I learnt to speak English
I hate lesson planning. It’s would be much easier if I had some sort of guideline, other than “just speak English” … but it is what it is. And somehow it all comes together.
It must be a real bummer to be a Korean “English” teacher ~ they have a standardized curriculum that they have to follow, which includes the classroom text and a teacher’s manual. I spend some of my time working with the Korean English teachers on translation of the teacher’s manual, a convoluted mess of Korean and English.
Anyway, poor Mrs. Ct1 was in quite a lather this morning ~ she could not figure out how the instructions in the manual applied to her lesson on classroom manners and behavior. The issue was the acronym “UCC” ~ she was quite certain that “UCC” meant “Uniform Commercial Code” (as that is the first one that comes up in Google). I had about 2 minutes to explain to her that UCC has about 50 definitions in English ~ she’s already had 3 hours to get all worked up about not understanding how to use it in her first class of the day. Mystery solved ~ “UCC,” in this context, refers to User-Created Content, which is not a common term and definitely not familiar to the Korean teachers. (Who the hell is writing these teacher manuals?)
It’s a minor, but somewhat significant issue ~ the variations in speech (accents), phrases, and spelling in the English language (i.e., American English vs UK English) make it even more difficult to learn. The brightest students will occasionally correct my spelling ~ “teacher, shouldn’t that be spelled learnt, not learned ? ” (“I learnt how to speak English in middle school.”) Someday they can tell their children that they learned to speak English in middle school from an accent-less (ha, ha) American teacher, who didn’t spell things funny.
Tags: 1
Nancy