What is teaching. Today, one of my college friends showed up at my study room. She is a high school English teacher turning to her third year in school. We went to coffee shop and talked a lot. As both of us are working on education, the subject of our talk was about students and fellow teachers. She said, some of teachers were not likely to do anything that can bother them. If it takes you a long time to get the job done, then none of them come forward to do the job. The thing that bugs her the most about the teachers, is that they pretend they are not qualified for the hard works. So, at the end, novice teachers take over those tricky and tedious jobs. The senior teachers do not take initiatives and this atmosphere is pervasive in the school establishment. Me, who is preparing for the teacher's recruitment exam, is sorry for that situation. And on the other side of my mind, I am afraid of myself becoming that kind of teacher later on.

Memorizing vs. Reading alot. These days, I keep thinking about how to speak English more fluently. There are two different views of acquiring English. One is from my professors. The other is from a famous interpreter. Seeking for the answers, I paid a visit to my professors, who are renowned language experts in Korea. All of three said, I have to read a bunch of books without looking words up on a dictionary and memorizing them. However, a teacher, who once was an interpreter, keeps saying memorizing the chapter books will definitely work. So, now I am memorising the whole lines of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. After dictating the audio files, I start memorising it. What do you think learning foreign languages is? Do you think you just memorize the whole thing with contexts, or you should read floods of reading materials for speaking? Please give me your thoughts, my friends.

About speaking ability. Please help me!!! How did you learn foreign languages, my fellows? I really want to know how you get to be fluent in speaking. Please let me know ㅠㅠ In Korea, most people who learn English focus on reading skills. I have to admit that in EFL environment, we have few chances to talk to foreigners and use productive English. Reading the texts and learning new infomation from the developed countries might be much more important back in the era when Korea was develoing. However, as Korea gets to better off, it is getting more and more chances to come across foreigners and speak out our own thoughts. So, English education also have to center on the communicative ability. To be honest with you, me, who is struggling to become an English teacher, isn't equipped with the high grade of communicative competence. That's because I learned from the focusing-reading soil. I was't exposed to a whole lot of expressions that could be use in daily life. Whenever I speak or write, I kind of make up a new expressions that no natives would like to use.

Starting new way! Studying English I think I get off to a great start. After dictating Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I memorize the whole text to the extent which I can speak aloud frequently. Add to that I read and listen to ABC news, the economist, and CNN news. Listening to lessons that teach about the above news, I am trying to internalize the whole contexts and practice until expressions can actually come out. One of my American friends, Delisha gives me a big hand. Talking on the phone, or over the Hangout, I have plenty of chances to use expressions that I learned. The most great part is that we can exchange our thoughts on various subjects such as politics, educations, and societal issues. Exercise This is the first day of my exercise. I cannot remember when I did workout before. My belly is starting to be folded up. It's like jelly, which I don't want to go as. So today, I did a set of push-ups, squats, and so on. I hope I could keep on doing this. By the time I start studying my major real hard, my body wouldn't look anything like it looked half a year ago.

Bitterness It's been a week after I found out that I was not in the list of new teachers recruitment. I managed to get in the right track again. Yesterday, however, the thing that I really wanted to avoid happened.And that struck me hard. On my way to cafeteria in our university, I came across a bunch of novice teachers who were just recruited. In fact, they were the ones who passed the exam that I had tried. What is worse was that I specifically ran into my fellows, who studied together for that exam. They won the game. I lost the game. Standing in line for lunch, I felt I was an island, or poor boy, who needed sympathy. Eventually, I got to eat lunch surrounded by the whole newly recruited teachers. They seemed to be happy with the thinking that they are going to teach and make their living. The lunch was pretty good, but I just wanted to eat right away and sneak out of the cafeteria before another encounter with my fellows.

I got failed in my test. As I stated in the last note, I took an exam for the teacher recruitment. But unfortunately, I got failed. The first exam that was by paper and pencil was pretty good. My scores were up by 4 points compared to the cut line. However in the second round, I got 4 points lower scores compared to the average points that my competitors got. In a teaching demonstration, I thought I was pretty good, but to the eyes of testers, I was just a novice who cannot control his own lesson. In an interview, I mumbled, which lead to pretty low scores too. Hopefully, I could improve my English skills in this year and pass the exam...

I am waiting for the result of my test. As I said on my profile, I am going to be an English teacher. For now, I am waiting for the result of teacher recruitment test. About 11 hours later, I will know the answer. Preparing for my test, I was nervous and filled with anxiety that I am going to fail the test. All I need was English proficiency. But without any contact with native speakers, I struggled to be good at speaking English and writing the essay. Maybe, that kind of thinking (I am not fluent and proficient) gnawed at me through the whole year. I should have studied instead of just worrying about my English. If I pass the exam, I will definitely go on learning Englsih in order to be confident in front ot my students. If I fail the exam, I also will go on learning English to be a good teacher. For that, my followers and others' help is needed. Please help me!! ^^^^