Anyway, the fifth grader added a couple lines to his speech; my main co-teacher, who has the best English in the school, proofed them before giving them to me for the final sign-off.

I ended up making these corrections:

• I am a student of [school name] = I am a student at [school name].
• I would have to say my new pen pal = I would like to talk about my new pen pal.
• Thank you for hearing until now = Thank you for listening.

Obviously, these are really minor changes. What threw me about them was that even my co-teacher, who has been studying English since high school, didn’t catch them. Being still pretty new to this and full of youthful idealism and whatnot, at first I was really discouraged — if years and years of study can’t get these rules across, how can non-native speakers ever learn them? (And what chance do I have of ever learning Korean?)

Teaching elementary school here can be disheartening. The kids learn vocabulary in each lesson and seem to forget it by the next one. Students who could easily answer “What did you do last weekend?” with “I played computer games” the last time you checked revert to “I did playing computer games” a couple weeks later. Learning a language is tough anyway; add in that students don’t get graded on their performance in English class, giving them very little incentive to actually absorb anything, and you’ve got a recipe for disappointment as a teacher.

So how can you feel good about what you’re doing?

It wasn’t until I started this post that I realized I was looking at it all wrong. First of all, most kids just don’t care about learning English, and since picking up a new language is a skill that has to be practiced, not knowledge that can just be absorbed, those kids won’t learn anything beyond the basics (and will probably forget those anyway). They may get enough familiarity with English to pass the written tests that are so important in Korea, but they won’t learn to speak it. Among these kids, my job, as I see it, is to get them a little more interested in the language, a little more confident about using the words they do know, and maybe encourage them to change their minds down the road. My job is not to make them English speakers, because that’s their choice, not mine.

But secondly, and more importantly, there are some kids who do want to learn, and who genuinely enjoy speaking the language (or, at least, want the opportunities that speaking it well will afford them). Working with these students can be really encouraging, because they pick up so much — but also, if you’re a certain type of person, discouraging, because there’s so much you know you can’t teach them. What I’m trying to remind myself of is what all new teachers get told: when you’re teaching (or learning) a new language, the goal is to communicate.

The point isn’t teaching them to speak perfect English. If they never get subtleties like “Thank you for listening” instead of “Thank you for hearing,” who cares? The odds of one of your Korean students being mistaken for a native English speaker range from nearly non-existent to truly non-existent, so the sooner you can divorce this from your standards, the better. If they can get the gist of what other people are saying and make themselves understood, they’ll have succeeded.

In the next few minutes, the number of great students who had to ask me how to spell “swimming” or “visited” or even “went” was more than a little disheartening. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised, because the curriculum doesn’t call for them to write much at all. Since then, I’ve been trying to think of ways to work writing practice into the lessons.

Today was the last class of Lesson 12: “Will You Help Me, Please?” It called for them to role-play based on some pictures and a pretty lengthy (for this class) sample dialog. Since I’ve learned that freeform activities like “Come up with your own roleplay” don’t work too well in this class, I made some modifications to check their listening, writing, and reading skills. Here’s what we ended up doing.

• I played the dialog for them once and asked the basic questions: “Who is in this story?” “What are they doing?”
• I handed out a written version of the dialog, with a fair amount of words blanked out (PDF), and explained that I wanted them to fill in all the words they could hear.
• I played the dialog two more times.
• I wrote out the first half of the dialog (up to Tom’s “Good”) on the board with blanks, and asked what they heard. I gave the teams a point for each correct answer and filled in the blanks on the board.
• I played the dialog one more time and did the same thing for the second half of the dialog.
• By that time, each student had a complete copy of the dialog. I had them divide up into groups of threes and and each practice one of the roles.
• Finally, I had them role-play. (We had time for four groups to role-play, out of about eight.) I gave two points to each team that would do it, and three points to one team that did a really outstanding job — they could recite the whole thing from memory and did really expressive acting.

Afterwards, we did the first two “Review” activities from the book, and then we did a final game: I handed out envelopes with cut-up sentences from the role-play to each group and read a sentence (e.g. “Hi, Tom. What are you doing?”). The first team to assemble the sentence got two points, and every team that could assemble the sentence correctly got one point.

The lesson went over really well with my kids. Here’s hoping it can help with yours!

