to teached english for second language

Newly official summer goals in preparation for moving to Korea:

1. two days of korean lessons per week (via podcasting and workbooks)

2. two days (ie. six units) of TEFL coursework per week toward 100-hour certification

3. more weekly free time devoted to reading about teaching and living in South Korea

4. weekly contributions to packing entire apartment (aka: holy poo)

5. two major weekly items checked off to-do-before-K checklist (like buying new external harddrive, year's supply of neutrogena moisturizer, canceling netflix subscription, etc)

6. my master's thesis. oh wait. that has NOTHING TO DO WITH GOING TO KOREA AT ALL AND FEELS LIKE A TOTAL WASTE OF TIME.

In convergence with these attempts to better my mind, spirit, and suitcase, I have also enacted a true resolution to improve my body. Sugar is evil to my body, people. Those of you who have lived with me know this, and know that it is a lifelong mistress of mine: not so good for the home life, but so damn satisfying at the moment, despite the mysterious diseases and general guilt afterward. It's a rough life, peeps, but if I want to be in top working order for a year of living abroad and scampering through the streets of Seoul, I need to get the ole' vessel in optimal shape. I've decided that this is no big deal, just a simple lifestyle change. Right? No more sugar for me (except for very special and impossible to avoid occasions) and I've also upped my exercise ante to every single day, no excuses!

Perhaps the most humorous (so far) of these goals is my attempt to complete a 100-hour TEFL certification course in the next 6 weeks. TEFL stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and though my recruiter insists that I don't need such training ("You already have Master degree! You fine! You fine!") I am somewhat more skeptical. I mean, please.... they do not know WHAT kind of crap I'm learning in grad school. In one of my recent Learning Science electives, I spent 3 hours straight playing Pirates of the Caribbean online in order to learn about using video games in the classroom. Yeah... exactly. So, despite my recruiter's emphatic insistence, I have taken it upon myself to sacrifice the $190 and take some basic TEFL training. After all, my content area may be English, but it is certainly not English for people who don't already speak it.

So I'm not a total dunce about English as a language, I'll admit. In my methods class, I was in the top third (I would estimate) of classmates who already knew how to diagram sentences and string together a decent clause. But this has really put the English language through a different lens for me. I'm actually really enjoying it! But hey, I'm a nerd who loves learning. Shocker. The funny part is all the examples used to teach parts of speech.

I knew I was in for fun when the first example of ambiguously countable and uncountable nouns read as follows:

"There is a chicken in the fridge. (one whole bird)
There is chicken on the menu tonight. (we cannot be sure how much chicken there is)"

This was followed immediately by a lesson on articles, reading: "She is a tall, dark, and stunning teacher."

But the sentences kept getting weirder and better. And dare I say, so totally not Americanized. I mean... I don't think these sentences would swing in a US course. And I'm not just talking about their spelling of the word "practise." Take, for example, this study of adverbs, citing the following common English sentences:

"Fortunately, everyone else has drunk too much!"

"Unofficially, everyone smokes hash!"

"They always forget to lock the door."

If you're having trouble remembering the conjunction because, simply recall the sentence: "I married her because she's gorgeous."

There are also several examples of England "losing games" and "failing." I don't know who wrote this tutorial, but it is awesome. No offense, England.