One of my students has the notorious habit of yelling out completely random things in class all the time. Not things where he was trying to answer a question, trying to speak English, or simply having a conversation. These are just random Korean words that come spilling out of his mouth constantly for no reason what so ever. Since the words he says are meaningless, I ignore them, as annoying as they are, because if I started to ask him about what he was saying, me might actually do it more than he does now.
When I came into class today, two of my female students proposed a solution. I didn’t know what they were trying to say to me, as they have terrible English skills, but eventually what they were working on was easy enough to figure out. They set up a paper at their desk, and whenever the male student shouted out something completely random that made no sense, they wrote it down. They only wrote down things that were unsolicited Korean phrases that had nothing to do with our class. They did this on their own, and I didn’t need to help. I didn’t see the harm in letting them discipline a boy they thought was annoying, and they weren’t doing anything bad when he said something, just writing it down.
I went down the list of things he said, and when I read some of them out, the boy actually denied having said some of the phrased. I know he had said them. I had heard him, and the girls had written them down. He honestly couldn’t recall. After a fifty minute class they had filled an entire page with ramblings. One page of Korean phrases that went nowhere.
I brought this up with the teacher that follows up after me. It seems it was her idea to have a compiled list of his babbling. I’m not sure if it’s something to document what he’s done, or show to his mother, or as a basis for punishment. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was all three. I’ve had students do the exact same thing in English. It’s just as annoying, but since it’s English it’s harder to punish someone for it.