Class: 6th grade
Lesson: 12 (Will You Help Me, Please?)
Teams: Flexible; at least 2 students / no more than 6 students in each group
Materials: Board game map (PDF – 1 copy per group), board game markers (PDF – 1 marker per student), cards from the back of the book (page 179 – 1 set per group), printed sentences that match said cards (PDF – 1 copy per student), dice (1 die per group)
Prep Time: 10 minutes; more if you laminate the materials first

Prep Work

Decide how many groups you want to divide your class into. Each group needs its own map, and each student in the group needs his or her own marker. Print one board game map (PDF) and one set of board game markers (PDF) for each group. (The board game markers file has four sets on it, since printing one at a time would be a waste of paper.) I recommend a color printer for this if you have access to one.

Once you’ve printed out the map and the markers, cut out the markers and paperclip each set to a map. This makes it a lot easier to hand everything out in the classroom. If you plan on playing the game often, you might want to laminate this stuff first.

After you’ve gotten your map and markers straight, choose the vocabulary you want them to practice. For this lesson, I wanted them to practice “I don’t know how to [do something] / I have to [do something]. Will you help me?” The pictures in the back of the book hint at this, but most of my students aren’t quite advanced enough to take a look at a picture of a kid slaving over his textbooks and come up with “This homework is very hard — can you help me?” on their own, and then rinse and repeat that for eight separate pictures.

Instead of skipping over the pictures for this unit, I put together a printout of sentences that could be associated with each picture (PDF). I gave one copy to each student and had each group cut out one set of the pictures from page 179. If you don’t have the picture cards, you can also print them up at the Korean School blog.

Before You Play

Since my students needed to go over the sentences associated with each picture card first, I had them read their printouts before I handed out the rest of the game materials. First, I had them read the sentences to themselves, which was a good opportunity for them to identify the words they didn’t know — my students had trouble with “lost” and “use,” in particular. Second, I asked for volunteers to read the sentences and had the class repeat them. Third, I put the picture cards on the projector and asked which sentence matched the card on the screen. By the time we were done, they had a pretty solid idea of what each sentence meant.

If your students can come up with these sentences on their own, or if you’re using less complicated vocabulary from another lesson (e.g. the picture cards from 5th grade’s “What Are You Doing?” lesson — for example, a boy jumping is “He is jumping,” nothing difficult there), you can probably skip the printout and just run through the vocabulary before you play the game.

How to Play

Have the students put the deck of picture cards face-down in the middle of the table. Each student rolls the die to find out how many spaces he can move. Before he can move, he has to draw a picture card from the deck and then read the correct sentence. For example: If a student turns up the heavy bucket card, he has to read the “This bucket is too heavy. Will you help me?” sentence before he can move. If he reads the right sentence, he can move however many spaces he rolled. Then it’s the next student’s turn. Whoever makes it to the end first wins!

Why They Like It

It’s a board game they get to play in class.

Why I Like It

It gets all of the students reading, including the ones who are nervous about reading in class, since they’re reading for their peers instead of for you. It also introduces them to different reasons to ask for help and exposes them to different constructions (“I have to” / “I don’t know how to”). Finally, it really drills the “Will you help me?” sentence into their brains.

Plus, it gives you a little time to observe students as they read, so you can get a good idea of who’s not reading in class because he can’t read well and who’s not reading in class because he doesn’t have enough confidence — useful information to have.

Credit Where Credit’s Due

The pictures for the map and markers are from the teacher’s guide to 6th grade’s Lesson 12, of which I’m lucky enough to have an electronic copy.

Enjoy!

This past weekend, when I taught a camp at another school in Taebaek, that co-teacher taught me the best phrase ever:

조용히 하세요! (joyonghi haseyo!) = the polite form of “Be quiet!”

Since then, I’ve used this phrase in a couple classes. In every single one, it has resulted in dead silence; a couple times, it even got dropped jaws. They know I don’t speak Korean (although a few of them know I’m learning it), so getting snapped at in their language was shocking enough to make them stop talking immediately.

If you’re not feeling very polite, you might also try:

조용히 해! (joyonghi hae!) = the less polite, to-children version of “Be quiet!”

I suspect that this will only have the shocked silence reaction the first few times, and that the magical effect will wear off once they realize it’s just a phrase I’ve memorized. Of course, that’s why I’m memorizing a bunch more.

