Desert Island

On Thursday we talked about what items would be useful if we were stranded on a desert island. There was lots and lots of discussion and even some disagreements. I thought everyone did a great job. I especially thank Ahn Seung-jin, Sang-jun, and Eu-ji for their help in explaining the situation.

One set of words that caused a bit of confusion was choice/choose/chose. Please remember that choice is a noun. Choose is the verb and chose is the past tense of the verb. So, we would say:

I chose a piano because there are many parts of the piano that can be used.
Our first choice was a bottle of soju because an island might be lonely.
I really do not know which item to choose.

Another error that we talked about was the use of the word stuff. We would mostly use this word as an uncountable noun. So, not many stuffs, but a lot of stuff, or many things.

A word that is often confused is die. We might say, “If you don’t drink water you will die.”
Also remember that if we are talking about the past we would not say, “My dog was dead,” but we would say, “My dog died.” My dog was dead = it was dead for a little while but now it is alive and OK.

One thing that I noticed some students having problems with was agreeing and disagreeing. I am sure that we will have many chances to practice these things in this course. Here are some examples of what I heard and a better way to say each idea.

I don’t agree umbrella. >>> I don’t agree with the choice of umbrella.
I think so matches. >>> I think matches would be a good idea.

In addition to the possible items there were many other words that came up in class. They are:

compass I need to use the compass to find north.

salt water The water from the ocean is salt water, we need to think about fresh water.

turbulence I get very scared when I experience turbulence.

charcoal Charcoal can be very useful when making a fire.

label One group suggested peeling the label off a soju bottle and making a note.

spear Mike suggested that we could make a spear with a knife and a long stick.

magnifying glass The detective always carried his magnifying glass.

matches Some people prefer matches to a lighter.

So, very good job. Have a great weekend and remember this class if you ever have such a situation.

Travel

Today’s main topic was travel. We talked a lot about travel experiences, were we would like to travel and planned a trip.

The question that we started off with was:

Have you ever been abroad?
Have you ever been to abroad?

The usual answer to this question would be:

Yes, I have./No, I haven’t.

Please remember that we don’t include the “ever” when talking about experiences that we have had.

I have ever been to China.  >>> I have been to China.

Also, if we are talking about a specific time that has already passed, we want to use the present perfect (have + PP)

I have been to China in 2003.  >>> I went to China in 2003.

After talking about experiences traveling abroad we then talked about our most recent trip.

Some questions that I thought were useful were:

What was the highlight of your trip?
What was the best part of your trip? 
What was the most memorable part of your trip? 

I found discussing these trips to be very interesting. I was very surprised about Jin’s walk/hitchhike home from the airport. Hyun’s story about traveling with two other girls made me think of the expression, “Two’s company; three’s a crowd.” I thought it was pretty cool that Roger went to Kenya. I have not met any Koreans (or Americans) that have ever been to Kenya before. It sounds so interesting.

I guess a few people in class like drinking because that was a common activity during different trips.  Remember that the past of drink is drank. Drunk is the condition that comes after drinking too much alcohol. Drunken is much much less common and is used before a noun, as in drunken behavior, drunken stupor, drunken sailor, and drunken driving.  One person mentioned that she ate chicken food, but I am sure that she meant that she ate chicken. Chicken food is food that chickens eat, like dog food is food that dogs eat.

After break we answered the question”Where would you like to go?” We spent some time discussing this. I was surprised at the different places that people wanted to go. One common mistake here is to use the word Swiss. In English, Swiss is an adjective, but Switzerland is the country. Also, Mongolia is the name of the country.

After discussing which country we would like to go to we thought of questions that need to be considered when making a plan to travel. They are:

How much (money) do I need?
How long will I stay?
When will I go?
Who will I go with?
What will I bring/take/pack/carry??
How will I get there?
How will I  travel when I  get there?
What problems might I have?
Where will I stay?
What sights will I see?
What will I do?
What will I eat?
(and a very interesting question)
How can I convince my parents to allow me to go?

Finally, we had to make a plan to travel. The money and “who” question was already answered. Each student would receive 2,000,000 won and would go with their group members.  Perhaps there was not enough time to really make a thorough plan but at least each group made some decisions.

I think it was quite a good class and everyone talked a lot. Good job.

Some words that came up in class were:

laser--  She had laser eye surgery.

razor– He uses a razor to shave his face every day.

dumpling– I sometimes buy dumplings filled with kimchi on the street.

shellfish–Crabs are my favorite kind of shellfish.

selfish–  Ji-hoon is not selfish, he cares about other people very much.

highlight –   The highlight of Ji-yeon’s trip was the laser show on the river.

round trip ticket– It is usually cheaper to buy a round trip ticket.

Thursday’s class

Wow. I think this class was fantastic. I was really impressed with how much and well everyone spoke. I was also impressed with the strong arguments that were made. It seemed that everyone was speaking a lot and enjoying the time.

