Thanksgiving at Ewha Womans University

Within a mile or so in each direction from where I live there is a university - 4 in all. I attend Yonsei, and the next one over is Ewha Womans University. (Yes, it is spelled "Womans" - no plural, no apostrophe.) Every day after I finish class at Yonsei, I now head over to Ewha and go into this underground building:

Here I meet a different student each week for conversation practice (Korean and English). I met these students through Myong Hee, a health education teacher here whom I had met earlier through Clara Song. I hope to write more about this conversation experience later. But now I just want to report that through Myong Hee and her students, I was invited to this real American-style Thanksgiving dinner:

The precooked turkey, sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping and cranberry sauce apparently came from the US army base here in Seoul; the rest was made from ingredients found at Korean markets. Forks didn't make it, though. Here I am with Myong Hee:

And these are two of my conversation partners who were at the dinner, Ji Min and Shi Yun:

It was fun to be with a group of Koreans and for once understand everything that was going on! It was an interesting mix of Korean and American - a good evening.

Final Exam - and Error Correction

Next Friday and the following Monday are final exams. Wow - can the first term be almost over already??

My blogging has fallen way behind! It's not for lack of thinking of folks back home, nor of things to post - just feeling busy, I guess. I will try to catch up with things soon.

For today, rather than whine about the final exam (at least for now!) - I shall post some thoughts on...

Error Correction!

There is one and only one error correction method used at Yonsei:

Yes, errors are corrected for us in bright red ink. That's it. There's no highlighting, no hints about how to correct our own errors, no writing center where we can discuss our errors - we can study the errors or not as we will.

And I often find the will is lacking. The value of studying the errors is nowhere near as valuable as doing the writing itself. That's where the real learning takes place. The teacher will never know how many times I look up words in the dictionary, how many times I check over my writing before I hand it in, how long I think about what content to put in my sentences - the pride I feel each time I finish a writing assignment.

If the teacher could be beside me while I am writing, and help me see the errors as I put them on the page, that would be helpful. That's the time the brain would be receptive to the feedback. But getting the feedback the next day, after the brain has gone on to other things, is really too late.

By far the majority of errors are "careless" - that is, I know how to spell the word or apply the grammar, but when I am thinking of so many things at once, I still make a mistake with it. Several times, I have made an error, and the teacher has taken the trouble to write out the rule I broke. Each time I felt sorry for the teacher, because I already knew the rule. It was wasted time for the teacher and actually felt insulting to me, presuming ignorance I didn't have.

I understand the teacher's goal for me is to write without errors, just as it's my goal as a teacher with my students at SJCC. The student can't feel the irritation errors cause the native reader, so the teacher must do something about that. But I wonder if focusing on the student's errors is really the way to help students avoid them.

When I write, my goal as a student is different. I want to communicate. I want to function. I feel real satisfaction when I do those things. How much sympathy I now have for some of our students at SJCC who are new to the Roman alphabet and have tremendous spelling problems. On different days they may write the word "friend" as "fiend" or "frind" or freind" or... yet they actually have learned how to spell the word. It's just that ... to them, the word looks just fine any of those ways. They know how to use the word. They just want to tell the reader something about their friend and are willing to work hard at that - but not to look up and double check minutely every single word.

Would spelling lists help? Would charts of frequent grammar errors help? I 'm not convinced. Making charts of my stupidity doesn't really seem to be that inspiring! I'd rather use the time to read some more and listen some more and study some more. That, it seems to me, would be more fruitful, and lead to better writing in the long run.

I am feeling more enthusiastic about things like journal writing - writing activities where content, rather than correctness, is emphasized. It would not bother me at all to turn in some writing and have just my content - and not my errors - commented on by the teacher. It would be refreshing! And fun!

And that will be a topic for another time - can language learning be... fun???

Food

I've had some queries about what I eat. There is much to write about food here, and I hope to post more soon. For now, just thought I'd post this picture of me sitting down to dinner.

(I hope no one was expecting a movie (maybe watch me eat the whole thing?) This was just supposed to be a photo but somehow the movie button got turned on...)

A Robot - or a Teacher?

Yes, all the teachers follow a script and use the same process, but I'm glad to report that one of our new ones has what is to me the spark of a "teacher." The other teachers basically present - and then test. They may be nice, or funny, or clear; they may write beautifully on the blackboard; they may have great diction and the ability to keep their oral speech more or less within our vocabulary level - but when they start the "go around the room" Q/A check, it is the same for everyone. Teacher asks; student either answers or squirms. Student gets nervous as his/her turn approaches; student breathes a sigh of relief (and probably stops listening) after his/her turn has passed. If student can't answer, teacher repeats question; eventually, if this goes on long enough, teacher gives the answer and student repeats. Student may not understand the answer, but his/her turn is blessedly over.

But this new teacher....actually teaches during Q/A. She listens to the student's effort. If the student has trouble she breaks down the question into parts. She writes a word or two on the board, giving the student a visual hint and time to collect his/her thoughts. If needed, more words go on the board. More hints are given. The student is not left floundering; instead, the student is patiently lead to the answer. The teacher uses the Q/A to figure out what the student doesn't doesn't understand and targets that. Wow! This is what it means to teach the student, not just the material. Not only do we get that moment of individual help, but the stress of the Q/A is much reduced. So simple....

This was the same teacher who broke us into groups of 3 and gave us conversation time with students from another class, and today set us up with a little team competition to practice some vocabulary - such welcome variety!