For more on this phrase, you might visit Korean Phrases #32: Teaching in Korea (complete with helpful presentation!). There are 33 lessons at this blog, which doesn’t appear to be updated anymore. I’ll be combing through the archives for more useful phrases.

• WikiBooks: Korean. This site doesn’t look impressive at first, but it breaks down conversations in detail that literal-minded students like me appreciate. See the first lesson: Greetings.
• Luke Park’s Guide to Korean Grammar. Now closed, this blog has tons of useful grammar info in the archives, which are neatly sorted by topic. This is my first stop for my Korean grammar questions now.
• Galbijim: Learning Korean. This subset of the Galbijim wiki (also worth a look) boasts such helpful gems as 100 Basic Korean Words and Common Korean Phrases.
• Livemocha. Livemocha, which bills itself as a “social language learning” site, has resources for tons of languages, including Korean. You can study lessons, take tests, and even communicate with native Korean speakers if you want. If you’re interested, you can also evaluate work from people studying a language you know.
• Korean Class 101. When I first visited this site, I was so turned off by the up-selling during registration that I didn’t bother going any further. However, after getting yet another recommendation to check it out, I did, and I subscribed to the free podcasts. Despite my first impression of the site, I’m really impressed with these.
• YouTube: Let’s Learn Korean. I’ve heard a lot about the Let’s Learn Korean video series. While I haven’t spent a lot of time with them yet (video learning isn’t my thing), these come highly recommended, so I’m including a link here for those of you who might be interested.
• Learn Korean. Sue at An Adopted Angle showed me this one, which has Hangul, Romanization, and audio for a ton of useful phrases, organized by topic.

열심히 공부하세요! (Good luck with your studies!)

Background

I don’t teach first and second grade students very often. I teach each class once every two weeks — so one week, I’ll have one class with each of my second grade groups, and the next week, I’ll have one class with each of my first grade groups. Since I see them so rarely, and since they understand so little English, I haven’t gotten nearly as much of a connection with these students as I have with my other grades.

More importantly, I haven’t really figured out what works for them yet. My first couple of classes mostly consisted of a “How are you?” warm-up followed by them coloring alphabet worksheets while I said the letters and words they were coloring and had them repeat.

Why This Class Worked Better

Although this lesson could have been improved a lot — I started planning this lesson about half an hour before I had to teach it, and I’d told the kids we were going to continue with the alphabet train and didn’t want to go back on it, so it got pulled in two directions — it got the kids moving, got them using English to get what they wanted (more or less politely), and reinforced the order of the letters in the alphabet. I call that a win.

Another bonus: The lesson was so simple that I didn’t need the co-teacher to translate anything (convenient, because he wasn’t there for the first part of the class) except the letter-choosing and picture-drawing at the very end. Usually I’ve had to rely on the co-teacher for translation services a lot in the younger grades, but my limited Korean (“faster!” “slower!” “what’s it called?”) got us through this lesson just fine.

Lesson Plan

Here it is, with the Present > Practice > Produce format EPIK loves so much…

Warm-up

• Listen and Do: To get the kids settled down and ready for the lesson, especially because the co-teacher wasn’t in the class so I couldn’t look to him for any disciplinary help, I had all of the kids listen to me and do what I said. I had them stand up, sit down, stand up again, raise their hands, put their hands down, sit down, and make a sound like a dog. I’ll probably use this warm-up pretty often with the younger classes, and as they get used to the game, I’ll borrow more of the commands from GenkiEnglish’s version.

  Even the lowest-level students got into it, because if they got confused they could just look at the others. It seemed to make everyone feel a lot more at ease with me and each other, and more importantly, it got them listening to me from the start — so later, when I had to tell them to be quiet, they were more cooperative than they would have been otherwise.

