I think it's high time for me to get off the Trump bashing and onto something,,, ANYthing else here. How'd you like that triple comma? It's a new punctuation technique I'm trying to make happen. I call it,,, what else???, the tricomma. It's for a pause longer than a comma pause, a,,, pregnant pause if you will. One in which the writer might be searching for his/her next word. Or when the writer has found the absolute perfect word and wants to pause for emphasis just that little bit longer. I think you might see it again.
Today, I'm up late. Even though it's my earliest morning of the week tomorrow. I'm having my second beer too, even though I hadn't planned on having ANY beer tonight. I actually went out and got this beer at 10 PM, a time when I'm usually either finishing a movie or TV show, or hitting the hay. Not today folks. No, today I figured I'd be efficient and mark some of my midterm exams. That's what had me so angrily soliloquizing, I had to sit down and blog it out or I'd be up till 4 tossing and turning. As it is I'll be up till 3, but at least I'll be sitting upright, therapeutically writing all this down. It's how I save marbles. And years of life. The beer is the way I destroy my marbles and shave off years, so it all evens out I reckon.
What, you may ask, could my beloved students have done to get me angrily soliloquizing? See, I live alone. There's nobody to downgrade my angry soliloquies to stifled murmurs. No wife, no kids, no pets, I don't care if the neighbours hear. They probably think I'm video chatting or talking on the phone or maybe even teaching a late Zoom class. I've been outlining to the gods everything I did to explain to my students their midterm group video projects (to the absolute HILT) for over an hour now! And I grow further and further away from any compassionate empathy, and closer to just giving all these boneheads zeros. Oh, nooooo, I can't do that! And actually I see the effort some of them put in and think, maybe they GENUINELY didn't understand! But it's so implausible as to make a mockery of my kindness. Indeed,,, I believe that's precisely what most, if not all of my students who messed this exam up, were trying to do.
The very first day of classes, I gave every one of them a syllabus that included all the assignments, homework, tests, grading, topics, everything they could ever want to know about this class. I went through it with them. When we reached the midterm exam, I told them it was a group video project and that they would probably have fun with it. My students from the previous semester said it was actually fun for them. I then,,, I'm not making this up, SHOWED them one of the best videos that had been made by some of my students from the previous semester as a group project video. It featured a student happily skipping to our university to meet his new classmates. The narrator said how happy he was. There was happy music and some graphics that made him look ecstatic. Then suddenly grey clouds, lightning, and thunder. COVID! No face-to-face classes. The student slouched and turned around to slowly walk home with sad music playing and the narrator explaining how he had looked forward to meeting his classmates but was now disappointed. I explained that the target vocabulary was feelings like happy and disappointed. I also drew attention to the verb tense, which was the target English grammar for the chapter they were illustrating. I said I wanted everyone to do their midterms just like that.
Then assignment one rolled around. It was a 30-second video commercial. Make a TV ad with your group describing your product using the grammar (adjectives) and target language in the chapter. I made a point of telling every class that this was practice for their midterm video group projects. Their midterms were to be exactly the same thing, only longer. Most of them did okay with the assignment. A couple made ads for things you'd never see ads for like guitars or oranges but most were find and even the guitar and oranges ads were using the language I wanted them to in a role play that demonstrated target language usage.
I assigned the midterm to every one of my 10 classes explaining it to the hilt and asking if they all understood and inviting them to ask questions if they didn't. I uploaded the assignment in which I explained it one last time saying I wanted them to show me what they've learned so far. 5 units, 5 people per group. Maybe each person should be in charge of one unit. I told them to do what they wanted. I said I'd be looking for them to use the grammar and vocabulary we learned in each unit and for good teamwork. My final words were, "have fun."
What did I get?
Can you beleee dat shit? Most of the pics, graphics and "vocaburary" were taken directly from the text. Basically, "Here's what you taught us, we learned it, TRUST US." Virtually half of my students did this! I have to believe it was a well organized attempt at the customary Korean gullibility gauge they so often subject the new, foreign teacher to. Mutinous little shits. You know, to see what they can get away with. So I couldn't very well let them get away with it, could I?
So, because I'm so nice, I didn't give them all zeroes, I gave them an extra week and uploaded a video explaining the old, "I don't want you to list the parts of the bicycle, I want you to show me how well you can ride it" speech. I guess it worked. All but one group RE-submitted their videos. What they don't know, however, is the groups who got it right the first time had it marked out of 30. The ones who did it wrong the first time had a max of 25. A couple of them actually GOT the 25 too! But it would have been 30 if they'd followed instructions and didn't try to do it the lazy way. Some of my fellow teachers think I went easy on them. I probably did.
I have finally marked all the vids, almost a month after they were assigned, but I'm still dealing with the students who expend MUCH more effort wheeling and dealing for higher grades than they did making a video that would GET them a high grade. I've found after a coupla decades teaching ESL, mostly in Korea,,, it's par for the course.
I WILL add that their most recent assignments have been excellently done!
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