In the past, I’ve used idiomatic expressions for emotions to teach creative responses to the standard “How are you?” This time, I wanted to introduce students to some new expressions and see if they could use what they understand about English and how they relate to the English-speaking culture to identify meanings of idiomatic expressions for emotion.
The class featured in this video, PK2 Class, has been speaking English for several years, having grown up in an English kindergarten. Most of their skills are on an intermediate level. They can make full sentences, use multiple verb tenses when concentrating well, and converse on a variety of subjects. They LOVE learning jokes and practicing wordplay with new material. Our curriculum is usually very content-based and we have little time to depart from the very ambiguous culture of their textbook, but are often able to take moments to discuss differences between everyday life in Korea and the English speaking cultures of their teachers.
Students started off very energetic and relating to the material. They recalled past idioms they had learned and interacted well, remembering things like "I feel like a million dollar", having been taught monetary value in English already. Their recall of cultural material has grown a lot, so relatability is improving. I think I overdid the teacher talk a bit and could have, even at the beginning, elicited some similar expressions in Korean culture. The matching-expression-to- meaning activity seemed to be on their level, but their frustration with its difficulty proved me wrong. They, did however, engage well with trying to identify the origin meaning of the expression. I found their comments on being unable to identify culturally with “feeling blue” very interesting. The small time allotted for this segment didn’t allow for follow-up discussions of similar Korean expression, but I hope to develop this further in our subsequent lesson to talk about why idioms are created in a culture.
ICC Idioms
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