• Please and Thank You: I usually have a stuffed ball with me when I’m teaching first and second grade. Today I held it up and asked who wanted it. When half the class immediately started waving their hands and making wounded noises, I told them to ask, “Please?” and demonstrated with one of the sharper students. The students tossed the ball around using just “Please?” for a couple turns, and then I added “Thank you” to the mix. By the end of the game, almost all of the students seemed comfortable with “Please?” and “Thank you,” and when I handed out papers later, a lot of them showed off their knowledge. (Another version of the game is also at GenkiEnglish.)By then, everyone was a lot calmer, so it was on to…

• Present: All of the kids seem to know the alphabet song (although it could be that a few don’t and are just pretending to sing along with everyone else), so I had them sing it slowly and wrote each letter on the board as they sang. We then went over the alphabet one more time to reinforce the order.
• Practice: Since these kids are crazy about catching the ball, I had them toss the ball around the classroom, which each person saying the next letter in the alphabet — “A” *toss* “B” *toss* “C” *toss*, etc. — until we finished. By that time it was clear that a significant number of the students really weren’t clear on the order of the alphabet, although the students were so good about helping each other that no one got embarrassed.
• Produce: With the alphabet already on the blackboard, I handed out alphabet connect-the-dots sheets as the other teacher had suggested. I printed the Bear (Capitals) sheet and the Whale (Small) sheet and passed out one of each for each student. I was a little surprised at how much time this took up, and at the number of kids I had to gently correct about the order. The exercise gave me a better idea of the class’s level, but it was easy enough to avoid frustration even when students were wrong.

Alphabet Words

• Present: I had the kids tell me what the bear and the whale on the sheets were in English, and then pointed out that “bear” starts with B and “whale” starts with W. I explained that we were going to list more words that started with different letters and checked to make sure they understood.
• Practice: I had the whole class stand up and had each student give me a word that started with a letter of the alphabet (in order). Whoever answered could sit down. Many of the students knew basic words like apple, banana, and cat, and again, they helped the students who weren’t as up to speed.
• Produce: The last time I had this class, each group made an alphabet train by cutting out these trains, tracing the letters, coloring them, and gluing them to a sheet of posterboard in a backwards “C” shape. I had them leave the middle of the posterboard open for some drawings, like in a sample one I did myself to show them. This time, I had each group pick a letter and draw something that started with that letter. The results were: A/apple, B/bear, J/juice, and Z/zebra.

What Could Have Been Better

I’ve been laid up at home with sickness for the past two days. Instead of ignoring my impending need for lesson plans, I should have worked on this lesson some while I was home and not put it all together half an hour before go time this morning. If I’d had more time and a better sense of what a really good first/second grade lesson plan looks like, I’d have found a better way to make the whole lesson more consolidated — focusing on either the alphabet order, or words that started with different letters, but not both — instead of making this one such a mishmash. The fact that it’s the lesson I’ve felt best about so far probably says more about how uncomfortable I’ve been with my other lessons than how good this one is.

Still, the kids had fun, I got a better sense of their levels, and they seemed more comfortable with me and English than they’ve been before — and I finally feel less nervy about teaching this age group. I’ve asked my main co-teacher if we can order the EFL Phonics books, and if she says yes, I’ll have a better backbone to structure my lessons around. Wish me luck!

P.S. Ideas and feedback on these lessons are more than welcome. I’m figuring this out as I go — constructive criticism is always helpful.

My 6th grade students just had their last class on the “I’m Stronger Than You” lesson. In this lesson, they learn how to use the words bigger, faster, longer, older, stronger, and taller and make sentences like “__ is stronger than __.”

Since they already knew how to make these sentences by the last class, I wanted to open by getting the kids to use them correctly in an unscripted way.

I asked for volunteers who wanted to draw on the board and instantly, half the class raised their hands — including kids who usually don’t participate in the lessons that much. I picked two kids, had them come up front, and told them to each draw an animal. Afterwards, they went back to their seats. I asked the class:

• what each animal was, and
• what comparison sentences they could make.

I played the warm-up three times in both of my sixth grade classes, and they came up with some pretty fabulous ones:

• A penguin and a rabbit. Conclusions: “The penguin is taller than the rabbit” and “The rabbit is faster than the penguin.”
• A chicken and a man. Conclusions: “The man is taller than the chicken” and “The man is older than the chicken.”

Since the comparisons were so silly, I noticed that some students were more willing to participate — it didn’t feel like a serious exercise with a right or wrong answer, so they felt less pressure to say the right thing.

Be careful how you introduce this one. The kids will love it, but the co-teacher may be more skeptical, especially since your volunteers are just drawing, not speaking English. When I’d finished the three I had planned, the co-teacher in my first class very pointedly said, “Let’s start now,” and then took control of the lesson. The students had been into it and really participating, so at first I didn’t understand the problem.

