Liger!?

I was doing an instructor evaluation today, observing a class in which the students play 20 questions (we won't go into the pedagogic geniuses that put their heads together developing this sophisticated and intricate cirriculum). Now when this game is played by children in their native tongue, it usually involves a formulating series of strategic inquiries, in order to most efficiently deduce the object in question. However with the rather limited interrogative skills of our students, the game here is played by yelling out answers until somebody randomly guesses correctly. It's basically just a vocabulary crossfire, which is not as fun or cool as real crossfire because it doesn't involve shooting little steel beebees at spinning disks (Suggestion #1 for the cirriculum development team: More beebee use).

So after about umpteen rounds of this dictionary-din it was declared that the last "thing" was to be chosen by a student who had demonstrated exemplary skills of deduction... (ie the kid who'd gotten the most candy for shouting out the most correct random guesses). The student sat pensively for a moment, then slowly emitted a coy smile, letting us know he'd thought of a particularly brilliant "thing" to stump his classmates. His one alotted clue was "Animal". We were then bombarded with a menagerie of animals "Bear, Koala, Cat, Mouse, Dog" , "no, no, no, no"- it looked dismal, I contemplated resorting to beebees.

Then came a small voice "Lion?" no, "Tiger?" no...."LIGER?!!" You can imagine the speed with which my jaw dropped at the mention of this mystical creature (bred for strengh and magic). What was even more exciting was that this evoked an erruption of chanting from the other students as they all communally glorified the beast shouting, "LIGER! LIGER! LIGER!!!" I was stunned, who knew that the great and ferocious Liger lived in Seoul? This country gets better every day.

It inspired me to do some research so I googled "liger" and this was my reward, which I share with you now http://www.geocities.com/anti_liger_alliance/

Another day of English teaching completed, satisfied with the fact that "liger" is now appropriately fixed in the vocab banks of 12 year old Korean children.