Gender, jobs, and job interviews

Hello everyone! How are you doing? Can you believe that the end of this 10 week course is coming very soon??? I cannot. Time is really flying.

We started out Monday’s class with a little riddle/story. I told you that a father and his son were driving in the country side. The father was driving and he was driving a little too quickly. They had a car accident and the father was killed. The son was badly injured. An ambulance came and rushed the son to the hospital. When the son arrived at the emergency room, the doctor said, “I cannot operate on him, he is my son!”

If you don’t know who the doctor is, you will have to think about it, or ask someone.

We spent the first hour on Monday talking about gender and jobs. Some questions that we considered where, “What do you think about stay-at home dads? and, “What do you think about women in the military?” 

Remember: How do you think about ….. ? >>> How do you feel about….? 

These questions started quite a lot of interesting discussion.

In the second hour, we changed the topic from women and jobs to just jobs. The first question for discussion was, “When you were a kid, what was your dream job?”
I was very interested to hear everyone’s different answers.

The next question was, “Have you ever had a job interview?” I think it was a good chance for people who have had interviews to give some advice to those who had not. People automatically shared their experiences and advice. I was happy about this.

My next question was,  “What are the most common job interview questions?” People shared their ideas. I was waiting for Miyoung to ask how we can fit an elephant in the refrigerator, but she never did. After lots of discussion about job interviews and dreams. I handed out copies of 20 of the most common interview questions in America. We used these for some discussion as well. Here is a link for some common behavioral questions that might be asked in an interview. Want more interview questions? Click here. Would you like a sample answer? Well, then, click here.  I do not know very much about getting a job in Korea, but this link might provide some useful advice for answering hard questions.

We continued the job theme on Thursday. We started out the class with a 10-opinions that each person either agreed with or disagreed with. I was very impressed with how well everyone worked together to explain what a yes or a no answer would mean in each case. Because I am a very strict teacher, people that came late had to survive without the paper. I thought this actually worked very well, because those with the paper had to speak very clearly for the late people to understand. Again, very good job with this. I found the conversations fascinating. Many people gave answers that were the opposite of what I would have expected.  Also, these questions caused people to get into serious discussions that were a few steps away from the questions on the sheet. This was, of course, fine. I am always happy to see such discussions in English.

When we came back from the break I asked everyone to pretend that this was a job interview. I think people got a bit confused because I did not want you to make an interview again… but to imagine that your partner had given these answers in a job interview. My question was, “What would your answers tell an employer about you?” 

After about 10 minutes with one partner on the above question we changed back into bigger groups (with a more balanced male/female ratio) and the next question to consider was, “What would the ‘right answers’ be?” This was very interesting for me to listen to because many people had different opinions and different opinions from me as well. I think that Eric said it best. He said that your answer is not so important, it is more important that you speak well. I tend to agree. Roger asked me how to say a Korean proverb, I roughly translated it as, “It is not what you say, but how you say it.” I think that this sentence applies very well to job interviews as well as to life.

As I said at the end of class on Thursday, my next question was going to be, “How would you change your answers if you were applying to become a member of a religious organization?”  I felt as though the class (much like the 10 weeks) really flew by. Good job.

Some words that have come up in the past few classes:

babysitter     Let’s go out tonight! I’ll call the babysitter to watch the kids.

nanny     It is quite expensive to hire a full-time nanny. Let’s think of another option.

housekeeper    They must be rich. They have a housekeeper to clean the house.

housewife     His mom doesn’t work. She is a housewife.

stay-at-home mom/dad    Mike’s dream is to be a stay-at-home dad.

ambidextrous    She can use both hands equally. I guess she is ambidextrous.

cartoonist    She is very good at drawing. I think she wants to be a cartoonist.
successful     His mom always tells him that it is important to be successful.

successfully    I finished the term successfully.

success     I wish you great success in all your future endeavors.

succeed    If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

atheist     He said he is not an atheist because he believes in God.

testosterone   She complained there was too much testosterone–she wanted more girls.

devil’s advocate    Don’t think this is my opinion. I am just playing devil’s advocate.

kiss up/kiss _ _ _  He said the best way to get someone to like them is to kiss up.

on the surface   On the surface it might seem easy, but it is actually quite hard.

Of course there were some errors as well. A few people said sentences like:

Love is important than money.
Success is important than love. 
I believe love than sex.

I think we forgot the comparison words to make these sentences work. So:

Love is more important than money.
Success is more important than love.
I believe in love more than I believe in sex.

A common topic on Thursday night was blood type. I guess this was the case because we were talking about personality types. A very usual sentence about blood types that I heard was, “You look like ‘O’.” I don’t really think that people can really guess someone’s blood type by their personality. I certainly don’t think that we can tell someone’s blood type by their looks. I think a better sentence would be, “You seem like you are ‘O’.” 

One word that I hear a lot in class is, “charge.” As in,  “My charge is ….” This sounds quite strange to me. I think that I would choose another word, like duty or responsibility.

OK. That is all for now. I hope everyone has a great day/night/weekend. See you next week!

