Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mheller]

I work at a GEPIK elementary school and have to teach a teachers class. I have taught a few, and used a book that was given to me. This book is absolutely boring and in no way can it even be made more interesting. I was given the ok to teach other material, but am not too sure what to use. I have done some searches and have not come across anything really. As many of you may already know, when you ask for some direction from your co-teacher, they are extremely broad, and in my case, she actually contradicts what she says. On one hand she said to teach conversational English, and then she says to teach them classroom English. As in, what they should say to students in a classroom. Ie.. "Don't talk, be quiet, sit down", etc... Really boring, and that is what was in the book I was given originally..

Basically, what do you folks teach the teachers in your schools? Or... What do you teach for a very very very beginner level adult English conversation class?

[losing_touch]

Well, the people I work with are not beginners. I talk to them about pronunciation most of the time. I focus mainly on suprasegmentals, but they are interested in segmentals thinking they are more important. I guess vowel sounds are coming up soon. They are surprised to hear that there are 15 vowel sounds in English.

[rayjoy]

We're doing classroom English and yeah it is boring, but we do it very quickly. We cover 2-3 units per class, which would take 8-12 classroom hours. Mostly we fly through the key phrases and then play games. They really like the games and I think it gives them some ideas of things to do if they're after stuck substituting an English class.

Once we go through all the lessons for grades 3-6, we're going to do English songs and movies. We totally based this course off of what they said they wanted to learn.

Also, my co-teacher helps me a LOT and teaches part of the class in Korean as their English abilities are so low but their intelligence is very high.

I find teaching adults EFL is so much harder than ESL. In ESL, they can find reasons everyday to speak English. In EFL, especially in Korea, there's not a lot of incentive to know English (other than the principal demanding you go to English class).

[farrepatt]

I have to teach a Teacher's class twice a week. My teacher's are mid-level and we mainly do newspaper articles. I usually go through them and change difficult words to easier ones. I'll also add discussion questions at the end. Most of the time I remove some words and they have to fill them in while I read them the article (the 2nd time through they take turns reading).

My teacher's like strange stories so I get most of my articles from the following sites:

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/index.html

http://www.reuters.com/news/oddlyEnough

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4429957/

I have a bunch of articles from the last year that I could send you if interested.

[ddeubel]

I saw your thread and once again my head started "spinning". I get this question along with "I downloaded X, now what do I do?" so much I start to get dizzy.

But it is a good question. I used to refer others to Interchange, Tell Me More etc but on just seeing your question I decided the buck stops here. Go to our EFL Classroom 2.0 scribd account. Download English Now. You are set to go. I will begin promoting this for use with coteachers in schools, within SMOE. http://www.scribd.com/people/documents/1005075

Good luck,

DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

[maingman]

http://www.youtubeenglish.blogspot.com/

g luck !

[hari seldon]

[cj1976]

I have to teach teachers too. It's quite fun sometimes because you can get to know them well.
I am currently using a book called 'Impact Topics' that has a number of different issues such as smoking in public, couples living together before marriage, the environment etc.
The book has listening and reading tasks but the class is mainly based around group discussion. The teachers seem to like it.

[Faunaki]

I use the English Update from the Korea Herald. I like it cause the topics are fresh, relevant, the vocab used is quite high and more importantly for every paragraph of English there is a paragraph of Korean explaining everything. Even though our co-teachers are English teachers, they still need the extra help.