Don't Speak While You Kick Push

This week has been very laid back at least in terms of teaching. Because the students will have mid-terms soon, the second year students have to play catch up. This means that my classes for them have been canceled this week. That effectively cuts 1/3 of my classes for the week, so I haven’t tried to actually use the books to teach from.

For the first year students, I’m doing a light review. I have a tough time explaining it to some of them, but the idea is that they have to make a 4-panel comic strip using the lessons we have already gone over. I give them the book pages to use as references; but basically they have to make a comic showing an introduction between people, two friends greeting each other, one person inviting another to do an activity. I wish I had gotten to use it on class 105 (my angel class) but I had to play catch up with them. The test class was 102; a class where I don’t have English co-teacher. It wasn’t too hard to get them to understand the concepts, but I know it would have gone smoother if I had a co-teacher who could help with questions.

The third year students have a lesson that involves music. I selected two songs; one song because it is slow, the other because it’s tougher and I had a feeling they might like it. The songs are “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt and “Kick, Push” by Lupe Fiasco. I first made a lyric sheet for them for each song then I made a worksheet with words missing in the lyrics. It’s to test their listening skills. The first class didn’t go as well as I would have liked because I wasn’t able to set things up like I should have. The next class went much smoother because I found a copy of the video for “Don’t Speak” on youtube that had the lyrics. It’s gone over fairly in well in the classes. . . but it’s third years so you never know. The girls seemed to like “Don’t Speak” and the boys “Kick Push”. . . overall, “Kick, Push” is the favorite.

As I expected, the students keep up with “Don’t Speak”. In fact, I’ve caught some of the girls mouthing the words to it. They all seem to find “Kick Push” hard to keep up with. Still, some of them were able to catch on to it after listening. I eventually want to do a lesson where classes pick a song to learn and I give them the lyric sheets. I will try hard to find song with easy lyrics to learn. I have talked about it with my co-teacher and the big issue is songs that are overly sexual. Considering that many students requested “Sexyback” by Justin Timberlake, I can see this will be an uphill battle.

Music Overview: Jan. 5, 2009

Just finished picking apart Common's "Universal Mind Control." I'm not as impressed as I would like to be. It's not a bad album. . . I just think it could be better.

Best part of my hip hop listening habits have been my rediscovery of Little Brother. If you are a Hip-Hop fan, PLEASE listen to these guys. They are throw backs, but they are so much fun to listen to.

I also went thru a few days of listening to a lot of Japanese Rock. Mostly it's stuff from Anime but I got to say I love Sambomaster. Talk about a band that's not pretty. The lead singer can belt it out, but he's SO NOT the typical front man for a Rock band. Watching the video for one of my fave songs looks like he's singing and stumbling drunk. God Bless the Japanese.



This sadly made me think about how the lack of unique music here in good ole Korea. Here, everyone listens to the same music, the same songs and it's mostly pre-packaged Pop that imatates mainstream Pop, R&B and Rap back home. Which means almost NO groups write their own music. Doesn't mean there aren't a few. Only ones I seem to find that have some merit is Epik High. For some reason, these guys impress me and from my understanding they have a lot of creative control over their stuff. But it doesn't hurt that they manage to make videos that get banned from TV:




Either way, that's all when it comes to music for now. If you got any reccomendations, please feel free to speak up.

New Year's Evolution

Instead of writing some long, drawn out post about my New Year's Eve (AND because I was silly and forgot to take my camera), I'm going to let Mike Skinner a.k.a The Streets explain how my night went. Replace all the drug references with liquor and you've got an extremely accurate picture of my New Year's Eve.



Happy New Year Folks

Just Like Music. . .

Unlike most people around here, I didn't do the iPod thing and become apart of the cult of Mac. . . . I got a Zune and I say I can't complain. However, their answer to iTunes ain't bad. It doesn't quite the same amount of contient to buy from Apple's online store (who does???) but it does have a good share. Best of all I"M NOT LOCKED INTO iTUNES MUSIC FILE FORMAT!!!!

Plus, zune.net has a social networking element that I enjoy messing with. So I figured I would post my profile card. . . . . I've been listening quite a bit sense coming to Korea (my home entertainment sources are limited). Plus I love how i can put a picture of my students in the background of my profile card :)

Personal faves of late: Kanye West's new album "808 & Heartbeak", T.I.'s "Swagga Like Us", Rhianna's "Distrubia", Silverchair (just about anything by them of late), and Common's "Finding Forever". I also recently downloaded Ludacris's "Threatre of the Mind". Muse (both "Absolution" and "Blackholes and Revolations").

Recently downloaded three Fatboy Slim albums and Cornershop's "When I was born for the 7th Time" (Remember "Brimful of Ashe?") Wicked songs on the Cornershop. . .it's growning on me.