Grades Uploaded, and Next Semester
Hi there!
Grades for this class have been uploaded. If you have any inquiries about your grade, please first read this page for more information on the handling of grading disputes before contacting me.
Also, if you’re curious about courses I’ll be teaching next semester (Fall 2008), there’s a list on the front page of this site. Have a look and see if anything appeals to you: there are several courses focused on creative work, as well as a literature course.
Have a good summer!
Final Exam Files & PDF
Hi there!
Here’s the PDF file for you to use in your self-evaluation. Remember, you’re evaluating your performance on this exam. However, you can also write on the back how you think you did generally, if you like.
The official deadline for submitting your self-evaluation paper to my mailbox (Dasol Gwan, Room #205) is still 6:00pm Thursday, June 19th. However, if the slight delay caused you any inconvenience, I could extend that until later Thursday evening.
Here are the video files for your oral exams from earlier this evening:
- Sang Woon & Su Jin
- Saem & Su Hee
- Saem & Jeong Hee
- Han Kyu & Ki Wook
- Jeong Myeong & Hye Jung
- Yong Heon & So Ra (Part1, Part 2)
The videos will be deleted after nobody downloads them for a month, so they should be long gone by the time next semester comes around. Therefore, if you want the video, please keep it on your computer!
Coming!
Apologies, everyone, I had some problems with my computer, but the files are coming now! They should all be online by midnight tonight.
If this has caused any inconvenience and will prevent you from submitting your self-evaluation on time, let me know.
Final Exam Files
Please download this PDF — it is the self-evaluation form for your final exam — and download the video of your final exam. Po-Ching, since you were nice enough to stand in for a missing student, you’re free to choose whichever exam you think you did better on for the purposes of self-evaluation.
Your files are being stored at MegaUpload. This is a free service, therefore the video will be deleted from the service after one month of not being downloaded. However, you should please only download your own video, as exams are private. When you click the link, a window will load, and you have to wait a few seconds before downloading the file. What can I say? That’s a little inconvenient, but it’s free, and the files are BIG!
Anyway, please remember to submit the self-evaluation form by Wednesday (let’s say, 6pm) to my mailbox at #205 Dasol Gwan, that is, at the English Language & Culture Department Office. The links to your video files are below.
GROUP 1: 9:00am-9:20am:
Yi Yu-Min,- Po Ching & Kyeong Eun,
- Po Ching & Eun Shil
GROUP 2: 9:40am-10:00am:
- Kum Hee Yoon & Hee In Jeon (Part 1, Part 2)
- Min Ji Kim & Yu Na Jeon
GROUP 3: 10:10am-10:40am (yes, this means SIX people, and it means you need to all arrive at 10:10am!)
GROUP 4: 10:40am-11:00am:
GROUP 5: 11:00am-11:20am:
About Preparing for the Final Exam
A couple of students have come to me in a panic, wondering what they need to do to prepare for the final exam in this class.
One of the best pieces of advice I can offer is this: DON’T PANIC.
I can’t actually tell you which questions will be on the exam, because I’m still in the process of selecting questions from those you submitted to me last class. However, I can give you a few pointers. You have an advantage, which is that you have all experienced the midterm exam, and remember the kinds of questions I asked you there. Similarly, you have all had a chance to prepare some thoughtful writing about each of the topics we’ve discussed in class during panel discussions.
You will have a choice in terms which questions you answer, but I will also try to make the question broad enough to let you talk about the things you’re most interested in/confident about. One approach would be to have classmates email you some of the questions they submitted, so that you can think those questions over. While the same specific questions might not appear on the exam, thinking about them will help you prepare for the analytical task the exam will involve.
You are responsible for everything discussed in the course. However, in practical terms, I won’t be asking anything about, for example, The West Wing. The focus of the final exam will be on what was dealt with since the midterms. This doesn’t mean you cannot refer to Lost, Bamboozled, The West Wing, or V for Vendetta, in your answers to essay questions. (For example, if discussing the archetype of The Other in Blade Runner, you might want to refer to Bamboozled. You’re free to do that, but you should focus on Blade Runner if you do.) It does, however, mean that you will probably want to focus on things we’ve discussed since midterms.
