|
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.
This is a good paper, and it has a good introduction. Unfortunately, it’s only TALK, and not a text, because Yeongmi didn’t really finish it.
As a result, it doesn’t have an introduction to the WHOLE PAPER, and the second half of the paper is not really about these issues, as you will see.
But I did say that you could begin from the DATA and not from some common problem. And I am going to stick by those words. This is a paper written from the bottom up, from the data to common problems.
What common problems will emerge? That is what we are going to find out!
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.
Well of course, that’s true. But on another level it’s not true at all. It’s true that the information is presented in the form of pictures, and even in the form of text. However, it’s not true that the information is presented in the form of questions and answers, that is, in the form of talk. So the teacher is taking new information (because the children have NOT seen the pictures before) which is available through an old, developed skill (perception) and “recasting” in a new form, namely talk, questions and answers.
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 strategy of using FACIAL EXPRESSIONS to ask questions about FEELINGS is a very well developed strategy in our English data, as we saw.
One of the reasons why it is well developed is that it allows us to ask WHY. Why is the mother unhappy? These “why” questions are NOT well developed in our English data, although we did see quite a few in Ms. Hong’s data.
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.
We can see that our analyst is allowing a lot of rather emotional expressions to creep into her work! This is not necessary—we need to look at data OBJECTIVELY. There is really no such thing as a horrible situation in our data; the children are Koreans and they do not bring guns or knives to class.
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.
A VERY long turn. We can see that it is constructed exactly the way that similar long turns are constructed in our English data—by the teacher ANSWERING HER OWN QUESTION.
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 causes 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 wasting 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.
We saw that one IMPORTANT function of questions is to GET ATTENTION, and that it’s hard to get attention with questions that teachers cannot answer. Are you SURE there isn’t a good reason for asking these “old knowledge” questions (which as we saw are actually questions about new knowledge, although the new knowledge is in a non-linguistic form and uses only an old, already developed skill to access)?
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.
Yeongmi’s FIRST data really falls into two neat halves: Hogeun and Taegeun. It’s what Professor Noh might call a case study.
The second half is more involved with WHOLE CLASS teaching, and there’s a good reason: the activity. The first activity is really Teacher to Individual Student because it’s largely the process we called “look and listen”. But the SECOND activity is Listen and Repeat. Here, the children are inside the story, and there are two halves. So it makes sense to share the lines with the children, and that’s exactly what the teacher does.
Listen and Repeat
HOW DOES THE TEACHER CAST THE ROLES?
HOW DO THE LEARNERS LEARN THE LINES?
HOW DO THE TEACHER AND LEARNERS DEVELOP THE SITUATION?
The data I've chosen is from the Korean class 듣말쓰(which means listening, speaking, and writing) in which thirty five 4th graders studying what are the advantages of writing a letter are. In my paper, I will explain how the teacher casts the roles by inviting students inside the story, how the students learn the lines using pictures and written expression!s that are already given in the pictures, and how the teacher and the students develop the situation by up-taking the others’ utterances or using their own experiences. Finally I will discuss alternative ways she could have solved these problems.
Firstly, the teacher casts the roles of 홍빈 and 홍빈 엄마 by inviting her students inside the story. She asks the students to imagine 홍빈엄마’s emotions(“어떻게 말하고 있는거예요?”) and to express the way the mother speaks(“말해 봐 봐.” “다 같이 말 해 봐 봐. 시작!”)
T: 어떻게 말하고 있는 거예요? 말해 봐 봐.
T: 다 같이 말 해 봐 봐 시작!
By saying “all together”(“다같이”), the teacher is casting the whole students as 홍빈 엄마. Moreover the teacher makes the students repeat the line(“너 또 게임하고 있냐?”) one more time in the hope that the students can really understand the mother’s feelings by asking like this:
T: 어.. 덜 실감난다. 한 번 만 더. 시작!
However when she teaches the third picture, she casts the whole class as 홍빈 at this time.(“자, 다같이 홍빈이 목소리로 시작!”)
T: 3번 그림을 봐주세요.(소란스러운 분위기) 하나, 둘. 셋.
홍빈이 얼굴 보세요. 얼굴이 벌그레해지고 눈썹이 당황한 표정이 역력해요
자, 다같이 홍빈이 목소리로 시작!
Ss: "그게 아닌데..."
As a result of this exchange, every student is 홍빈 엄마, and is 홍빈 as well. Interestingly this exchange causes a confusion that the students don’t understand who is saying what to whom and why.
Good—and we DO see this in the data.
In the dialogue below, the teacher is asking what do the students themselves do when they make a mistake(“그럴 때 여러분은 어떻게 하나요?”) and a boy still seems to stick to speak about his mom. (“그럴 때 엄마가요…”)
T: 잘못 알고 화를 냈어. 엄청 미안해요. 그럴 때 여러분은 어떻게 하나요?
효근: 그럴 때 엄마가요.. 잘못했다고 미안하다고 해요.
The teacher tries to ask another boy, but that boy’s answer has the same problem to the previous one.
T: 엄마가 미안하다고 해요.. 너희는 어떻게 해? 너희는? 정균이 해 보자.
정균: 엄마가요....
