The good news: this August I'll be making my annual trip to America to see my family in Washington, D.C. and Seattle. It's always great to see them.
More good news: the semester is over and my grading is done! For anyone who puts up with me on Twitter, you're probably aware that as much as I enjoy teaching, I've always hated grading. Throw in the fact that South Korean hyper-bureaucracy (i.e., tons of paperwork) is a definite thing, and the end of every semester can actually be a bit stressful. But I really pushed myself to just get the stuff done this time around, and it worked out.
Funny how discipline actually pays off at times.
Potentially great news: Me, my boss, and my two foreigner co-workers won a stipend from our college to write a research paper about using more effective teaching methods in the classroom. We're putting together a study regarding effective questions based on the Socratic Method in the less English proficient (L.E.P.) classroom. (That's fancy pedagogy speak for beginner level students.) Over at the old place I was starting to do some posts based around our research so far, and while some of it is pretty damn dry it's nice to be able to articulate some of the things that I've always felt instinctively while in the classroom regarding what works and what doesn't.
Long story short, this is going to be a very busy July for me even though my main classes are over for the summer. We've got to be ready to do our research when the next semester starts up at the end of August, which is probably going to involve recording conversations with five to ten of our students from every class (which can range from 25 to 50 students on average). We're finishing up our literature review now and moving on to working out the methodology next week.
Other than that, it's jang-ma season here in lurvely Daegu. Jang-ma are basically heavy summer rains, and the streets and gutters of Korea go from perfectly dry to drenched and swelling within minutes. So now it's hot, humid, sticky, and insufferably damp! Good times!
James,
ReplyDeleteI don't have your email, so I'm leaving this comment here. Several of us on Twitter, including ESL Barry White, are concerned that your Twitter account has been spoofed or hacked, as it's currently showing juicy, delicious boobs. You're probably aware of the hacking/spoofing by now, but we just wanted to let you know that we're hopeful this problem can be resolved expeditiously and painlessly.
In your corner,
Kevin, Barry, et al.
Yeesh. Thanks again for the heads up.
Delete