My students know that it’s fairly to easy to get me to wander off topic. And sometimes, if they find the class content dull they have learned that with a well-placed series of comments and questions, they can get me to go on endlessly on something unrelated to the syllabus. Thus in my Eldorado 3 class yesterday, they managed to get me to talk for almost the entire hour about cold-war geopolitics, and North Korea vs South Korea as proxies for great powers, despite the fact that the official topic of the day was advertising.
Today, in my Eldorado 2 class we covered a lot of territory not really pertinent to our upcoming debate, which is a bit dry, having to do with “Green Industry” policy initiatives of the current South Korean government. I actually love teaching topics like that, but we nevertheless managed to wander off onto something else entirely.
One thing that happens, of course, is that sometimes they teach me things, instead. Today I learned that Korean language text-messaging slang “ㅂ2” means “bye.” It’s the Korean phonemic jamo ㅂ (which represents a “b” sound IPA [b]) followed by 2 (which is pronounced “ee” IPA [i], the sino-korean “two”). Sound it out: buh-ee… it’s actually the English word “bye.” Simple, right?
And then conscientious Anastasia raises her hand and says, in a remonstrating tone, “Teacher. I really think we should be discussing the debate topic. Don’t you?” And with that, the bell rang.