I hope that everyone is doing well. I wanted to thank you guys for your hard work during these 10 weeks. I really enjoyed getting to know you guys and working with you. You all did very well. I wish you all the best of luck in the future, wherever you go and whatever you do. I hope you sometimes think of this class. Take good care,

Mike

PS- Someone asked if I will keep this blog up. I will keep it up for at least a year. I probably will not update the blog very often but I will check if you leave a comment.

PPS-Jin, who is probably already in America asked me to tell him the song that I used to sing when I was a kid. Here it is:

“I’m hungry,
I’m thirsty,
I’m tired,
I’m sick,
and I want to go home.”
(this song can be changed easily…just add a negative word after “I’m”)

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!

Many people had similar ideas about this. It was interesting to hear people explaining and describing commercials to each other. I asked each group to describe a commercial to me, because I do not have a TV. I expected that everyone would feel sorry for me, but no one did. It is OK. I will be OK, I am sure. Anyway, each group did a good job to explain their commercials to me and to the other groups. Actually, I had not seen any of the commercials in my life so it was very interesting.

The main part of the second hour of class was spent making commercials. No, we didn’t actually film them, but made the story for each of them. The themes were, “Don’t use the air conditioner too much,” “Don’t throw away pets” and “Don’t smoke.” I was very impressed with the visual imagery that each group came up with. As I write this, I am thinking about the water overflowing onto the office worker who used the AC too much.

I thought it was a very good class because I liked how the groups worked together and came up with very different ideas.

Some words that came up during this class:

spokesperson     Jun Ji-hyeon is the spokesperson for many, many products.

memorable     That commercial is so memorable, I am sure I will never forget it.

CM jingle (song)     He thinks that the most important thing is a memorable jingle. (please don’t forget that CF is also Konglish)

impressive     His speaking style was very impressive.

impressed     I was very impressed with his speaking style.

catchphrase/slogan     “Impossible Is Nothing” is a memorable slogan.

catchy     A catchy slogan is one that we can remember easily.

consumer    A consumer is someone who buys goods or services.

copyright That song is copyrighted, you cannot use it.

Everyone did a great job. Nice!

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.

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!

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!

How are you? I am not sure who checks this blog, or when they check it. I wanted to be sure to give you a hint about the topic for Thursday’s class. I promised Mi-young that I would at least say on Tuesday what the subject will be for Thursday. Well, today is Wednesday so I am almost right. The topic for Thursday is one that was suggested in the second class. It is “How to make friends.” One link that might be helpful for this topic is right here.  This page was not written with ESL learners in mind, so I think that it might be a little difficult, but I also think that it has lots of interesting and useful words for you. Take care and I will see you on Thursday!