English Beyond Classroom

Aunt Agony

2009-07-31T00:35:00.000-07:00

"Aunt Agony" is a phrase I often use to refer to those doctors, psychologists, columnists etc who give advices to helpless souls who wrote in to them. "Aunt Agony" would always emphatise with the people who wrote in and tell them what to do.

I'm sure at one point or another in our life, we would have someone we know coming to us for help and advices. Before we say anything, we would have to:
1) understand the situation / problem.
2) put ourselves in their shoes to have a sense of how they feel
3) recall if there is any relevant past experiences that we can relate to.

This is a tacit skill of comprehension, which many of us have been using.

Recently, a class was pretty unhappy having need to do skit for Animal Farm.
"We're not going to be actors and actresses next time!" lamented one boy.
"Skit is a waste of time..." moaned the other.

In order to present a good skit, the cast must:
1) know the story and characters well
2) put themselves into the shoes of the characters and imagine how they would feel under those circumstances
and, hopefully, the cast can further relate the skit to real life experiences.

The teacher who used this idea is actually trying to get them to practice comprehension in a fun way! I think it's a pretty good idea, what do you think?

Our New Teacher by David Bateson

2009-07-28T19:42:00.000-07:00

This teacher has such scary teeth,

they look just like a shart's;

his eyes gleam in the sunlight

like a pair of purple sparks.

His voice is just as booming

as the roar from some big gun;

he can imitate a thunderstorm

for a greusome bit of fun.

And now Billy who was silly

almost every other day

does his tables, writes his spellings,

hides his comic books away.

Every lesson lasts a lifetime...

with our noses to each page.

We imagine bars on windows

and the classroom seems a cage.

So please come back Miss Fothergill:

though you won't believe it's true.

We all loved you as our teacher;

we were oh, so fond of you!

Students are so strange.

When they have nice, loving teachers, they would create so many problems that such teachers either transform to become fierce teachers or leave the service.

When they have frightening and unkind teachers, they dread the class but somehow they learn and do the right things.

What kind of signal is sent to their teachers??

Learning Point - The Power of Tenses:
Note the verbs highlighted in red. What does the change in tense tell you?

Value of Time

2009-07-27T23:16:00.000-07:00

Few days ago, I was relieving a class. As usual, students were estastic that their English teacher was absent. "Free periods!" they shouted.

Seeing that they were so gleeful to be wasting away half hour of learning, I shared with them a poem:

To realise the value of One Year,

Ask a student who failed his or her AP exams.

To realise the value of One Month,

As a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.

To realise the value of One Week,

Ask an editor of a weekly magazine.

To realise the value of One Day,

Ask a daily wage labourer who has six kids to feed.

To realise the value of One Hour,

Ask the lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realise the value of One Minute,

Ask a person who missed his train.

To realise the value of One Second,

Ask the person who survived an accident.

To realise the value of One Millisecond,

Ask the person who won a silver medal in the Olympics.

We are our own time master. We determine the value of our time.

Why are some people able to charge $1000 for one hour of their time (i.e. speakers, trainers etc) while others have so many worthless hours to squander?

Welcome to English Beyond Classroom!

2009-07-27T20:15:00.000-07:00

Thank you for dropping by.
In the days to come, hope you can learn something from this blog.