“hope I can sleep tight.”
Archive for the ‘introduction’ Category
This semester I…
Thursday, March 7th, 2013Wish vs. Hope
Tuesday, March 5th, 2013As I don’t have to do a full-blown intro lesson with second grade, I taught my returning students the differences between “wish” and “hope.” We practiced constructing future hopes and wishes, and then wrote our self-introductions on index cards. Students would then come up to the front of the classroom, read other students’ index cards, and the class as a whole would have to try to guess which student wrote which card based on their wishes/hopes/hobbies/hometowns, etc. It was fun.
The way I tried to simply break it down was you use “hope” when something is possible or probable, and “wish” when something is impossible or improbable. For that reason, you can say “I hope I will go to sleep early” to signify that that (going to sleep early) is something that may actually happen, and you can say “I wish I could go to sleep early” when you have important work that you must do, and thus most likely will not be going to sleep early.
We brainstormed verbs in pairs, then I threw my classroom ball and whoever caught it had to volunteer a verb. The class as a whole created a phrase with the verb, then decided if that phrase was impossible/improbable/probable/possible and created a sentence together by plugging it into one of the two grammar structures I had left on the board [I wish I would/could; I hope I will].
Addict -> Break an addiction -> Break my addiction to computer games -> I wish I could break my addiction to computer games.
Here are some funny/sweet/weird ones (and ones I’m a little scared to leave up on the board) my students have come up with.
I hope I can talk to female students [this semester].
I wish I could invade Russia.
I wish I could burn down the school.
I wish I could walk to the sky.
I hope I can cure cancer.
I hope I can confess my secret.
I wish I could sleep in Emily’s class.
Newspaper Article
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011Only one more blogpost today, I promise. However I’ll be traveling tomorrow through Monday because of midterms, so just think of this as your payment for those long cold days with no updates.
I wrote an introduction about myself for the school newspaper, and my rockstar co-teacher helped me recruit (i.e. saw students in line for the ATM and dragged them over) students for a picture. They look so thrilled. The newspaper was published today, so here is my introduction!
“Introduction to Changpyeong High School – Emily Potosky
I came to Korea in the fall of 2010 as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, a program that promotes intercultural exchange through teaching, with the intention of staying for only one year. However through my experiences living with a homestay family, traveling all over Korea, studying Korean, and most of all teaching my students, I realized that I was not ready to leave. I enjoy both being a teacher and being a student too much, so I decided to stay in Korea for one more year. I had heard from Ms. Sicat about how amazing Changpyeong High School was, and thus applied to teach here.
Last year I taught at Sapgyo High School, in Yesan county, South Chungcheong Province. That was my first introduction to Korean high school students. I am very impressed by the work ethic of the average Korean student, and after finishing two weeks at Changpyeong High School, I am especially impressed by the caliber of the students and faculty here. Even after such a short amount of time, just by observing the students and the teachers I can tell that Changpyeong High School takes education very seriously. I am honored and excited to spend this year as part of a faculty that puts so much effort and enthusiasm into quality teaching, because education is not only a means for improving job prospects, but it is also a means of improving yourself. I believe that all foreign language study, not just English and certainly not just American English, is important, because it is one of the best ways to learn about other cultures and other people.
As a teacher and a fellow foreign language learner I strive for communicative competence. Communicative competence can be loosely defined as the ability to communicate through knowledge of grammar as well as knowing the appropriate time to use certain utterances. It is impossible to learn a language just by memorizing phrases and grammar points – you also need to know when to use them! It is both possible to say something grammatically correct but completely contextually wrong, and to say something grammatically incorrect but nevertheless understood and appropriate for the situation. My goal as the native English teacher is to impart contextual knowledge to the best of my abilities, because I believe that it is more important to be understood than to be grammatically correct.
I am incredibly excited to get to know all of you. So please, I invite you to come practice speaking English with me outside of the classroom whenever you have the time. I am sure that I will learn a lot from you this year.”