Midterm exam_1_Youngmi

[최영미]

The data I've chosen in my paper comes from a Korean class 듣말쓰(which means listening, speaking, and writing) in which thirty five 4th graders studying what are the advantages of writing a letter. In my paper, I will explain how the teacher sets the scene by asking questions using doing verbs, mental verbs and verbal verbs, how she fails to create the characters by missing a chance to build implicit connections and by standing out of the story and finally how she checks understanding by giving commands that turn into a pair work. Then I will discuss alternative ways she could have solved the problems.

Firstly, the teacher sets the scene using a question type command (“62쪽이래. 전부 폈나요?”) and a closed question.(“아들 이름은 뭐죠?”) The teacher asks the son's name because it is new knowledge here and she moves on to the WH questions(“엄마가 어디에 서 계신가요?”“손에 뭘 들고 계셔요?”) using doing verbs(“서다”, “들다”). All of the questions are testing questions asking for old knowledge which is already presented in the pictures. Then the teacher seeks new knowledge by asking a formative question("엄마는 어디에서 오시는 길일까요?") which cannot be answered directly because the picture doesn't show the answer explicitly. In this case, the questions looks like a WH question, but it is not. It really means that "Tell me about the place where the mom is coming from.". As a result, the students produce many guesses that represent their experience.(“시장, 동사무소”“친척집”) Now, for the teacher, it's the time to decide which answer should be picked to teach the students the situation of the picture, the emotion of 홍빈‘s mom and finally why the mother writes a letter to her son even though they've met a few minutes ago in their house.

T: 엄마가 자...1번 그림을 봐주세요. 엄마가 어디에 서 계신가요?

태근, Ss: 화장실, 현관

Ss:현관

T: 현관에 서 계시죠? 손에 뭘 들고 계셔요?

Ss: 가방

T: 가방! 밖에서 들어오셨다는 뜻이네요? 엄마 어디서 오시는 길일까요?

Ss: 시장, 동사무소. #$%^&

T: 손 들고

T: 동사무소? 효근이

효근: 친척댁

T: 친척댁에 방문... 친척집에 갔다가 돌아오시는 길이다?

효근: 네.

T: 어 그러면...해진이

해진: 아....시장

And then the teacher uses mental verbs(‘느끼다’) when she asks the question "How does she feel when she sees her son playing computer games?" ("엄마 기분이 어떠실 거 같아요?). To help the students understand the mom's emotion, she asks the students to focus on the mom's facial expressions but it seems to be failed because of a boy who is keep trying to attract everybody's attention on himself by telling opposite answers for what are expected to be answered. The teacher might given too much freedom to the boy when she asks the question in an open question form. And then finally the teacher uses a verbal verb(‘말하다’) and asks the students to say the mom's words and to express her anger while they are speaking.

T: 어. 엄마기분이 어떠실거 같아요? 얼굴을 좀 보세요. 얼굴 좀 봐 봐.

태근: 웃고 있다.

T: 눈썹이?

태근: 좋아요.

T: 위로 쫙 뻗쳐 올라갔죠?

태근: 아니요

T: 그리고 입 좀 봐 봐. 입이 ‘아’ 하고 벌어진 걸 보니까...

태근: 웃고 있네요.

T: 어떻게 말하고 있는 거예요? 말해 봐봐.

태근: 기분이 좋아요

T: 다 같이 말 해 봐 봐 시작!

태근: 이 게이야 너 또 게임하니?

Ss: 너 또 게임하니?

T: 어.. 덜 실감난다. 한 번 만 더. 시작!

Ss, 태근: 너 또 게임하니!! 게임하냐아!!

Secondly, the teacher fails to create the characters missing very important answer(i.e. “홍빈이가 게임을 많이 하니까 오해한 거..”) to find implicit connections in the pictures or out of the pictures. The mother assures that her son 홍빈 plays computer games not doing his homework and her assurance comes from what 홍빈 did in the past. What makes the mother to be angry is not because 홍빈 plays computer games but does bad things again and again. Instead of the teacher, a student(효근) tells about the implicit connection, but, unfortunately the teacher misses it and fails to make the implicit connection to be inter-mental. It remains only in 효근‘s mind even the boy himself doesn't recognizes it very well.

T: 게임을 하고 있는지, 조사를 하고 있는지.. 알 수가 없네. 엄마는 뭐라고 생각하신거야?