I realized later that I hadn’t laid out how long the warm-up was going to take or how many pairs were going to draw, so it looked off-the-cuff and disorganized. In my second class, I was careful to write “Comparisons: 1, 2, 3″ and write a 1, 2, or 3 for each round to make it clear to the co-teacher that this was a quick activity with a set number of reps. That co-teacher loved it.

The lack of communication between the Korean co-teacher and the native English teacher is a big problem at schools that don’t encourage both teachers to review the lesson plans together — especially if the English teacher has a different co-teacher for every class. This episode reminded me of how important it is to be clear about the structure if the co-teacher expects to be a part of the lesson. The more organized you are, the more your co-teacher will respect you as a teacher, and the more comfortable he or she will feel entrusting the class to you. I’ll be doing my best to practice what I preach in the weeks ahead.

Prep Work

I found the same pictures that are in the back of the 5th grade textbook at Korean School and printed them (my file is up at Sandwiches & Spiders if you’d like to save yourself some time). I also found a picture of a spider and a picture of a fly online. I’d share those too, but copyright protects the ones I used. Just search for “spider clipart” and “fly clipart” and you’ll find a ton.

Finally, I printed enough to make each group a deck of 9 food cards and 3 spider/fly cards and then cut them up. (Make sure that the food cards and spider/fly cards are the same size so students can’t easily tell which is which.) I separated them out into decks and shuffled them.

How to Play

I divided the kids into groups of 4-5 students and gave each group a deck. I had each group pick a dealer for the first round, which both classes spontaneously did through Rock, Paper, Scissors. Here’s how it works:

• Each food card is worth one point, and each spider/fly card is worth one negative point.
• The dealer goes to each kid in the group and asks, “Do you want some more?”
• Each kid can say, “Yes, please,” and get a card, or “No, thanks,” and get no card.
• The dealer puts the card down face-up in front of that student and moves on to the next kid.
• Once all the cards have been dealt, the winner is the student with the highest score.
• The winner deals the next hand.

Why I Like It

• It gets students talking, and it gets them comfortable with both the question (“Do you want some more?”) and the answers (“Yes, please” and “No, thanks”).
• It’s competitive, with clear winners and losers, which seems to be the best way to motivate kids in Korea.

Why They Like It

• They get to laugh at the classmates who get bugs to “eat.”
• They all want to deal.

What to Watch Out For

In my first class, several of the dealers were going through the deck and selecting a card to give to each person based on how much he or she liked the other student. When you lay out the rules, be sure to explain that the dealer shouldn’t look at the cards and should hand out whichever one’s on top.

Credit Where Credit’s Due

I owe special thanks to the blogger at Wuthering Life/Dear Korea for helping me out with the initial concept. When I first talked to her, I was seriously considering showing them blackjack (come on! it’s perfect for this lesson!) and teaching my kids how to gamble.

Teaching elementary school in South Korea should, theoretically, be a snap. There’s a standardized curriculum for grades 3 to 6, and it includes detailed instructions for every class — including a script for the teacher, audio/video dialogs on a CD-ROM, and game instructions. (In the official outline, there’s a game in every English class — these kids are way luckier than I was in my elementary school career.)

But if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The script is, to put it frankly, lame, and while some of the games are pretty good, some of them are downright painful. At first, I went by the book’s script no matter what, even if I didn’t like it, because (a) thought I had to and (b) thought that the book played to some secret wisdom about Korean kids and their learning processes. By my second week, after one of my 5th grade classes nearly rioted over a boring game, I’d realized just how wrong I was.

Reality: If you want your students to enjoy your class, you’re going to be changing the lesson plans a lot.

For every lesson (1 lesson = 4 classes), I change at least 1 of the 4 planned games; for the older kids (5th and 6th grades), I change 2 or 3. Since it’s just sad to come up with a new game every few classes only to forget it, from now on, I’ll be posting my favorite game of the week here every Friday. The first one will go up tomorrow.

If you’re putting together great games of your own and want to share, send me a Facebook message, leave me a comment, or email me at kat [dot] kuhl [at] gmail [dot] com with the details. I’ll post your game here and give you credit with a link to your blog (or Facebook, or Flickr — whatever you prefer).

Happy gaming!