Best Day/Worst Day

“The present is the present, tomorrow is a mystery.”  –anonymous 4A student

Sorry for taking so long to get my comments up about this class. Actually, I have a few excuses. The first is that I wanted the commercials to be at the top so anyone could see them easily. Someone told me that he/she came to the blog and could not see the commercials easily. I don’t understand because they were right at the top of the page. Anyway, if you have not seen the commercials yet, I highly suggest that you check below.

It was quite a long time ago that we talked about the best/worst days of our lives.

The question that we started out the class with was:
“What was the best/worst thing to happen to you today?” 
This question was easily changed by trading today with this week, this month, this year, this decade. 

I thought the best and worst things that happened to people that day to be quite interesting. Some of the things were very small. In this initial conversation I noticed that quite a few students were having problems with the ‘th’ sound in English. Words like birthday, month, months, and think caused some problems.

Another error that I hear quite a lot is confusing interesting and interested.
I was interesting in your opinion. >>> I was interested in your opinion. 
Your opinion was interesting for me. 

I think most of you already know the differences, it is just a matter of using the words correctly. The sentence that I often use to help students remember this distinction is, “Bowling is boring.”  I hope this helps you to remember.

One phrase that I hear  quite a lot is, “I expect tomorrow.” This means that I think tomorrow is going to come. I hope that everyone expects tomorrow. I think a much more likely sentence would be, “I am looking forward to tomorrow,” or “I am excited about tomorrow.” 

Because the topic was best/worst days, many of the guys talked about their army service. For many people the worst day was joining the army and the best day was leaving. I did not expect that everyone would have such similar experiences. One question that I heard a few times was, “What was your charge in the army?” I cannot say that this is wrong, but I would be much more likely to say, “What did you do in the army?” or “What was your job/duty in the army?” 

A very common error for Korean students is to say, “I talked about my friend.” Actually this is perfectly fine English, it just means that my friend was the topic of conversation when I talked with another person. If I had a conversation with my friend I would need to say, “I talked with/to my friend.” 

We still had some problems with choice, choose, chose, and chosen. Click here if you want to see this explained again.

A final point is about the phrase, “frankly speaking.” I honestly, truly feel that I have never said this while in America. Please trust me. I truthfully don’t remember saying this. I feel that maybe American English speaking is already direct so we don’t need to say this, or maybe we would say truthfully instead.

Friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, lovers…etc.

This class was certainly an interesting one. People seemed a bit shy at first and kind of gave me looks telling me that they were not interested in talking about this topic. Well, once we got into pairs it was another story as the questions were shooting around the room like fireworks. It was very interesting for me to watch.

There were quite a few words that came up during the lesson. Some of them are:

bronchial tubes The bronchial tubes connect the trachea to the lungs.
bronchitis I have had bronchitis before, it really hurts.
bangs Charly had a new hairstyle today–she had bangs.
background Many people said that they did not care about family background.
picky If someone is picky, they are not often satisfied with choices.
convert Many people convert so as to the same religion as their spouse.
success rate A good success rate for a hitter in baseball is .300.
break up They decided that they were not happy so they broke up.
couple They are both so energetic and fun–they make a great couple.
single Some people want to stay single forever.
advice You shouldn’t give advise unless someone asks for it.
advise As your lawyer, I advise you to tell the truth.
confess He felt much better after he confessed his sins.
propose She is getting sick of waiting for him to propose.

Please do notice that the last two words are English words, but are often misused in Korea. Confess is rarely used to tell someone that you love them, and propose is almost never used to simply ask someone out. Mi-young made a good point, it is used to bring up an idea, in a meeting or something like that.

One question that was asked lot in this class was, “Do you have boyfriend/girlfriend.” We need to be careful not to forget the article here, so, “Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?” is more correct.

Also be careful of questions like, “How many boyfriends do you have?” because while grammatically correct, this question could make someone angry. I suppose that the question that was intended was, “How many boyfriends have you ever had?”

A few people talked about the importance of letting someone “know your mind.” I think I would usually say that “you need to tell him/her your feelings” or “let him/her know how you feel.”

Because today’s topic was very personal and private, occasionly we needed to escape from a question. Some useful ways of doing that are:

Sorry, that’s private.

That’s personal.

I’d rather not say.

I’d prefer not to say.

As I wrote above, I thought that everyone did a great job in the class. Some examples of conversations questions about dating that you could have asked are here. Conversation questions about friends can be found here.

Good job!

How to make friends

I hope that everyone enjoyed this topic as much as I did. I really wish that I wrote down everyone’s advice for making friends because it was very useful and interesting.

We started out the class with the question, “How do you usually make friends?”

This question started a great deal of conversation and it was very hard for me to stop some groups from continuing with just this question. Before we got started on the advice I pointed out that “making friends” is very usual English but “making a girlfriend/boyfriend” sounds like something from Frankenstein. Better would be “to get/find a girlfriend/boyfriend.”

After warming up with the question written above we started giving each other the advice hat I printed up. (I think maybe I confused some people with my directions and the phrase “word-for-word” means all the words exactly, verbatim ).

