Random Quote
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
---- Mitch Hedberg
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
---- Isaac Asimov
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
---- Galileo Galilei
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
---- Edward Abbey
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
---- George Orwell
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation.
---- Author Unknown
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
---- Pablo Picasso
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
---- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, 1995
Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
---- Leonardo DaVinci (1452-1519)
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
---- Arnold Toynbee
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
---- Thomas A. Edison
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
---- Franklin D. Roosevelt
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
---- J. Robert Oppenheimer
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
---- Robert Copeland
Teach English, Study Korean
Korea Herald - Readers opinion by Timothy Chambers
But is learning Korean “worthwhile”? One teacher I met was doubtful. “Look,” she said, “I’m only going to be in Korea for a year. So why should I torture myself learning a language I’ll never use again?”
The rhetorical question deserves an answer, which is: If you want to teach English in Korea, then study Korean because it will make you a better teacher while you’re here and a better person after you’ve left.
This is so true. Being a language teacher it is very useful to take up language study regularly as it reminds one of what it feels like to be on the other side of the desk.
Timothy goes on to talk about how learning Korean helps us to understand common errors that learners make while studying English. I have found this fact to be very true. It has given me greater patience with learners mistakes as well as a better method of explaining to the student exactly what is wrong and why they are making that mistake.
While being able to understand the local language is more useful while teaching in an EFL enviroment, it is still helpful to learn a 2nd or 3rd language while teaching in an ESL enviroment as it will remind the teacher of the feelings of anxiety and frustration the learner is feeling. I have also found another benefit of studying is that I learned some activities or different teaching tricks from my Korean language class which I have since incorporated into my own classes.
What to do? Many of us tell students that there’s nothing shameful in making mistakes. But I’ve found a more helpful ice-breaker is to show them that mistakes are a natural part of language-learning. How? By simply recounting some of the errors I’ve made as I’ve practiced my nascent Korean.
I, too have done this. Though the example I use most often in class is one of pragmatic failure. When I first got married my in-laws came to visit and after dinner I asked my Father-in-law Coffee mashi-le? using informal form on top of using the wrong word because of the nature of the relationship we have.
When I tell this to my students they are usually a little shocked. But I then explain that my father-in-law was very understanding because I am learning the language and that I found this experience useful. Mistakes are good provided one learns from them. I also explain that most people will be more forgiving of spoken mistakes than of written. Overall I find relating personal anecdotes to students both motivates them and improves the relationship between teacher and student by giving them something that they can relate to.
Sean. inscribed these words of wisdom on Friday Feb 20, 2004 at 09:05 PM
Teaching | teaching_application |
Kristina wrote 63 words on Monday Feb 23, 2004 at 01:58 PM
An interesting corrolary to this, for me is that you can learn about the structure of a foreign language by listening to the mistakes non-native speakers make in English. You are so right, though: it is SO much easier and more effective explaining the structure of a language when you have an understanding of the structure of the students’ native language. Great article.