If you’re applying to teaching English at a public school in South Korea and you happen to be as bad at paperwork as I am, the process will be intimidating. You’ll have to get a criminal record check, get several documents apostilled, and get your diploma notarized (which they never seem to tell you). The good news is that if you know what you’re doing, it’s actually pretty easy. I was one of the unlucky applicants who could never quite figure out what was going on, and having survived, I’m here to help you out.

But first, some notes:

• I work at a public school, not a hagwon, so that’s the application process I’ll be outlining. I know a lot of the documentation overlaps, so if you’re looking at hagwons, this post might still help you.
• I’m American. If you’ve got a different government to deal with, some of this information may not apply to you.
• There are essentially two application processes: the first one, which is all electronic, consists of an application form and a current photo if you’re applying to EPIK, and an application form, two reference letters, a cover letter, and a current photo if you’re applying to SMOE; during the second process, you send your official documentation to Korea after you’ve been accepted. If you’re just testing the waters, fill out an application and send it in electronically and don’t worry about the rest of this stuff yet.

With that out of the way, I found that the application documentation broke down into two basic categories: stuff I could do on my own, and stuff I had to get from other people.

Stuff You Can Do on Your Own

• An application form. You might be applying to SMOE (Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education — Seoul only) or EPIK (English Program in Korea — the national organization). If you’re going through a recruiter, he or she will send you the form you need, or you can find both on the EPIK Web site. Once you’ve been accepted, you’ll need to print this form, sign it, attach a passport-sized photo, and mail it to either your recruiter or EPIK/SMOE.
• A copy of your passport photo page. My recruiter had me scan and email this, and she printed a copy to submit with my application.
• A copy of your teaching certificate. If you have a teaching certificate, scan a copy and email it to your recruiter. Remember to bring it with you when you come, just in case — they haven’t asked for mine yet, but they might ask for yours. If your certificate doesn’t say how many hours the course was, you may have to get other proof of the course length; mine does, so my certificate was enough.

Stuff You’ll Have to Get from Other People

• A signed and sealed reference letter. You’ll need to get one recommendation letter from academic or professional sources. The letter must be signed and sealed, and it must also include the name, address, and contact number of the person who wrote it for you.
• A criminal record check (apostilled). Assuming you haven’t committed any major crimes (you haven’t, right?), this won’t be a big deal. I went downtown and had my check taken care of within a half a hour. I then went and got it and my diploma apostilled at the same time. One note: Make sure you tell them you need the FL-20 form! At first, they gave me the wrong one, and I had to double back.
• A copy of your diploma (notarized and apostilled). Make a copy of your diploma, have it notarized, and then have it apostilled. My recruiter neglected to mention that the diploma would have to be notarized before I could get it apostilled (yet another thing I had to double back for). Learn from my mistakes! If you have an M.A., you may just need to make a copy and not have it apostilled — check with your recruiter. Remember to bring the original degree, whether it’s an M.A. or a B.A., when you come to Korea.
• Sealed transcripts. You’ll need a minimum of two copies of your transcripts (again, B.A. and M.A., if applicable). Personally, I’d get five, just in case. If your university can do it, you may want to send your transcripts directly to your recruiter. The ones I ordered for my apartment never came, but my recruiter did get the ones I had American University send to Korea.
• Residence certificate. This one’s the least fun, because you have to deal with the IRS. Fill out Form 8802 (PDF) at least a month and a half before you need the certification, mail it to the IRS, and then sit back and wait for them to mail Form 6166 — the form you actually need — back to you. Bring Form 6166 when you come to Korea.
• Proof of teaching/work experience. If you have prior full-time teaching experience, document it. Be sure to state the month and year.
• An E-2 visa. Check with your employer and the Korean consulate to confirm what documents you’ll need to submit. My recruiter told me I’d need my transcript and diploma, but the consulate was only interested in my acceptance letter from EPIK and my passport. The process will vary depending on whether you go by the consulate in person or mail your documentation in; I went by in person, and my visa was ready for pickup six days later. Note that you will have to give them your passport for processing, and you’ll get it back with your visa.

If you’re lucky enough to be in or near D.C., you can handle your criminal record check, notarizing your diploma, and apostilling your criminal record check and your diploma all within a block of each other at Judiciary Square. Take a half-day and head down there to handle your paperwork — it’ll be more painless than you think.