I cannot recommend any specific topics for study, however, except to repeat myself: you’re responsible for everything we’ve discussed since midterms.
However, you probably have noticed that I am interested in a few things specifically:
- Your opinions.
- Your analysis of the pop culture we’ve examined.
- Critical discussion of archetypes/genres and the anxieties and deeper meanings that they contain or reveal.
- Application of this analytical process to how you look at your own society’s popular culture, or your society’s reception of Anglophone popular culture.
In other words, it’s all about thinking things over and expressing ideas that go beyond the surface! The preparation and reaction papers you’ve been preparing all semester long are, I hope, great practice in this.
Remember: the longest essay isn’t always the best. It often pays to sit and think a little, to write up an outline or plan, take some notes, and then start writing your ideas down. Diving into an essay headfirst without preparing your thoughts is almost certainly likely to result in an essay that is not as good as you could have written.
Finally: there will be three questions on this exam:
- Two will be essay questions — you will have a selection from student-submitted questions in both cases. (I will probably reword the questions slightly, but they will basically be taken from the questions you gave me.)
- Lastly, there will be one short-answer question that will require you to put the full semester’s work into perspective in terms of your general academic studies.
I think that’s all the advice I can offer. Good luck, and see you on Tuesday afternoon!
Final Exam!
Hi everyone. Here are some notes on the final exam.
- DO NOT prepare a script. I can tell when you’ve done that, and I’ll just interrupt and change the topic, and it will be much worse for you. The test is of spontaneous speaking ability, listening, and interaction.
- The test will happen at N223, my office, beginning at 9:00am sharp on Monday, June 16th.
- Your whole group must be present before the exam can begin, so make sure to give your group members a wake-up call and arrange to arrive at my office at least five to ten minutes before you are scheduled to begin your exam.
- We will begin the test by randomly assigning partners; two partners will stay and two will leave for eight minutes.
- During the ten-minute exam, you will discuss two things:
- The interviews — any aspect of the interview, from what you learned making it to what you found common between others’ interviews. Make sure you have seen some of your classmates’ interviews so that you have something to say about them.
- What have you learned this semester in our class? If you have a good answer and can explain it, this will be a big help. If you have a poor answer, and cannot explain it well, it will not help your grade. And if you say, “Nothing!” then you will get the kind of grade that a student who has learned nothing deserves!
Here is the schedule for the exams:
GROUP 1: 9:00am-9:20am:
Yi Yu-Min, Park Eun-Shil, Kyeong Eun, Po Ching
GROUP 2: 9:40am-10:00am:
Kum Hee Yoon, Hee In Jeong, Min Ji Kim, Jeon Yu Na
GROUP 3: 10:10am-10:40am (yes, this means SIX people, and it means you need to all arrive at 10:10am!)
Choi Chung, Jin-Ho Joo, Soo Hee Jang, Yi-Jin Park, Hyo-Rin Kim, Su-ji Lee
GROUP 4: 10:40am-11:00am:
Kyung Hee Park, ChaHwan Ryu, Sunyoung Ahn, Akari Mori
GROUP 5: 11:00am-11:20am:
Eunseong Kim, Asami Hiramori, Midan Lee, Chung-Ah Yoo
Regarding Your Final Exam
Hi everyone. Here are some thoughts on your final exam:
- My office is N223. The exam will be at my office, not in our classroom. Please come five minutes early with your whole group. The exam is on Tuesday, June 17th, during our regular classtime, with the three groups beginning at 6:55pm, 7:15pm, and 7:35pm.
- We will quickly assign partners and each exam will be approximately 10 minutes in total, from the moment you walk into my office until you leave.
- You will talk about two topics: one will be randomly chosen from your group’s list of topics, and the other will be this question:What have you learned in this class?
