Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Jackofall]

I am working for a new Foreign Language High School that has just one foreign teacher, me! There was supposed to be two but he decided not to come and now im stuck. I will only be working 18 hrs a week but the problem is how the classes are composed. Since it is like an intensive situation, I will have 3 classes of students 4 times a week, for around 18 weeks of class. So if ya are figuring the math I need 72 lesson ideas for each term of which there are two. That is how I figured out I need 144 lessons.

I asked them what they want me to teach but they said, �Just make their oral English better. � The book is no help, as it is all just dialogs and it only has 12 lessons at that. If I ask the other Korea teachers they just tell me the same thing.

Sooooo, what is a guy to do? I really cannot come up with 142 lesson plans. I was thinking I could dedicate some classes to games and pronunciation, but besides that I got maybe 50 ideas for class. Does anyone have any constructive ideas on how I should handle this?

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Stock up on stuff at a bookstore with a good EFL selection. I'd strongly recommend getting English Communication 2 by Putlack and Cho for a start.

Set target goals on what you want your students to be able to do with English: the seven most important verb tenses, core vocabularly, up to 7-digit numbers, writing a simple paragraph, etc. It might also help to do some research on implicit versus explicit learning and task-based learning.

[agoodmouse]

I wish I could work with my high school students that many times a week. During my first year I was happy to plan fewer lessons, but now that I'm in my second year I'd give anything to be in your situation. You can make some real progress.

[Hotpants]

If you divide up your total number of classes into:

eg, listening/reading/writing/speaking

or grammar/vocabulary

then it doesn't appear so daunting to find enough lessons, especially if you use a key textbook or worksheet set from which to extract items for each segment.

You can also throw in longer project-based tasks such as producing a video documentary, designing a game show, planning an advertising campaign, producing a newsletter...

Throw in a weekly test/quiz and monthly video/karaoke/art/picnic class, then that cuts it down further.

[BS.Dos.]

[Suwoner10]

You have the crappiest job in Korea. However, you'll learn how to make lesson plans well.

[BS.Dos.]

Get yourself down to Kyobo bookstore and grab a copy of either this or this

They're both excellent and you can pull whole lessons straight out of them in about 2-minutes flat. I used both of them over Winter camp (book 1 with my freshmen and 2 with my HS 1st and 2nd graders) and they more than paid for themselves over the 4-weeks I was teaching.

Not sure what age and level you'll be teaching, but considering your current predicament, I'd say they'd make a good investment.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Hmm, it seems like one of my grade 3 HS classes is finally getting sick of English Communication II. Today they were asking me 'when is this book pinishee? ... it is never ending story.' So I caved into their request that I spend the last ten minutes of the lesson with me telling them about my first love. It was amazing how attentively they listened. Then...

'Teachah, you and girlfriend go bedroom?' they all wanted to know.

'No comment'.

'Teachah, bedroom I know all things' one of them announced proudly.

'Um, Ok...'

'You tell us bitch story?' another one of them asked.

WTF??? Where did she learn that word and what does she think it means? OK, this route was a mistake.

'All right, how about we finish with a music video?'

[nicholas_chiasson]

-what does bitch story mean?

[agoodmouse]

Sounds like an utterance Samir Nagheenanajar from Office Space would say.

[nobbyken]

[elliemk]

B.S.Dos - hey, dude- nothing like posting a link to Amazon that gives you credit for when people buy the books you recommended, is there? Anyway, that is a commerical for you, basically, and not allowed on this board. Just a heads up.

[nomad-ish]

[BS.Dos.]

[JMO]

I'm a little ignorant on foreign language high schools. How big are your class sizes?

I do an adult conversation program at a University and had a similar problem(for the first few sessions). i had coworkers who gave me a lot of help though. If you have an idea of their level, you could concentrate on a particular grammar point each week(or maybe for a block of 3 classes, that might fit better). Since the idea is to improve spoken ability stay away from writing as much as possible. Use the first class to model the point/s and have a very guided conversation activity. In the next two classes you have more conversation activities based on this point. They would become less guided in the last two classes. The point would be re-enforced with written homework and you could play a game at the end of the third class.

There are lots of places to get conversation lesson plans online. Search this guys posts

http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=6581

He had a cool download with lots of esl links and a website also.


edit: also recently I found a website that I've been using more and more..

http://www.eslpod.com/website/

lots of conversations and vocabulary to base a class around.