Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mnhnhyouh]

I work in a hagwon in Mokdong. Last week I asked all the kids I have from elementary schools what their English teachers are like, what the classes are like, and what the English they learn there is like.

It seems to me that they learn little English there, as the lessons are very basic, offering "What is this?" and "What is that?" and "My name is....."

The older students I was asking, grade 4, say that all but one or two of their classmates go to hagwons, and they use the class as a rest. One group of 4 boys are learning ABC in school. They sit in my class conjugating verbs, and putting them into sentences, minimum 6 words long. I am about to move them from that to doing the same, but making questions. One girl, in grade 3, has very good English, and is the best in her class, the rest being in grade 6. She goes to Math, Science, Social, Korean, Piano and English hagwons. Her aunty told her to look at school as socialisation and the hagwons as her learning environment.

I understand that you mostly dont see the kids on a daily basis, as I do, and have class sizes in the 40+ area, whereas I see 6 or less at a time.

So my questions:

How do you guys in the elementary school system deal with kids whose elementary school lessons are something they are well beyond?

Do you get a chance to find out which are going to hagwons?

How restricted are you in shoving some of those hagwon kids into separate groups so they can maybe do their hagwon homework in your English class? This would reduce the amount of afterschool time they need to do the punishing homework load they have. (I typically give about 1 - 1.5 hours worth per day).

Just trying to understand the system I am working in a little better.

h

[shantaram]

Hi,

I teach at an elementary school five days a week and have done for eight months now. I will try to answer your questions from my experience.

Firstly, grade 1 and 2 elementary do not learn English. As a special exception to this rule, I taught these grade English last year, and was working on phonics and teaching them to read when the school pulled me back and told me "Little children like a song and a game". The games were hopeless as I could not communicate instructions to them or the teachers. They could not sit still for long enough to learn a song. Meanwhile the one thing I could use to keep them attentive- teaching them to read and write- was closed off from me. Can you tell I'm bitter about it?

This year I don't take Grade 1 and 2. The kids learn "How are you", "How's the weather", "Can you swim" and "Happy birthday" in Grade 3. They learn the alphabet at this stage but are not encouraged to write until Grade 4. Things gradually become more difficult up to Grade 6, when longer sentences are used and different verb tenses are learned.

Now for the kids who go to a hagwon. Not all of them benefit from it but the ones who do usually answer all my questions. So I let them answer the questions sometimes but not all the time. It is very easy and actually quite lazy to let the intelligent children dominate the class. It doesn't help the twenty five other children who still do not understand.

Separating the children to do other work is not a good idea in my opinion. Hearing these children talk benefits other children in class. Having the opportunity to talk with their peers in English is important for the children who already know the speech. There are plenty of opportunities for me to answer their questions, which develops their knowledge further.

[willneverteachagain]

im not sure they are learning much in hagwons

[The_Conservative]

[VirginIslander]

[ddeubel]

I would have hoped this would have got mentioned very quickly. So I am a bit disappointed.

A teacher teaches all students, not just a "level" and each is a responsibility. I don't think as teachers we just, present material and pray the students are at the right stage to learn from it.........we should also be aware of the large area of English which is outside of "knowledge" and more in the realm of "understanding" and "doing/speaking", internalizing......

Okay, I'm getting too fuzzy. What I really mean is that a teacher should use these higher level kids in class. Give them leadership roles in their groups. Use them as examples and yes, if you've prepared the class properly, have them present/explain material and lessons and lead the class......great inspiration to others and a way to give those kids confidence and help them with their own struggles in expressing themselves in English.

To the OP -- I hope that those kids who are conjugating verbs are doing it in a communicative fashion and not just completing exercises.....this happens in hagwons too and this "worksheetitis" is a big contributor to Korean's problems learning English along with the dreadful memorization and translating viruses....

DD

[mnhnhyouh]

[patongpanda]

I'm an elementary teacher. The curriculum is just so incredibly sloowww!
It aims so ridiculously low. They aren't supposed to read and write until Grade 4! If I introduce any reading or writing in my Grade 3 classes I get told off by my co-teacher "They don't know that yet!".

It's a shame 'cos the materials are really well thought and it's very kid friendly just the bar is set so low.

[The_Conservative]

[CasperTheFriendlyGhost]

I teach subject and object pronouns to kids in first and second grade at my hakwan. All but my most basic classes know the S-V-O English structure. Past and future tense is taught no later than second or third grade. By grade three or four, if they can't spell it, they better 'look it up.'

