Wednesday, June 23, 2010

"How are you today?"

In all my classes, I try to elicit a student question for me, in response to a question I've asked.  Example: at the beginning of my smaller classes (less than 10), I'll usually ask students, "How are you today?" for lower levels or "What's happening/ what's up?" for the higher level classes.  I'll go around the class and then when everyone is finished, I'll just wait.  Someone will have to ask me the same question.  I try to always give a very vague but interesting answer so that students want to know more information and will ask me some questions.

In real-life use of a language, it's not just one person ask, the other one responds.  It's a back and forth kind of thing, so I try to model this in the classroom.  And actually, you might be surprised at how weak most Korean students are at asking simple questions, since they've generally never been expected to do this before.  This is a simple step in the right direction. 

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