We started off the class by saying hello to the person next to us. Maybe some people were meeting for the first time, but mostly people just said hello and “nice to see you again.” After about 10 minutes of small talk, each student thought of 5 topics for discussion in class. Next, they shared their topics with a partner and explained why they thought it would be a good topic. The next stage is where the arguing began. Each pair (with one team of three) had to make a list of 10 topics that they thought would be interesting. They also had to put the topics in order from 1-10, with 1 being the most interesting. Lots of good discussion came out of this. The next step was to get into even bigger groups and to do the same thing–make a list of 10 topics. This took much longer than I expected because some teams had a hard time to agree on topics. I thought it was very interesting to hear different opinions about what would be a good topic. After each group made its list of 10 topics we shared the answers with the class and suddenly it was time to go home.

The 10 topics from the first group were:

1. Girlfriends/Boyfriends, are they necessary?
2. How to make friends
3. Plastic surgery
4. What makes you happy?
5. Trips–recommending places to travel
6. Explaining places in Korean to foreigners
7. Movies
8. Travel experiences
9. Blood type
10. The best news you have ever heard

the middle group came up with these topics:

1. The shooting at Virginia Tech.
2. Movies
3. Club activities
4. Cherry blossoms
5. Eating/Food (Mike’s favorite)
6. Hillary Clinton
7. Photography
8. Sports and exercise
9. Green Tea
10. Is it better to live alone or with your family?

The topics that the third group had were:

1. Diets to be healthy
2. Good places for dating
3. Mike (???)
4. Spring
5. The upcoming election
6. How to cook
7. Baseball
8. Superstitions
9. The massacre in America
10. Classmates’ lives

I think that these lists are enough for 40 weeks of class, not just 10 weeks. Great job.

Since the discussion took much longer than expected (this is a good thing) there was no time to talk about mistakes and errors.

I will do that now.

One common problem is people confusing scary and scared. Scared is the feeling, as in I feel scared when I watch a horror movie. If something is scary it makes us scared. So, the horror movie was scary.

I was scared when the scary man shouted at me.

Another common problem is to use the word younger when we should say young.
You look very younger. >>> You look very young. or You look younger than ____.

A question I often hear in class is, “Have you been to abroad?” we do not need to “to” with abroad.

Another common problem is misusing the word die. Die is a verb, “to die”. So we could say, “He died last week.” Students often say something like, “he was dead last week,” this means to me that he was dead, but now he is alive–not very likely. Also, suicide is a noun and the most usual verb used with this noun is commit. Sorry for such sad and morbid grammar points! The next point will be more cheerful.

One word that causes a lot of confusion is graduate. This is because it can be a noun or a verb and has different pronunciation. I think the meaning most people know is the verb graduate (grad-jyou-ate) . This word can also be a noun, a person who has graduated is a graduate (grad-jew-it) Finally, the school that people who have already attended 4 years of university attend is a graduate school (same pronunciation as the noun). I hope you are less confused than before.

That is all for today. Thank you very much for your hard work. Have a fantastic weekend!

Hello and welcome to the class (and to the blog). I think everyone did a great job for the first class. We spent a lot of time getting to know each other and trying to remember each other’s names and hometowns. I answered some questions about myself, including my home state and my favorite movie. One student asked if I was married (I am not) and nobody asked my age, thankfully.

After spending some time getting to know each other we started the second hour talking about this discussion course. I tried to explain the difference between P/E (Practical English) and Discussion. I think it will be more clear as the weeks go on.

After talking about the course we started on the day’s topic. I expected that this topic is a very important one for everyone. After all, that is why everyone joined the class–to improve their English. Each student thought of three questions about this topic. I thought many of the questions were very important and interesting. Some of the questions that came up were:

Do you think it is necessary to learn English?
Why are you taking this course?/Why did you join this course?
What is the best way to improve your English skills?
Which skill is the most important for you?
Which skill is your favorite?
What is the most difficult thing to learn in English?/What are the most difficult things…?
What makes you learn English eagerly/enthusiastically?
Is going abroad an effective way to improve your English?
How can (do) you study/memorize vocabulary?
(the dictionary says vocabularies is the plural, but I advise against using this rare word)
How can I bridge the gap between ___ and ____? (for example: speaking and reading)
What is the best way to use an English newspaper?
Till when will you study English?/When will you stop studying English?

I was very impressed with the conversations that followed. Each group used these questions and other questions from their brains and papers and had a conversation.

There were a few small errors or things that sounded strange that came up in class today.

One was the use of the word grade. My advice was not to use this in the context of being in first grade in university. (If I hear first grade I think about elementary school). More common (American style) would be first-year.

Another use of grade that I heard was about someone’s TOEIC grade. I also heard point, but I think that score would be a much better word to use in this situation.

A phrase that came up in early conversations was “to take a break.” This is a very useful phrase for many situations. Today we were using it to mean to take time off from school, to stop (going to) school for a while.

One phrase that we did not have time to talk about was: In my case…
Now, this is not wrong, but we hear this phrase in Korea very often. My advice is to find another way to say what you are trying to say, or omit the “in my case” part totally. For example, if you say, “In my case, I read an English newspaper every day” the “in my case part is totally unneeded.

At the very end of class we talked about the difference between hear, listen and understand. Please don’t tell me that you can’t hear English (unless you have a problem with your ears).

Again, very good job in the first class! I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.

Hello!

Welcome to Discussion 4a with Mike. This blog will be updated at least twice a week. Check here for links and reports about the class. Enjoy!