Teacher notes — Grammar for Korean Speakers
Why Korean students say "Do you can swim?"
- The error comes from Korean's verb-ending question system, not from carelessness. Students already learned "do" works for regular verbs and overapply it to "can."
- Drill out loud before you explain. At this age, hearing the wrong version and fixing it fast works better than a grammar talk.
- Watch for the same error with "can't": "Do you can't swim?" Fix it the same way.
- One thing to flag for yourself: a few students will still mix "do" and "can" weeks later under pressure (a quiz, a new partner). That's normal. Keep the drill in rotation rather than treating it as fixed after one class.
- For a stronger class: introduce "should" and "will" the same week and ask students to sort all three modals into one "no do needed" group on the board.