Curriculum Craziness

Over the last seven months of teaching in Korea, I've had to teach some strange words and sentences to my students.  At the beginning of each lesson, we listen and repeat and memorize the vocabulary and phrases, which means that my students have committed some really odd things to heart.

This includes phrases like "I'm going to go inline skating" and "What is this?" "It's a sensor."

One of my favorites was the video dialogue about the "house of the future" in which the characters exclaim: "Look! The robot is cooking."  "What a surprise!"  I honestly had more of a problem with forcing my kids to memorize "What a surprise!" than "Look, the robot is cooking!"  If there was a situation in which a robot was cooking, I can imagine someone might actually use that sentence.  But I cannot picture anyone I know using the phrase "What a surprise!"  To add insult to injury, the actors in the video spoke this phrase in the dullest, least whatasurprised monotone possible. 

I can only assume that someone was trying to directly translate a Korean phrase for being surprised - like "Quelle suprise!" in French, and they didn't want to say "Wow".

My plan for this post was to come up with a list of the funky things I've had to teach - including conversations about appearances "He has curly hair and a big nose", which, in the video are accompanied by characters emitting red hearts from their eyes.  So I asked my friends to add some of their bizarre curriculum to the list.  And I suddenly felt very, very good about my curriculum.  Here are the samples they gave me (these are mostly from my friend Asrune who has a great blog.)

I didn't know they had it this bad.

List of words/phrases my friends and I have had to teach in Korea


- "We will see a future house." and "I go to school on foot."

- "The doughnut shop of sweet is next to the book gallery."

- "We're going to have a Halloween party. Don't forget to carve a Jack-o-Lantern!"  "Would you like to come to a snack party?"

- "Don't use the elevator, use the stairs. The elevator is for old and weak people."

-"Do you want the king of steaks or the super sweet pizza?"  (To be fair, the pizza here tends to have sweet sauce.)

 "Today is Arbor day. What day is your birthday?"

-"Don't run! Because they're wet and slippery!" (No explanation as to who are wet and slippery here.)

-"Let's make a happy school"

"I want to clean the windows" (Chapter title)

" I want to play and have dinner with you."

"Be careful! Owls eat snakes and snakes eat grasshoppers."

-Student 1: "You are very strong." Student 2: "Of course, I am stronger than you."

- "Who's calling please? This is David. Lucy and I will have a badminton party. Can you join us?"

- "Can I get on the bus? Sure you can! But you must line up first." (In the video, she is the only person there.)

- "Hallasan is higher than Jirisan." (taller?)

-"Come to my movie party! We'll have pillow fghts and sing a song."

-Student 1: "Can I come to your house?" Student 2: "Ok, come in."  (As my friend pointed out - doesn't this imply that he is already at said person's house?)

Posted in: ESL Korea 2012, ESL teaching, Funny things that happen in Korea, Only in Korea 2012