As a rule, I don't play many games with non-kindie students. A student asked me a month ago when we would play a game. I told him in May. He was pretty happy about that.

[mnhnhyouh]

Here is a prime example of what I am talking about. This girl is in grade one in elementary school. Every week, for homework, her class reads 5 pages from a novel, in this case The Little Mermaid. They are required to listen to the CD three times, find new words and write the Korean meaning in the book, and then read it three times. They are then required to give a 10 sentence summary. This is a young class, so they are allowed to just pick the 10 most important sentences, but some are required to write their own. She does this, and will not allow her mother to help.

[cj1976]

I work in a public elementary school and I have to admit that the level of English they are learning is a bit of a joke. The book are pitched at an extremely low level.
For example, the 4th grade books are still teaching the alphabet and numbers from 1 to 12. When I pointed just how easy it was, my co-teacher told me that there some students who cannot speak even at this level. When there are 40 kids in the class, 3 slow learners keep the other 37 back. This apparently is the Korean way of education.

[yingwenlaoshi]

Don't you get it? It's all a fking joke because by the time they reach middle school, all anyone's concerned about is passing English equivalency exams that are mostly multiple choice with Korean explanations to choose the English answer.

It's all a joke. From what I see, that's all that matters. The best we can do is teach them as much as possible before they take a powder.

Really though, if students see a hagwon as "game time" they're either at the wrong hagwon or they're having fun learning. The times of playing at the hagwon are long gone. It's a thing of the past. I know that some exist, most especially in Seoul, where the teacher is between a rock and a hard place with stubborn students and a boss who wants to please them. All with parents who probably call in and say "too much homework/too little homework" all because they're footing the bill and it makes them feel powerful. All the while it's got nothing to do with learning and only bullying and threatening to go next door to ding ding dong smellers hagwon of the probably temporary BS.

Games? Who the hell plays games anymore? Games don't do anything. I guess it's nice to reward the kids once in a while, but games? What games? I hate fking games.

Do any of you self-righteous public school teachers realise how much we teach these kids? We teach them so much it's incredible. Even young teachers stuck in a crappy hagwon.

What's really deplorable are these teachers that are under the students' rule. That's not the way it goes. I remember my very first gig here. In Seoul. I came from Taiwan on a free ticket and ended up in a very bad situation. The owner wasn't paying the current teacher and everything was going downhill. Apparently I was a filler until the owner had the school sold the next month. Only taught there a couple of weeks with no visa. The middle school students there were just a big, huge pain in the ass, barking commands at me to play scrabble and telling me the lesson was done. Couldn't believe it. I was like, "Fk that. Open your goddamn books you bunch of sill ass monkeys and get to fkn work before I make you eat your book, you litte pissants." Telling me what to do. Anyway, I imagine that still goes on and this could contribute somewhat to hagwons having bad reps as far as learning goes. But I mean hey. C'mon. Is this the norm? I doubt it.

My kids actually seem quite happy. And they're learning. You can't come at me with a "You only think they're learning". That's BS. The thing is, with my situation, you really notice the kids that aren't making much leeway and are falling behind. Well, that's where they get left. Behind and eventually gone. It's like scraping the *beep* off your boot. It's too bad because some of them have the capability, and are nice kids, but they just get left too far behind. There's just not enough time for them. If a kid's behind, he has the book. He or she has the workbook. Study at home if you're behind. Serious learners only. The brighter students can get by pretty easily and who knows if or how much studying they do at home. I don't know about the OP's giving out 1 to 1.5 hrs of homework a night. When the hell would they do that? I guess it might be good for them to do that, but... Seems kind of excessive. If the parents were really into them doing it then I guess it's a possiblity, but not all parents want they're kids doing 1.5 hrs of hagwon English homework a night.

I think it's also maybe easier for them with a Korean teacher. An easier time. They get to communicate in their own language and study for these simple tests. Yes, they're simple. Simple because they don't have to think about speaking. The best "English" students are at many times ones who wouldn't know what to say to you if you spoke to them.

[mnhnhyouh]

[Saxiif]

Learning the alphabet in 4th grade? Daaaaamn. My fourth graders (the youngest I teach thank God) are reading The Witches by Roald Dahl with me

But apparently at a lot of their schools (private Korean curriculum elementary schools) they have the English class divided into three levels and they're all in the top level, which is apparently fairly challenging.