I am boring: the -ed/-ing adjective mix-up Korean students make
Korean students often say "I am boring" when they mean "I am bored." The mix-up comes straight from how Korean describes feelings, and once you show students the rule, it clicks fast.
Park English2026-10-203 min read
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A student raises a hand after a pop quiz and says, "Teacher, I am boring." They do not mean they are a dull person. They mean the quiz bored them. This is one of the most common adjective mistakes you will hear in a Korean classroom, and it is not random. It comes straight from the grammar they already know.
Why this happens
In Korean, one word covers both sides of a feeling. 지루하다 (jiruhada) means "to be boring" but Koreans also use it to say "I feel bored." The same verb, 지루해요, can mean "it is boring" or "I am bored" depending on context. Korean does not force a different word ending for the person who feels something versus the thing that causes it. English does.
English splits every one of these feeling words into two forms:
| Ending | Describes | Example |
|---|---|---|
| -ed | the person who feels it | I am bored. She was surprised. |
| -ing | the thing or person causing the feeling | The movie is boring. His joke was surprising. |
Students translate word for word from Korean, keep the one form they already know, and say "I am boring" instead of "I am bored." The same thing happens with tired/tiring, excited/exciting, and interested/interesting. It is not a careless mistake. It is a direct translation of a language that does not mark this difference the way English does.
How to explain it to the class
Skip the grammar terms at first. Try this instead: "-ed is how YOU feel. -ing is what something IS." Point at a boring textbook and say "This book is boring." Then point at yourself and say "I am bored." Have students repeat both sentences while pointing at the right thing.
A line that sticks with middle schoolers: a boring person makes other people bored. A bored person is just feeling it. Say it out loud a few times and let them laugh at the idea of a "boring" teacher.
Drills, easy to hard
- Choose the word. "The movie was so (bored / boring)." Students circle one. Start with five sentences like this using the same five word pairs (bored/boring, tired/tiring, excited/exciting, interested/interesting, surprised/surprising).
- Fill the blank. "I feel ___ after my exam." (tired) versus "My exam was ___." (tiring). Mix the two sentence types so students cannot just guess a pattern.
- Fix the mistake. Give five sentences a Korean student might actually write, including "I am boring in this class." Students correct them and say why out loud.
- Build your own. Students write one true -ed sentence and one true -ing sentence about their own week. This is where the rule has to survive without a model sentence next to it.
This is the kind of mistake students will make again weeks later, even after a good class on it. That is normal. The Korean pattern underneath does not disappear after one lesson, so plan to circle back to it for a few minutes every couple of weeks rather than treating it as a one-time fix.