Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Qinella]

Our hagwon recently start a class, called 'Speaking Club', for 1st-3rd graders. Let me give you some details about it.

- It's taught by a Korean teacher (who is fluent in English).
- The teacher speaks Korean almost exclusively. The few times she does speak English, she immediately follows it with a Korean interpretation.
- They are learning the alphabet at a rate of two to three letters a week, and not in order. The designers of the program have categorized the letters by presumed level of difficulty for Korean speakers to learn.
- During class, they do a lot of repeating. Examples: "I see a firetruck."; "The cat climbs the tree."; "The calendar says Monday."; "I'm getting wet."

Personally, I'm very skeptical about this program. The students have been coming five days a week for a month now and still do not understand anything I say when I talk to them before/after class. The only original English I've heard any of the kids produce are greetings. "Hi" and "hello" to be exact.

My biggest problems with this program's method are that English is only used when copying the tape or teacher, the kids aren't learning the alphabet, the language they are exposed to in class isn't applicable in their lives, and there seems to be no organization at all.

I've only taught absolute beginners twice, but in both cases I had them answering a slew of questions, and producing their own little sentences, within just a couple of weeks. They also knew the alphabet, in order, in about two weeks. I taught all this using Korean only sparingly. With these students, though, I ask them questions using "do you like.." or "what is.." forms and they can't understand. "What are you doing?" elicits a "ne? moragoyo?"



Kinda venting, but your opinions are welcome. Maybe I'm being too critical, and this kind of program takes a while to get up to full speed, like a semi-truck.

[spliff]

Yeah, but how much dosh does it rake in for the school, now that's the biggest consideration...

[Saxiif]

This is the standard Korean teaching style, the same sort of things happens in middle school. My wife teaches teenagers the same kind of way, they do very well on their middleschool tests (what my wife gets paid to make them do), they can diagram sentences very well and they can't speak a sentence to save their lives.

The kids aren't going to learn shit.

[Qinella]

[ChuckECheese]

[Qinella]

[oneofthesarahs]

I never cease to be amazed by how much kids can learn even under really sh*tty teaching. We used to have a teacher who rarely spoke English in a beginner class, which is probably because the kids had better pronunciation than her. (She later got fired.) I had the kids once a week, and I was always astounded by how much they were actually picking up on. Having you around will help them. And if you speak NO Korean in class, regardless of your ability to, it might motivate them to try to pick up a couple of phrases.