With bring new creative writing and speaking activities into my classroom comes a mystery. How will the students respond to the activity? Will they shut down and refuse to do it? Or will they go to the opposite extreme and take the activity with no seriousness at all and make a joke of the class? I've challenged my middle school students with activities they have likely never done before and I'm very interested in the results.
I approach my classroom as a laboratory. Since there is no curriculum, no syllabus, no homework, no grades that actually matter, and no tests, I see no difference between following the dull old textbook versus my own creative lesson plans. The students are bored to death with the textbook; they sometimes spend entire classes in utter silence staring at the floor, playing with their thumbs (that's only because the director has taken away their cell phones). I can't force someone to speak, can I? Isn't that a right a student keeps for themself? He or she can be forced to do homework, forced to do reading, but you can't force someone to speak, much less communicate with a foreigner.
I've learned that my job is not really to teach. True, I define vocabulary, correct pronunciation and grammar mistakes, point out skills in sentence construction and communication. But I'm not really teaching them English. They are here to practice English, meaning they should take what they know, what they've learned, and apply it in my classroom.
Upon this realization, I've started to a push for a more creative approach in my classroom. It's not about what you don't know, but what you do. I've learned that my students know more English than they let on. They are just afraid to use it, don't know how to use it, or they want to force a direct translation of what they want to say from Korean into English. When students try this, they run into vocabulary problems: they may not know the vocabulary or sentence structure to say what they want to say. Rather than try and use alternative words, synonyms, pictures gestures, the students freeze up and simply say nothing.
Perhaps this is a product of their "listen and repeat" memorization heavy environment. The students are accustomed to memorizing phrases that answer a specific question they have memorized. If you ask them a question that varies only a little bit from what they've memorized, they are completely in the dark.
This is the case with my middle school students, not with my elementary kids. Something very strange and bad happens to Korean children between the ages of 12 and 14, something that sucks the soul out of them.
Why can my eight year olds make better use of their incredibly limited vocabulary and still get their message across, while my older students, who have been studying for years upon years, can barely formed a sentence and struggle to remember words like "school", "fishing", and "tiger"?
As an experiment, I showed a flashcard picture of a gorilla cooking a banana over a gas range to two different groups of students.
First, the teenagers.
I showed the picture to a 14 year old teenage boy and asked "What happening?" No response. Pause. "What's the gorilla doing?" No response. Pause. I point to the gorilla. "What this?" .... .... ....finally, a response: "gorilla...banana...cook."
Same exact activity, but with 12 year olds.
Q: "What's happening?"
A: "The gorilla is cooking a banana on oven."
WHAT'S GOING ON?!?
Here are some sample stories taken from my middle school classes. This is one of a couple different activities I've tried -- story chain. I give the students a theme and some vocabulary (in this case, a fairy tale theme), and they have 1 minute to write a sentence, then pass the paper off to the next student. I've left the grammar and punctuation unedited.
1)One upon a time, There was a onions princess in vegetable world. A onion princess die. But next, the tomato prince kissed to a onion princess and she rise from the dead. But she didn't love anymore the tomato prince. So tomato prince killed a onion princess. But suddenly, tomato prince was married Pinocchio. But Pinocchio loved Cinderella. So Pinocchio divorce. Finally, the tomato prince was killed Pinocchio. And, Pinocchio was killed by God.
2)Once upon a time, there were 100 people in the world. They are very stupid and dirty. But next, they started study. But they didn't study hard, so they loved singers. They loved Big Bang (a popular Korean boy band)very much, x10000000. But suddenly, Big Bang visited them. Big Bang lived with 100 people. And Beast (another boy band) is come here, too. There was lived with Ashley, Britany. Finally, they were happy :). ^^Happy ending ^^.
3)Once upon a time, a princess lives in castle who is very tall. But a princess's face is like zombie. But next, she kills people. She found a tiger. And the tiger is her mom. But suddenly tiger died. The tiger go to the heaven. And a princess is crazy. Finally, she died. And, she go to sky.
4)Once upon a time. Pikchu shout fork, break head. But next, squirtle is heal the Pikchu. Pikchu becom a live. Pikachu is transformation. Pikachu is from North Korea. Pikhu ufc champion. But pikhu kill the person. Finally, pichu is suicide. And, he is a legend.
I think these stories, as listed here, get progressively worse. The final story in the list above is actually written by a middle school class of four boys, who are at a remarkably low speaking and writing level. It's strange because most middle school students hide how much English they actually know, usually because they are afraid of making a mistake. But not this class. They really don't know that much. Really.
Notice the common theme in all these stories: death, murder, and suicide. Korean students have a very morbid sense of humor. When a kid is late or missing from a class, I ask
"Where's ____?"
The kids answer, "Oh, he/she died."
"How did he/she die?"
"Car went bruuuuurak, then whhhaaakk, then CRAAAAACCKKKMMMMYAAAA, a ping ping ping, , and died.
