English House Jan 5

A good day. We did a "free" kind of discussion today on the assigned topic (pyramids) -- that is, after a 15 minute ranging talk on various things by me, including introducing the ideas

• history = his story (the winners write the history, losers may never get the chance)
• provocative = designed to create controversy or at least mental fireworks

students got about 25 minutes to talk as they liked.

After that I talked about why we didn't do "mental body-building" (hard thinking while talking) in the class today: I wasn't copying the other conversation teacher with a focus on fluency, but instead was teaching the "reward" system of study.

A. Study hard, then take a break
(50 minutes, then have a Coke for 10 min, 50 minutes then a 20-min break, write a postcard or something, then 50 minutes and call it a day, my law school system -- if not studying well, no reward?)
(study a number of days, then do a "fun thing" as study, example, go see an English movie with friends, of course you can use the Korean subtitles, but TRY to listen in English)

B. Study different things, different ways
(Do grammar, then do vocab, then do listening, or whatever, not just the same thing every day)

C. Study regularly, make it a habit, not something to be avoided
(if ugly, don't do it til finals, and then you won't remember)
(assume that there is something useful in the class, and you want to remember it for the future, so should take some time to learn it)
(if friends going drinking, don't be early, finish some studying first, you won't miss much since they are still trying to figure out where to go! ... study til 10, drinking becomes a reward)

Students seemed receptive to this idea.