or ideas of a past zeitgeist. You have to choose carefully once outside the realm of his educational ditties.

With that in mind, I think these would work pretty well, either with adults or teenager-ish age. The lyrics to all of these are readily available online, too (or very easy to transcribe yourself), perfect for fill-in-the-blanks or ordering verses and so forth. Plus, the content is pretty timeless and still relevant today.

The Masochism Tango (Maybe only with adults, this one.)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TytGOeiW0aE


Pollution



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPrAuF2f_oI


National Brotherhood Week



http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=OAOwYDlEQXo

And finally, my favorite Tom Lehrer song of all time; it may not be good classroom material (at best, requires vocabulary words with low coverage and use; at worst, satirizes Catholicism which might not go down with some students), but it's what initially endeared Mr. Lehrer to me. Enjoy:

The Vatican Rag



http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=3f72CTDe4-0


Happily enough, Tom Lehrer's birthday is coming up (April 9th). Why not honor the man with a "Tom Lehrer in the Classroom" day?

Brief Musical Interlude: "Anything You Can Do"

Great idea for comparatives class: "Anything You Can Do" from Annie, Get Your Gun.

With any luck, I'll get to this in my class tomorrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3xwDDLuLcY

Too cool for school.

I have middle school classes again. Not only do they suck, but they're useless—45 minutes a week with a foreign teacher isn't going to improve these kids' English, especially when they'd rather chatter in Korean instead of doing any work.

But since I'm such a good employee I want to make the slowest 45 minutes of my day go a bit faster, I've been browsing the gargantuan ESL Cafe website, namely the Idea Cookbook for games or activities to try and get them to speak. These might be useful for you other EFL teachers out there, if you haven't already cribbed some of these:

Greatest Bad Ideas:

First take about 30 queue cards and write hypothetical "problems" on them (eg. "My winter coat is not warm enough", "I can`t afford to pay my rent", "My cat makes me sneeze", or something more absurd like "My doctor scares me").
Explain to your students that you need their advice, but that they should avoid giving you obvious advice, and try instead to give you strange or stupid advice. Provide examples like: "If your winter coat is not warm enough, you should pour hot coffee in the pockets"; "If your pants are too big you should gain 50 pounds by only eating cake"; "If your nose is too big you should have surgery to make the rest of your face bigger", etc.

The Lying Game:

Each student (and Instructor) has to create three lies about themselves and one truth. A grid is placed on the board with the Students names in rows going across, and lies/truth 1 to 4 going down. The students then tell their 4 facts and after all of the grid is filled, the "Interogation phase" begins. The students one by ask questions to the subject, trying to discover whether he is lying or not. It requires focused listening skills and lying well requires a high level of speaking ability. The Winner is the one whom nobody guesses his truth. Second place goes to the one guesses most of the truths.

Hog the Brownie:

If you have seen the film "Notting Hill", one of the nicest scenes is when Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) is having dinner with William (Hugh Grant) and his group of friends. At coffee time, there is only one brownie left and Max says he will give the last brownie to the saddest act. Therefore one by one, they make an effort to get the brownie by telling how sad their lives are. Everybody laughs and is grief-stricken at the same time, so it could be funny to try it in the classroom. Some pupils can be very good actors and actresses. Besides you can work in groups.

Tic Tac Toe:

Draw a tic-tac-toe grid on the chalk board. Write the numbers 1 through 9 on the grid. Each square has one number in it. Then on a piece of paper write nine easy conversation questions such as -Whats your hobby?, What time is it?, How old are you? etc. Number the questions one through nine. Each question corresponds to one square on the tic tac toe grid. Divide the class into two teams, team x and team o. The students choose which square on the tic tac toe grid they want to try to get. When they choose a number then ask them the corresponding question. They get the x or o on that square if they answer the question WITH NO MISTAKES. The pickier you are with this one the more fun it is.

Diff'rent Strokes

The listening class I mentioned a while ago did not respond well to my initial musical selections. Apparently, adolescent Koreans aren't into Barenaked Ladies or Cake. Funny, since I consider those some of the more accessible bands in my library (I can't imagine how they'd react to Blood Sweat & Tears or They Might Be Giants).

