Yes, indeed… today is my favorite day of the semester!
Today we (that is: me and my freshmen Korean English students) are talking about “reading between the lines”! Woo Hoo!!
These kids are WAY too innocent, and it is MY job to introduce them to western culture! I love this!
(OK, I’m a sadistic old bastid… what’s your point?)
Today I am going to introduce them to “reading between the lines” by playing a song for them… a lovely little love song: More Than Words by Extreme.
After I play it once (they know this song, it is well-known in Korea) I will ask my students what it is about. “Love!”, they will say in their cute, naive way…
“Really?” I will say… “Let’s read between the lines!”
I will then play the song again, while my students read the lyrics… (I LOVE this!!!)
Then we will talk about the lyrics! Who is he talking to? What is he saying? What does he WANT?
God, I love this song!
My favorite part is when my students realize that the song is NOT a love song at all, but a song asking for sex!
I love this song!
Um, I, ah, used to teach English a couple decades ago. We, um, focused on pronuciation and stuff. Until the last day of class when I taught a lot of slang. Needless to say, one day of hearing my extremely quick students bark out “bullshit” ad nauseum to me was enough. I swore to never, ever go against my instincts and teach slang at the beginning of the semester.
Yeah, I work on pronunciation and such… but I want my students to be able to talk to English speakers… that means understanding where English speakers are coming from. THAT means telling them that a LOT of the jokes, etc. that they hear in English have to do with sex (even if they don’t understand the idiom, slang, etc. that they are hearing…)
