Yesterday I met with Boram Kang again for our second session. After our first session, she had decided to keep one of the Flash Fiction Forward books to read on her own. I am so glad that she really liked the genre as there is so much to learn from them (even for native English speakers). When we met up again yesterday, she had read 4 1/2 stories. She had written down any questions she had had while reading (such as what does this word mean? what is this story about? etc), but also interesting things she had seen and would like to discuss. We read a few of the stories aloud. One was "To Reduce Your Likelihood of Murder," which, after we had discussed select vocabulary and writing techniques, we talked about some of the recent events in Korea involving the mistreatment/murder of women (the theme of the story). This allowed for some good vocabulary to be introduced like "misogyny," "breadwinner,""patriarchy/matriarchy," "an issue close to home/that hits close to home," etc. It also allowed for discussion about safety for women here in the US and the similarities/differences between Korean and southern US culture. The FSU campus/college demographic was talked about as well. What factors influence campus crime? Why might have the girl lied about being abducted a few semesters ago?
To balance this discussion out, I had her read "The Great Open-Mouth Anti-Sadness;" a story that shows men in a positive, sensitive light. It gave way to talking about gender standards among our cultures and what we thought were the reasons behind it. We also discussed current gender trends as well.
Next session, we have decided to each find a few cultural video clips (and will discuss the differences in our choices) to watch/analyze/discuss. In addition, I will bring a few new stories that have an extra large amount of interesting mechanics/new phrases and words.
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