To be honest, I had hopes of channeling my inner Jack Black and giving my kids a School of Rock-esque crash course in music, assuming they'd be thrilled about this new thing called "rock 'n roll." It cut me a bit deep when it became obvious that life is rarely, if ever, like the movies.


Alas, this wasn't to be.

So I present a revised playlist, designed to cater to teenagers' insatiable desire for mediocre pop music—all of this based on their positive reaction to Katy Perry. Like my earlier attempt, this is definitely subject to revision. For example, I've already duly noted that they don't like Lou Bega. (If I wanted to be mean-spirited, I could say that, given Lou Bega's heavy Latin/mambo/salsa etc influence, they probably found it too bizarrely ethnic and simply lacked the capacity to put it in any context, but to be fair, Lou Bega isn't exactly great music.) And they love Britney Spears. The difference between this Version Two and the original Version One is laughable. For all of you baby boomers playing along at home, if you know more than seven songs on this list, I'll be impressed.

1. Womanizer (Britney Spears)
   
2. I Got a Girl (Lou Bega)
   
3. Hot 'n Cold (Katy Perry)
   
4. Fever, Fever (Melody Club)
   
5. Bad (Michael Jackson)
   
6. Mambo Number 5 (Lou Bega)
   
7. Crazy in Love (Béyoncé)
   
8. (You Drive Me) Crazy (Britney Spears)
   
9. Four Minutes (Madonna & Justin Timberlake)
   
10. I'm Electric (Melody Club)
    
11. Ring Ring (Abba)
    
12. Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) (Béyoncé)
    
13. SOS (Rescue Me) (Rihanna)
    
14. Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson)
    
15. Let's Get Retarded (Black-Eyed Peas)
    
16. Everybody (Backstreet's Back) (Backstreet Boys)
    
17. Umbrella (Rihanna, featuring Jay-Z and Chris Brown)
    
18. One Plus One is Two (Lou Bega)
    
19. Pump It (Black-Eyed Peas)
    
20. Take a Chance On Me (Abba)
    
21. Prayer For the Weekend (The Ark)

Two sad/funny things to note. One, whatever current pop music is in there, I pretty much only know courtesy of what they play at clubs in Hongdae—I had to get in touch with American pop music by coming to Korea. This would suggest that the typical Korean (or at least, the typical Korean who frequents Hongdae) knows more about "my own" current pop culture than I do. Two, I'm so out of touch with current/recent pop music that I had to reach back for Michael Jackson and Abba to round out my playlist. (Though I might nix some tracks, namely Lou Bega, to make room for more Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys. And throw in a song by Kanye West, just to see how they react.)

Also note that Melody Club and The Ark are actually Swedish pop groups—but their English is good so it's totally kosher. The heavy presence of Lou Bega is due to the fact that I actually own the A Little Bit of Mambo album and that was the closest I got to being into pop music back in the day. And of course, he's the one American pop artist on there who I actually like*.... and my students couldn't give two figs. Of course.


*Yeah, I don't really care for Michael Jackson unless he's ten years old and still black.

Music Ed, Part Dugae

Tentative listening class playlist, a mix of music that I really like, music with lyrics they should be able to understand, and music (I think) they'll like:

1. If I Had A Million Dollars (BNL)
2. Let Me Go (Cake)
3. And When I Die (Blood Sweat & Tears)
4. Cat's in the Cradle (Harry Chapin)
5. Warning (Green Day)
6. Fight For Your Right to Party (Beastie Boys)
7. Hot 'n Cold (Katy Perry)
8. I Would Be (500 Miles) (The Proclaimers)
9. I Am Woman (Helen Reddy)
10. Should I Stay or Sohuld I go Now (The Clash)
11. This Is My Song (Carbon Leaf)
12. New York, New York (Frank Sinatra)
13. Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) (Nancy Sinatra)
14. Ordinary Day (Great Big Sea)
15. Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
16. Mystery Dance (Elvis Costello)
17. Seven Day Weekend (Elvis Costello)
18. Might Tell You Tonight (Scissor Sisters)
19. Ring Ring (Abba)
20. Some Postman (Presidents of the USA)
21. Jennifer's Jacket (Presidents of the USA)
22. Fix You (Coldplay)

What do you think, sirs?