- Please don’t be late. Your group members are depending on you to get their exam done, and I will not be understanding of late arrivals.
I don’t know which group is #1, #2, or #3. I hope you remember! Anyway, here are the topics for the groups (for the two who have emailed me, anyway).
Sam, Sanghun, Su jin, Geum Hee
- the best or worst teacher
- stereotypes
- family effect
- relationship - true friends.
Seo jung hee, Yeo ki wook, Lee han kyu, Yoo saem
- travel
- music
- movies
- stress
If you’re a member of the third group, please email me your list!
Group #3: So-ra Jo, Jeong-myung Lee, Hye-jeong Lim, and Yong-heon Kim
- Travel
- Movies
- Family affect
- Man & woman change
The Name of the Book
I handed out a short excerpt for Thursday’s class, and said I would post the name of the book for you. It’s from this book.
My Remixes
Someone asked me why I haven’t produced a remix for you guys to enjoy. Well, the fact is, I do a lot of this, but not in visual media. My preference has been to do it with music and in my writing. Unfortunately, the recordings for a lot of my older musical “remixes” are gone… I lost them when I moved from Montreal to Korea.
My most recent fiction publication was, in fact, a remix of 1950s science fiction and 1940s jazz culture, especially the voice of Miles Davis as represented in his autobiography, “Miles.” But that’s not available for free online — it costs $3 to get an electronic copy of the issue of the July 2008 Asimov’s SF with my story in it, and even more to get a copy of the print edition — so I thought I’d pass some other things for you to enjoy for free.
Here are three musical “remixes” I’ve participated in:
- Boat Song (뱃 노래) (mp3): This is a “remix” of the old Korean song that I performed with Dabang Band (다방밴드) back in 2002-2004, and released this on our first CD, which was called “Pig Over Seoul.” We mixed it with blues and made it a kind of waltz. I’m playing the saxophone.
- The Jeonju Zoo (mp3): This is a “remix” of European Jewish traditional music, called “klezmer music”, with rock. This was also recorded and performed with Dabang Band (다방밴드)back in 2003 on our album “Product.” The lyrics are about how, in Korean, “Zoo” is pronounced to sound like “Jew” and how confusing it is when someone asks if you’ve visited the “Jeonju Zoo.” I’m playing saxophone, as usual.
- Apocrypha, Live ‘98 (mp3): This is a LONG mp3: a remix I performed with a “live ambient” (ie. live electronica) group called “Apocrypha” back in 1998, when, imagine, I was about the same age as most students in our class now are. As usual, I’m playing saxophone, and occasionally reciting a bad poem or two. There’s a singer and two DJs running the tracks. A lot of the tracks are from CDs by Pete Namlook and other ambient musicians whose names escape my memory, but there is also a track by John Cage (”In a Landscape”) mixed in, and it starts with “The Sinking of the Titanic” by Gavin Bryars.
In fact, our performance was recorded live to multitrack tape digital recorder, and then remixed by a producer who was friends with one of the DJs. So there’s a lot of re-re-remixing going on here. It’s messy, but it’s not bad in my opinion.
(See? Messy and imperfect is okay!)
So as you can see, I’m no stranger to remixing. In fact, I’d say every creative person in the world to some degree “remixes” what came before them… just as Lawrence Lessig argues in the book we’ve been reading!
I look forward to seeing your remixes soon! By the way, title them however you like… I’ll try collect the links and post them here after class tomorrow.
Announcement for Next Semester
Interested in Writing a Graphic Novel?
In Fall semester 2008, there will be a special course offered under the name Multimedia English Education and taught by Gord Sellar. In fact, this course will consist of planning, outlining, writing, and completely creating a graphic novel – that is, a novel-length and novel-quality “comic book” which will subsequently be published online. (Print publication might be sought, depending on the outcome of the project.)
Students who are interested in a hands-on project in which they can creatively use and develop their English skills are encouraged to consider this course. You needn’t be an “artist,” although talented artists are certainly welcome.
For more information, please contact me.