Tuesday, June 03, 2008

시작, 끝

Intermediate 2 Korean class at NEX began two Saturdays ago. The class started with eighteen students but by the second lesson, the number ballooned to twenty-one. I have not seen such a large class since Basic Korean level 1. In the first lesson, our teacher, Ms Kim Sehwa, tried to establish some form of 규칙 (規則) or regulation for the class. Each group was instructed to come out with one regulation as well as to determine the 벌금 (罰金) or penalty to be paid by those students who violate the regulation. There seemed to be some unspoken understanding among the students. All groups avoided saying things like we must do our homework diligently or we must be punctual for class because such regulations are difficult to observe since many students are busy working adults. So we ended up with "painless" regulations like we must enjoy our lesson, we must put our handphone to silent mode and we must not talk on the phone during lesson. The penalty was equally "painless - either no penalty or just a token 10 cents for violation. I think our teacher "gave up" on the class on the very first lesson. -_-"

Advanced 2 Korean class at SKS is coming to an end in two weeks time. In case anyone is confused, Advanced 2 at SKS is the equivalent of Intermediate 3 at NEX. Last lesson, our teacher, Ms Hwang Jung Hee, informed us that the 4th Korean Language Speech Contest will be held on 22 November this year. Since we are the most "advanced" class in SKS, she was encouraging us to participate in the contest. Unfortunately, out of four students, two are already "banned for life" from participating while the other two don't seen to be interested. I guess SKS will have to look to other classes for participants. Anyway, the next two weeks will be a period of anxiety. There will be the end-of-semester test on 12 June. Following that, on 17 June, the last day of this semester, each class is supposed to go on stage to put up a 5 minutes long drama. Our teacher has already prepared a few pages of Korean script for us to memorise. I shan't reveal our script content at this moment. All I can say is that it should be quite entertaining provided we can get our act together. But I am not too sure if we can even act in the first place, not forgetting that we need to act while speaking a foreign language. >_<

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