This post-modernism problem is due to two reasons. One is that the teacher has the students to exchange the roles, so the students start to confuse who is saying what to whom and why. The other reason is that the teacher who keeps trying to speak inside the story and to invite the students inside the story, suddenly stands outside of the story and asks the students about what they are going to do, not about what 홍빈 엄마 is going to do. When she asks the question(“너희는 어떻게 해?”), obviously, she is standing outside of the story.
Now, I would like to discuss about the possible ways that the teacher could solve this problem. Firstly, she has this problem because she makes them speaking inside and outside of the story in rotation, and makes them to be 홍빈 and 홍빈 엄마 at the same time. Instead of doing this, the teacher could cast the roles by dividing the class into two parts using a space.(e.g. “Over here you are 홍빈, Over here you are 홍빈 엄마”) Another way she could cast the role is that casting one person for one role at a time which really happens later in the data.
T: 그러면 홍빈이하고 엄마하고 있어야겠다. 홍빈이하고 엄마. 먼저 홍빈이. 홍빈이...좋아 명현이 잘 할 것 같애 엄마... 엄마. 성대.
Moreover when the students sticks to inside of the story,(효근: 엄마가요… 정균: 엄마가요…) it would be good for the teacher to accept the students’ view and to decide to go back inside the story again.(“어? 정균이도 엄마 얘기 하네? 어. 괜찮아 엄마 얘기 해도”) I would like to say that staying in the imaginary situation and speaking inside of the story would help the students to understand the context concretely.
Secondly, I will describe how the students learn the lines using pictures and written expression!s that are already given in the pictures. Unlike an English class, students can read and interpret the meaning of what they read in a Korean class. As a matter of fact, it is hard to imagine that students in Korean class listen to the teacher and repeat after what the teacher say exactly. Instead, students look at the pictures or read the lines that are already given in the textbook, and repeat the content that they have understood by speaking out the lines. As you see below, the students repeating what they read.
This ISN’T so different from English class, Yeongmi! Consider what we said in Miyeong’s report. Isn’t the MEMORY also a kind of text? And doesn’t the picture help to bring this text to life in BOTH cases?
태근: 이 게이야 너 또 게임하니?
Ss: “너 또 게임하니?”
When they are speaking out the line above, it is just repeating without understanding of the context. And then the teacher pushes the students a little bit into the imaginary situation, demands the students to speak in the mother’s voice by saying this:
T: 어.. 덜 실감난다. 한 번 만 더. 시작!
Ss: (more expressively) “너 또 게임하니!!”, 태근: “너 또 게임하냐아!!”
As you can see above, the students are now more involved in the imaginary situation than before. I would like to say that, in a Korean class, repeating is more like interpreting the situation in various ways and getting an understanding about what the context is. This understanding of the context leads the students to the next stage of “Listen and Answer”.
Good. But is English class any different? Isn’t English class ALSO about interpreting the situation in various ways? Isn’t this PARTICULARLY true of “Look and Listen”?
Now I will explain how the teacher and the students develop the situation by up-taking the others’ utterances or using their own experiences. In the data below, the teacher says only once(“아, 이렇게 하자. 좋아. 중간에 아니 얘가 왜 대답이 없어? 이런 말을 집어 넣어보자. 자연스럽게 연결되게.”), and this is just a simple direction for what the students are going to perform rather than a deliberate line which develops the situation. When the dialogue starts, the teacher gets out of the situation and disappears. Now, there are only two characters exist(홍빈 and 홍빈 엄마). Interestingly 명현 keeps taking 홍빈’s role persistently, on the other hand, many of the boys take part in 홍빈 엄마’s role together, cooperatively. First 성대 Starts repeating the lines in the textbook.
성대: 홍빈아! 홍빈아. 홍빈아!!
명현: 네
성대: 너 또 게임 하니?
태근: 오냐.
명현: 아니요
S1 is taking the mom’s role and answers the question by up-taking 명현’s answer(“아니요”)and adding his own thinking(“아니긴 뭐가 아니야, 게임하고 있는데”). 명현 is up-taking the form of S1’s answer(~하고 있는데) and uses it in his answer(“사회숙제 하고 있는데”)
S1: 아니긴 뭐가 아냐! 게임하고 있는데
명현: 사회숙제하고 있는데
Usually “있는데” is not a correct ending form of a sentence grammatically. The correct form is “있어요.” Instead of “있어요.” 명현 uses the word “있는데!” which contains the grammatical ending form and the complain about his mom’s misunderstanding as well. The other students, who still keep the mother’s role, catch the son’s complain and add some anger by using vulgar words.(“이 새끼가”, “이놈이”) Can we say that the students develop the situation?
Yes, but not in the direction of the lesson goal, which is writing letters!
태근: 아니, 이 새끼가 뭐가 아니야?
S3: 이놈이!!
명현: 진짜 확인해보세요
태근: 아, 확인하기 싫어
S8: (컴퓨터) 껐어.
Ss: 하하하
From students' point of view, the situation is developed in an interesting way but for the teacher’s point of view, this seems to be a wrong direction. We want to teach students speaking politely. We don’t want them to learn bad words or swear words.
We can see that Yeongmi has a VERY good paper here. There are only TWO things lacking:
An introduction, in which she lays out the common problem that unites these two discussions (what is it?)
A conclusion, in which she generalizes from one discussion to the other, and provides a place for Yeongmi to GENERALIZE about the solutions she is suggesting.
One third thing would make this a good thesis topic: some EXPLICIT comparison with English education.
There are a number of good places to do this!
|