Korea: Have More...

I suddenly have so many things I want to blog about this week…

I will not lie – yesterday… I wished this course were over.  Yesterday I realised I would miss a wedding of some good friends of mine because of this course… following which I made it ALL ABOUT ME – and spent the evening having a complete tantrum…  I found myself in a quite the conundrum – I know I love the course… it’s been one of the best things I’ve done in the last few years… but yesterday, that didn’t seem enough…

(sigh…)

Then… this afternoon happened.  I got a call to say one of my students in my advanced class would be absent – leaving me with one student… and I had this thought, “Well – I don’t want to continue with the novel… so… hmmm why not try that ICC lesson I planned for last weekend?”  It was the perfect opportunity!

So – admittedly, the lesson couldn’t go as planned, because with only one student, there was no opportunity for PW.  Also – in me getting swept up in how much I was enjoying the class – I ‘forgot’ to add in the TL focus (In my opinion… / I think…) but she expressed herself well.  To me – it felt like a productive class.  My student was enthusiastic about the activities – and overall – I found many of her answers insightful – and quite beyond what I expected.

The Preview stage went well – we went through a print advert – and I managed to elicit the target vocabulary from her – with some MIC techniques to make it a little easier.  When we got to the Presentation stage – I did my Type 1 task of playing the commercial for 5 seconds and she guessed where she thought the commercial was filmed.  Interestingly, she thought the South African advert was British (because of the accent), and she hesitated between Korea and Japan for the Korean advert because, as she mentioned, she knew it was ‘in Korean’ but she said she felt the actors looked more Japanese.  We then did a full viewing during which she had been asked to identify who the main characters were in the commercials.  We did some feedback, and she had some comments and questions.  When we did the Type 2 task of finding the tagline, identifying the target market and thinking about what message KFC was trying to tell the viewers – she did really well!  I felt like it was a little difficult for her at first, so I rephrased questions and gave my own examples – and after that – she managed to express her thoughts with ease.

Our TDBU extension tasks of identifying values, and then going further to think of other values (not seen in the video) that are important in Korea – she gave honest, mature answers.  In fact – I think I was most excited about the mature way in which she talked about the topic, and took it seriously (bar one moment when she had some fun pausing and playing the recording…)

I realise now – I didn’t incorporate a purely BU task… (live and learn ‘ey?)

Finally, we got to the “Closing” task – to make our own tagline for Korea.  I gave her an example of the South African tagline, The Rainbow Nation, and this seemed to help her with some ideas.  We looked through the values that we had identified – and initially she said, “Money” … but I could tell she was still busy thinking of how to express her thoughts…and finally she said, “Have More.”  I can’t explain how I felt in that moment.  I don’t think I could have come up with a more appropriate answer… When I mentioned it to my co-teacher she said, “Oh…does that mean greedy?” but in all honesty, I don’t believe that my student meant that at all – I think with those words, she was able to express what is central to the motivation of many Korean people – don’t settle for less… work hard… get educated… stay honest… Have More! (It’s yours if you want it!)

In those last 5 minutes of class – all that “wedding moaning” and hostility dissolved… In that moment – it was so clear why I love this course.  It’s pushing me – and I want to Have More too!