it's official

I'll be teaching French next semester. It's only basic French conversation, but I hope to have fun teaching it. This marks the first time I'll have the class as an official part of my schedule, i.e., I'll be paid to do this instead of doing it on my own free time, as I had done in the past.

I'll also be teaching a Fridays-only pronunciation clinic, sort of a throwback to a lot of the work I did at my previous job (longtime readers will recall I was at the Kangnam-based EC, a chain founded on roughly the same concept as Direct English, essentially a riff off one-on-one* private tutoring).

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*In Konglish, this sort of tutoring is called "man-to-man." There's even a venerable English language textbook series with that term as the title. The irony of a Konglish title on an English textbook is lost on most Korean consumers, alas. While "man-to-man defense" and "a man-to-man talk" might be proper uses of the term, "man-to-man tutoring/teaching" is right out. Heh. Does anyone remember when the motto for Pagoda Language Institute used to be "I Can Do"? They did finally switch over to "I Can Do It," but it took them over a decade to make the change.

My favorite prof at Catholic U., Dr. Jones, spent a few years in Taiwan and when I told him about the Konglish "I Can Do," he immediately came back with the Chinglish slogan "Let's Active!"


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