Ss: 게임을 한다고태근: 야동본다고

효근: 어 홍빈이가 게임을 많이 하니까 오해한 거...

The teacher try to stand inside of the story but in a critical moment, she tries to stand out side and fails to create the characters. When 태근 imitates his grandma's voice and says "Do you play computer games again?"(너 또 게임하냐?), he is exactly inside the story.

태근: (책상을 쾅쾅 두드리며)너 또 게임하냐? (책상을 세게 내리친 나머지 손이 아파서)아우!!!!

Ss:(......!)

T: 할머니...괜찮으세요?

Ss: 하하하...

태근: 아아!!아우!!

He understands the mother's anger and shows it but unfortunately again, instead of standing inside of the story by being 홍빈 and saying “아니에요. 저 공부하고 있었던 거예요”, the teacher stand out of the story, and making fun of 태근 by joking.(“할머니...괜찮으세요?”) This is a big loss and the teacher is putting herself in a horrible situation in which she is struggling to explain a big contrast between the mother's two kinds of emotions(i.e. great anger and great humilation) while she is still standing out of the story.

T: 아니아니. 엄마가 이렇게 나가시잖아. ‘그게 아닌데..’ 엄마가 그 다음에 어떻게 했을까? 지금 여기 엄마가 어떻게 했는지 보이지가 않아요. 바로 엄마는 나가시고 홍빈이 혼자 식탁에 앉아 편지를 읽는 장면이 나와. 근데 “엄마 그게 아니에요.” 했을 때 엄마가 어떻게 했을까? 아니긴 뭐가 아니야! #$%^&* 쾅! 하고 나가셨을까? 아니면은 “뭐야? 아니냐? 알았다!” 하고 나가셨을까? 어떻게 하셨을까? 엄마가.

Finally the teacher checks understanding giving a command like this:

T: 어떻게 말하고 있는 거예요? 말해 봐 봐.

T: 어.. 덜 실감난다. 한 번 만 더. 시작!

And then she continues to ask a student to say in with the emotion, but many of the students fail to express the anger except 태근.

정균: 너 또 게임.. 컴퓨터 게임하니?

T: 어머, 엄마가 웃으셔요

As you can see in the data below, students are still wandering out of the point. They are still giggling and making jokes that are not related with the mother's feeling. It shows that they don't understand the character, the emotions of the character (anger/ humilation) and the action(writing a letter to her son) either.

성대: 홍빈아! 홍빈아. 홍빈아!!

명현: 네

성대: 너 또 게임하니?

태근: 오냐.

명현: 아니요

S1: 아니긴 뭐가 아냐! 게임하고 있는데

명현: 사회숙제하고 있는데

태근: 아니, 이 새끼가 뭐가 아니야?

S3: 이놈이

명현: 진짜 확인해보세요

태근: 아, 확인하기 싫어

S8: (컴퓨터) 껐어.

Ss: 하하하

The teacher starts with an closed question("What's his name?") almost habitually. Most of the teacher's questions are closed questions and the teacher almost always up-take the student's answer. It causs a lot of teacher's work. Instead of doing this, suppose the teacher points out the first picture and says,

"This is 홍빈‘s mom. Where is she coming from now?"

"How does she feel now?"

"What does she find?"

"Is she happy or not?"

"Why?"

"What will she say?"

"Say it."

Instead of waisting her time and energy in asking for old knowledge, she could ask the questions above and could have the students do more work than they did already.

The teacher could succeed to create the characters by perceiving the very important utterance which is represented in a subtle voice ("효근: 어 홍빈이가 게임을 많이 하니까 오해한 거...") to show the implicit connections explicit. The boy who keeps going wild should be treated in a proper way.

DATA.hwp

[kellogg]

When we did the fox and the prince dialogue last week, the general direction was from LEARNER CONTROL (the remembered turns) to TEACHER CONTROL (the "listen and repeat" turns at the end). This is really the OPPOSITE of our volleyball game (which went from TEACHER CONTROL to LEARNER CONTROL). Yeongmi is arguing for BOTH directions in questioning: OPEN-->CLOSED and CLOSED-->OPEN. Of course, that's right! And only the teacher can really say which way to go at one moment, which is why Ms. Shin's "freeze frame" analysis is the right way to go.