opinions

On Tuesday and Thursday nights I teach a class of eight 14 and 15 year olds. "Teach" actually isn't the right word for it. These kids' English abilities are so good- better than any of the Korean teachers at the school even- that there's really nothing left for them to be taught. My job then is to be someone they can speak English to, and guide the class discussion.

Every other day I have to select an article from a collection of articles, and hand it out to them. The articles I give them are written in Korean, and their homework is to translate it into English. Also, there is a separate "Opinion" page, where a question relating to the article is posed to them in English, and they are to respond to it by writing a few paragraphs.

Given this arrangement, the contents of the actual article itself are unknown to me when I hand it out to them. I have to rely on reading their translations before I know what it is we're talking about. However, I can get an idea of what the article's topic is by reading the question on the "Opinion" page. For instance, the "Opinion" question for the first article I gave them was something along the lines of, "Do you ever imitate a celebrity's style?" The article ended up being about the influence a certain actor's fashion had had on fashion trends in Korea.

The reason I'm explaining all this, and taking way too long to do so, is that I was perusing the article selection today and stumbled across one doozy of an "Opinion" question. I really can't wait to assign it, just so that I can get a translation of the article itself. The "Opinion" question was: "If you were a leper, would you abort your child?"