The “Is it a curse” test.
Teaching May 16th. 2007, 11:29pmSome of my younger students were joking around during their dictation test. One boy wrote “뷁” on his book, and another girl took offense. The word “Bul-aek!” sort of sounds like a mock vomiting when pronounced well.
It comes from the word “break”. It’s actually slang said when someone is upset, or telling you to ignore what someone else is saying. The valley girl approximation of the word would be “Gag me with a spoon.” The only time I made mock vomit sounds in conversation to interrupt people was in elementary school (Okay, that’s totally not true), but it’s a juvenile word bordering on rude.
The girls in the class wanted the boy to not be able to use the word in class. I’d like this as well. The less interruptions from rude boys the better. Anyway, I asked the boys if they thought it was a curse. They said it wasn’t rude at all. Since there was such a split opinion, I devised a test to see if the word was appropriate for their age to say.
“If that word is okay, then I’d like you to say it to your mother tonight at dinner. If you can, then there is no problem,” I told the students.
The boys in the class were like, “What? Are you crazy? We’d get killed for saying that!”
“Okay then, don’t say it in my class either. Can’t say it to Mom, can’t say it here either!”
This only works because I know the students well enough to call the student’s bluff. They knew it was a bad word, otherwise why would they write it on the notebook and show people in the first place? It’s awful tempting to curse when you think the authority in the room can’t understand a thing you are saying.
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May 17th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
‘Toefl Crisis’ in South Korea Sends Students Abroad Just to Take the Key Test
May 18th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Yeah, I had a student that tried to sign up for the Internet based TOEFL examination. She heard on EBS (The Education channel set up by the Government) that the test sign ups were going to be made available on a certain date. She stayed up ALL night clicking “Refresh” on her browser. She said that the last time there were sign-ups, the ENTIRE country filled the alloted seats in under an hour.
The Education Minister got in some hot water over the limited number of seats. There is some sort of compromise about using paper based testing and whatnot. There are a lot of confusing acronyms. I’m glad I don’t have to wade through the paperwork to get it done.