::A Geek in Korea::

Today was my first set of tests for the week. I spent the day preparing the tests, adding a few pages of supplimental questions, and studying some Chinese characters while the students took their test.

In one of my classes, the students were expected to know how to write the numbers from one to one hundred without needing help. We had practiced the numbers multiple times, and I had given them a paper I had told them to memorize that helped with the spelling. I taught them when to use hyphens when spelling numbers. They seemed to have a grasp on the entire process, so I was hopeful going into the test.

When we started having the test, it was clear that they hadn’t memorized the numbers well enough. Two of the students asked me if they could use the paper I gave them to answer some of the questions on the test. Since that defeated the point of having them memorize it, I didn’t let them.

I started to grade some of the tests and saw what had happened. They had generally done well on numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine, where the hyphen is required, but had trouble remembering how to write numbers in the 13-19 range.

One question required them to write the price of a piece of clothing. The item had a price tag of $15.

One student wrote "Ten-Five", which would be how to write the word if you translated it from Korean to English without knowing about how our number system worked. He joined the class late in this term and hasn’t had all the books to study with until last week, so this sort of mistake I’ll accept as being reasonable.

One of the other students in the class had written "onety-five". I asked her what it was that she had written.

She said, "Thirty. Twenty. Onety! Onety-five."

Of course, now it makes perfect sense.