We did something...different!! today

This week starts the second half of the first term. At this point they change teachers around, so we have two new teachers. But that's not what's different. These new teachers follow the same script as the old ones, so they know exactly what we've studied, and they use the same procedure to go through each lesson. Oh, there are differences - one teacher always starts with the first student on the right when we take turns around the room; another teacher starts in the middle. One teacher has us read long passages out loud and spends a short time explaining the passages while another teacher has us read short passages out loud and spends a longer time explaining the passages. But basically, the teacher could be a robot.

No - here's what was different. In the fourth period of class today, the teacher put us in 3 groups and sent two of the groups to different classrooms. Meanwhile 2 groups of students from different classes came into our room - thus mixing up the students from 3 classes. Then we paired up with a new student we didn't know from a different class, were given some conversation questions to use as starters, and were instructed to have a conversation with our partner.

Wow! We actually got to practice talking with a partner. No particular questions we had to ask. Nothing we had to report to the whole class afterwards.. No - we just got a chance to practice - stress-free - for about 30 minutes. The teacher was there to help us with whatever we wanted to ask. It was wonderful! How lively everyone became.

Was this in the script? I don't know, but I suspect so. I suspect it's Yonsei's attempt to be a little more modern. I think every Level 1 student did this today. Ah, lucky us. To just be able to practice, and to use our new skills to get acquainted with someone new, to actually communicate, without the pressure of having to perform in front of the class - I must remember how good this felt.

Itaewon, Insadong, and Ehwa Womans University

I don't have pictures, but here are 3 more meaningful places I have visited:

Itaewon

This is an area not far from where Charles Montgomery lives, and I spent an evening with him and Yvonne here. There are lots of foreigners in this area. The famed "What the Book" English-language bookstore is here. The American Army base is next to here. There are restaurants from all over the world here. Really great for a little diversity! We browsed the book store, wandered the streets and went to a delightful rooftop cafe for drinks and food. I'll be returning to this area!

Insadong

Clara Song was here in Seoul last month, and one evening she invited me to join her and a friend to visit this special "cultural" area. Lots of artisans have shops here, there are old-style homes here, tea houses, narrow cobbled streets, galleries and so on. The friend was Mi Kyong, the one I later went to Seoul Forest with. We walked around, visited various shops, and ended up at this small specialty restaurant Mi Kyong knew about. Amazingly, we walked in, and there at the next table was a famous Korean actress Clara and Mi Kyong recognized - in her 70s now, but apparently well-know in her youth. (Her name for any Korean readers: Eom Aeng Ran or 암앵란). There was a fair bit of conversation between our two tables and I was even introduced and greeted. So what a great evening - Insadong, great dinner, meeting an actress, being with Clara, and making a new Korean friend.

Ewha Womans University

Yes - it's spelled without the apostrophe. This university is very near Yonsei, and one evening Clara Song (yes, Clara, once again, who has introduced me to so many people!) invited me to this area for dinner with another friend of hers, Myeong-hee, who teaches health education at the university. At dinner we got acquainted, and since then I have met with Myeong-hee several times and gotten to know Ewha a bit. Myeong-hee even invited me to go an excursion with her and a colleague to the DMZ, and I really wanted to go with them - but alas, they were going on the day of the midterm!! Amazingly, 4 of her students have volunteered to meet with me once a week to practice speaking Korean. Wow! I have already met with one student a couple of times, and will meet another one tomorrow.

So - my days have been full. It's a good thing I'm not teaching!!

Excursions

I realize that the last time I wrote about any excursions was a month ago. I have actually had some kind of outing every weekend since then. Rather than have people think all I do is study for midterms, here is the run-down:

Oct 10: Evening at Namsan and N'Seoul Tower followed by rainbow lightshow on the Han River. Namsan is a small "mountain" in the middle of Seoul with a tower built on top. I took this excursion with a classmate and Yvonne Dominguez, Charles Montgomery's fiancee. We rode a cable car up to the top of the mountain - where there is a teddy bear museum! At the top of the tower - I look wistfully across Seoul - to home.

Oct. 17: A lovely day spent at the Korean Traditional Village in Suwon, about 40 miles south of Seoul, with a classmate. Gorgeous fall weather, wonderful day spent wandering around this multi-acre recreated traditional village - many many houses and shops and paths and shows and interactive activities and people in native dress pretending to go about business the old way - no crowds - really a nice day.

Oct. 23: A visit to "Seoul Forest" with a Korean friend, Mi Kyong, whom I met through Clara Song. On that day I disappointedly forgot my camera again (picture is from the internet) - not that I wanted to capture Seoul Forest, but I wanted to capture my friend. Oh well - next time. Seoul Forest is not quite a forest - trees have been planted to try to make a park out of this old race track area, and as you can see the trees haven't grown too much yet. But we had a great time walking around. Mi Kyong speaks a little English but mostly we talked Korean for about 3 hours! Most of our talk went like this:

Me: What is that?

Mi Kyong: That's a tree.

Me: A tree. And what is that?

Mi Kyong: That's a bird.

Me: A bird. Oh, and what's that?.....

And so on. I don't know how Mi Kyong held up for 3 hours but it was great practice for me.

Oct 31: Another excursion with classmates. In the town of Icheon, about 40 miles south of Seoul, is a hot springs spa attached to that big hotel - you can see a water slide jutting out. We spent a couple hours in the coed sauna section, and then a couple hours in the women's only hot springs pool room. You walk around and go in all the pools ... naked! Those are a couple of my classmates in the picture. Hazy gray skies.

Believe it or not, we spoke mostly Korean the whole day on this trip. There were 3 Japanese women, 2 of whom speak little English, and 3 English speakers (one from Hong Kong, one from Singapore, and me) who speak no Japanese, so Korean was our language. Very elementary conversation, but fun and useful to practice with each other.

Actually, I've been having a very good time.