::A Geek in Korea::

I created a worksheet to study the "be" verb, using it in a pattern repeatedly to form proper sentences to practice. The patterns were supposed to show how many sentences were easy to create just by swapping different words.

To make a question:
"Be Verb" + Pronoun + Adjective + Question Mark.
Example: Is he tired?

For a positive declarative sentence:
Yes + Comma + Pronoun + "Be Verb" + Adjective + Period.
Example: Yes, He is tired.

For a negative declarative sentence:
No, + Comma + Pronoun + "Be Verb" with Not contraction + Adjective + Period.
Example: No, he isn’t tired.

I created examples following the rules above. Instead of using the word type terms, I would substitute them with words the students should know from their books. I wrote out examples for sentence that use "Is" and "Are", and made a list of different pronouns and how the Be verb changes in each sentence. I gave them enough information that all they had to do was simply swap words. I gave them a word bank for each sentence in the same order each time. In other words, if the students knew how to make a three word sentence with the Be verb properly, they couldn’t get this wrong if they followed my patterns.

I gave this to a class that had done these sorts of questions in class. We had been talking about careers. The sentences, "He is a firefighter", or "He is brave" were something all the students had practiced. We did these in class together. They were repeating after me, and they should have listened to the tape, and read the book five or more times before they had come to class for this lesson. The students only had minor problems forming correct sentences when I was having them repeat after me. Proof enough that they could do my worksheet, or so I thought.

I handed out my papers, then started writing the examples on the board. The students had to look at the sentence, then decode the next sentence in the same manner. No spelling required. I wrote down the first four answers on the page as people worked, that way slower students might be able to catch onto the pattern as we worked through it, instead of having to do it on their own. After the forth problem, the pattern of pronouns intentionally repeated, so they had already written their own examples once. After that I refused to simply tell them answers and would only point them to the previous example that best fit the sentence they were working on.

One of my worst students stopped working after the first problem. He had his "Disk Read Error: Abort Retry Fail. File not found. Try again?" face on. I had told them that it was homework, and since I had written four of the answers on the board, it would be wise to keep working, because it was less to do at home. I would go around the class, helping students, and every time he was rebooting his brain, dead stare, no idea what was going on. I kept telling him, "Hey, the answers are on the board, I can’t do anything more to help you other than writing it on your paper for you."

Another student happened to lock up on one of the "do it yourself" questions. He wanted to know the sentence order. Since it was the same as every other question, I told him to look at previous answers. When I found that other students couldn’t help him, I pitied him enough to tell him the answer. All he had to do was pick up his pencil and write it down as I said it. I repeated the answer seven times in total as I walked around class, stopping at him to repeat the answer, then move on.  He wouldn’t lift his own pencil and write. He gave me a look like he expected me to do his work for him.

That sort of thing drives me nuts. I have thirteen students in this class, and I want to keep all of them working. I can’t spend my time on two really slow students when everyone needs my help. I wrote them off and focused on the people that were actually going to have a chance to complete the lesson, albeit with mistakes. I hoped to catch a good students mistake rather than tell a bad student what to write.

After class, I took my two students with boot failure brains to the teachers office and explained that they were taking up too much of my time in class, and that they needed to do their work when it was written on the board for them. My director took them to a spare classroom, made fresh copied, and told them to start over, this time with no help from me. In an hour, when the next bus was scheduled to leave, they could go. One student got 90% of the paper done, and one 40% finished.

I told the Korean teachers, "Students can’t form three word sentences with the Be verb. What’s going on?!"

The head teacher seemed to think that they didn’t understand how changing the position of the Be verb in the sentence created questions, thus they didn’t understand my pattern sentence structure. Since we had done this in multiple classes, in multiple lessons, and I’m not even the students grammar teacher, I doubted this was true. I had explicitly written this out and diagrammed a sentences, spoken examples, and done everything I could to show this being true. Besides, if students have been studying here multiple years, and can’t make a three word sentence, what the hell were they learning in the Korean teacher’s grammar classes?

It seems that while in a spoken environment they can parrot back what they need to to survive, they don’t actually retain much information at all. The parents of some of the students will get calls home. I was really shocked at how poorly most of my students did. With mid-term tests being next week, I don’t expect a favorable outcome.