Korean Job Discussion Forums

[IncognitoHFX]

I'm having a lot of trouble making up new lesson plan ideas. I'm starting to recycle a little bit, and I have the feeling that my "conversation classes" aren't very effective.

My delivery is fine and I only have a few relative problems with classroom control and management. Rather, I have the sneaking feeling that everyone thinks I have a good class because I'm comfortable delivering it effectively without pauses, but the material the class is based on is rubbish.

I know what my student's weaknesses are. They've been learning English for ten years and can't even ask how to use the washroom. They have semi-decent vocabularies, but they can't make sentences and most can hardly speak more than one word at the time. They understand when I speak in long sentences yet they can't produce their own original sentences.

For example, today we talked about describing places and events. Key word was describe. "How can we describe the Olympics? What would it feel like if you were there? Use 'I saw', 'It was' and 'I felt like' as sentences starters" (showed an explanatory, simple Powerpoint and had the Co-teacher translate), then my response was: "BASEBALL! TEACHER, SOCCER!! SWIMMING!! PELPUSEU!!"

...and that was an "advanced" class.

That being said, what should I do with them?

My lesson plans revolve around their textbook dialogues as I've been instructed. I take a dialogue from the textbook, spend a few minutes explaining it, and then give them some ideas for forming sentences, we do a group activity that revolves around making new sentences based on the topic that was covered in the textbook's dialogue, and then we do a worksheet or play a game that enhances what we learned.

Usually I've lost their attention and focus by the second or third step. This is not entertaining and I'm really not creative when it comes to making this kind of thing "fun". I can usually gauge how it's going by looking at my co-teacher. At the beginning, I start with some jokes, show them some pictures or tell them a funny thing and get everyone interested. They usually swallow my bait but by the time we get the ball rolling and start getting into English-English-English I can see in my co-teacher's face that it's not fun or interesting or informative anymore.

That, and my lessons are beginning to be repetitive now that I've run out of ideas. I tried all the games I could think of, some worked and others flopped. I recycled them and eventually the games that worked even flopped. I wanted to have a new game each week but I can think of any that will actually work with my students. When I read Dave's or look online for ideas, I find most of that stuff won't work with my students or with High School students. Or, it's stuff that would take weeks to prepare for, which is a waste if it flops (ie: craft type things).

I want to create a procedural, practical curriculum that improves on their speaking and conversational abilities over a period of time, but I'm not expert and I don't even know where to begin with such a thing.

Sometimes I feel like I have some great ideas and they just... sink.

That and I only see each 45-50 member class once a week. I did the same dialogue twice and they didn't even notice it was a repeat (I had to reteach the dialogue part because it has been more than three weeks since we had class).

How can I go about this in a professional way?

[Juregen]

Making a curriculum is nothing more then establishing priorities and sequence of learning.

Creating blocks of assessment and how to proceed from one block to the other.

My curriculum is based on abilities rather then knowledge and in order to proceed to the next level, they need to actively show that they can use 90% of their respective level. (the few things they miss can be picked up next level for instance)

That is also how I design my classes. Part of my class is introducing vocab, then go quickly over the grammar points I want them to acquire, and then create an activity that supports both the vocab and grammar in an interactive manner.

I always found that concentrating rather on "knowing" then "being able to" actually slows down the learning process.

Everyone wants to experience improvements in their communication. It is inherently motivational.