The 12 pieces of advice that I gave were:

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.

2. Smile.

3. Remember that someone’s name is to them the sweetest and most important sound in any language

4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

5. Talk in terms of the other person’s interest.

6. Make the other person feel important–and do it sincerely.

7. Friends are like flowers.

8. Don’t expect too much from anybody. Take what they can give, and be prepared to by more generous in return.

9. Never give advice unless it is specifically asked for.

10. Never drop in unexpectedly.

11. Do not encourage your friends to tell you their troubles all the time.

12. Be unquestioningly royal loyal.

Maybe you can remember, but 6 of these were from Dale Carnegie and 6 were from Princess Beris Kandauoroff’s book, The Art of Living. The first six were from How to Win Friends and Influence People . By the way, I am sorry, I think we (including me –especially me) confused Dale Carnegie with Andrew Carnegie. Sorry about any confusion about that.

Some phrases that came up in this class and might be useful include:

first impression First impressions are very important, so you should try to smile.
maintain your relationship It is hard to maintain friendships during military service.

lose touch I have lost touch with most of my friends from high school.

zip one’s lips Do not tell anyone my secret. Zip your lips!

miser You should not be so cheap and act like a miser if you want to have friends.

Also, please don’t forget the difference in pronunciation of royal and loyal.
Here is a tongue twister for you–A loyal royal warrior will rarely worry why we rule.

Because everyone spoke for such a long time, there were mistakes of course. Some of them are here:

When I was elementary school. >>> When I was in elementary school.
When I was an elementary school student.

I very enjoyed it. >>> I enjoyed it very much.
I really enjoyed it.

My friend is angry to me. >>> My friend is angry with me.
My friend is angry with me.

Almost people have friends. >>> Almost everyone has friends.

This is difficult, I am confusing. >>> This is difficult, I am confused.
This is confusing, I don’t know what to do.
I confused the main ideas.

I hope you are not confused. See you very soon!

Week 3

Hello everyone!

How are you doing?

Everyone did a very good job this week. I also cannot believe that we laughed so much during English class. I especially enjoyed the role-play on Monday.  The topic for Monday was choosing which people would be useful in order to start a new civilization. Each person had some good points and some faults.

The possible survivors were:

1.  A 32-year old male carpenter that was manic/depressive.
2. A married male artist that was 30 years old. His wife was #3.
3. A 29-year old female singer. She was married to the artist and pregnant.
4. A one-armed female nurse that was 26 years old.
5. A male doctor that was homosexual and 27 years old.
6. A female biologist that was 22 but couldn’t have children.
7. A racist male farmer that was 40 years old.
8. A 25-year old Catholic nun.
9. A policeman that was 37 years old.
10. A 25-year old woman that was also a drug addict and a teacher.
11. An aggressive male soldier that was 30.
12. A 50-year old clever politician.
13. An alcoholic engineer that was 33 and a woman.

The pros/cons of each person stimulated a lot of debate and caused a lot of disagreement. After spending a long time discussing each person’s good/bad points we then did a role play and each student explained why they should survive. This was fantastic!

On Thursday, we continued with a similar idea and imagined that we did such great job choosing the survivors that the humanity survived. It was a few generations later and the island had over 150 people on it. We imagined that everyone was going to be on a committee to decide the rules, laws, and customs of the island. At first, we brainstormed questions that needed to be answered. I was very impressed with the questions.

A great deal of new/interesting words came up while thinking of questions.
Some of these words were:

soil
currency
infrastructure
elect
unanimous
barter
conservative
liberal

In the second hour of class we pretended to be one of 6 characters while discussing the questions that everyone thought up during the first hour. The conversations were great–both funny and serious. Mostly everyone talked a lot.

Again, lots of words came up. They were:

unemployment
prevent
incarcerate
monogamy
polygamy
commit
committee
a pill
the pill

At the end of class I  talked about some  key errors that I heard.  Here are some errors from today’s class:

This island has small people. >>> This island only has a few people.
Small people means that the people are short… not the amount of people.

We should prohibit eating the pill. >>> We should prohibit taking the pill.
In English, we don’t usually eat medicine (it tastes terrible).

He is a grandfather.  or He is an old man.
If he is a grandfather he has grandchildren. When we talk about being a grandfather we are talking about family relationship. Otherwise, we would talk about his age. Just like ajashi does not mean really mean uncle.

Are you agree with me? >>> Do you agree with me?
I am not agree your opinion. >>> I do not agree with your opinion.

I also talked for about a minute about “wanna.” My advice about this word is just to be careful. Try to not overgeneralize and use it in the wrong cases.  The examples from today were:

He wanna be a king.  >>> He wants to be king. 

I wanna freedom.  >>> I wanna have freedom. / I wanna be free. 

At the end of class I also mentioned some good things that I heard in class today.  Actually, I heard many good things, but some were:

For me, ….. (instead of IN MY CASE)
Do you think so?
Well,….
Oh my goodness!
When it comes to ___, ….

It was a really great job by everyone. Have a great weekend and I will talk to you next week. Please feel free to leave a comment or question about anything. Take care!

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.