Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ed1980]

anybody have a particular site they use ?? - i need to get my adults talking more - and some more thought provoking material is needed


cheers

[Juggertha]

easiest thing is a news paper.

but theres a fair bit o' books out there.

[ed1980]

will be honest - im a new teacher and although everything is fine so far - i would be more confident if i had specialised discussion questions backing up an article
cheers

[peppermint]

Every so often the students need a break and so do you. This site has a lot of conversation questions organized by subject. Take the time to go through the questions and weed out the ones that are basically the same.

[Howard Roark]

Newspapers are the best. And you don't have to buy them. Just go online and look for interesting articles. Everyday I visit www.koreaherald.co.kr, www.joongang.co.kr, www.koreatimes.co.kr and some other Canadian and American papers' sites.

Check out Annie's Mailbox in the Korea Herald. It's a "Dear Abby" type advice column. The topics are great for conversation, lots of family, relationship, and current issues. I just print them out and stick some discussion questions at the bottom. Definitely give this a try.

[the saint]

I've been getting stuff of the web from mostly health sections e.g. Face transplants possible from the BBC. Reuters.com has an Oddly Enough section with some quirky news in it most of which are fairly brief reports.

In preparation for the class, I break questions down into these categories:
questions on specific vocab
questions on what the news article actually means
questions on what the implications of the news are for the country concerned
questions on the relevancy to, in this case, Korean life and culture

We then work through these questions in groups, with feedback and some mixing of partners etc.

As for a book - Penny Ur wrote Discussions that Work and I find these work well. There is also another book called Keep Talking by Kippell which has everything from discussions to much more simple activities.

[the_beaver]

They're just questions and there are a few mistakes and a lot of duplicate questions, but if you're discussing, for example, music (as my class is tomorrow) choose some of the questions for pre or post activity discussion.

http://iteslj.org/questions/

[Squid]

Cosmopolitan agony columns are a doozy, then your home country newspaper and others... village Voice is a good one.

Push the envelope with them, have them list Korean taboos then gather material on them. I usually do one "hard" topic first up- the comparative merits of machine plate fittings in vacuum cleaner production... bundle of laughs it's not but it forces them to recognize technical journalism from say entertainment journalism, art journalism etc.

Follow it with a couple of weird stories from the Sydney Morning Herald "Strange But True" column and my time with them flies... I enjoy it and they get a laugh and a kick out of it too.

Don't be afraid to ask them hard questions with moral dilemmas attached- they're often the best starting points.

Just being helpful.

Squid... split shift fatigued.

[peppermint]

I foten ask my students what the big news stories in the K-language papers are. They're often quite different than what's in the Herald/ Times etc.

[kangnamdragon]

I would recommend not using newspapers published in Korea because most of the articles are written by Koreans. Students generally want to read that which has been written by native speakers.

[IconsFanatic]

BBC World.

On the whole, Koreans know diddly-squat about the outside world, so most of my students are quite interested when I present them with stories about Africa, South Asia, etc.

[ed1980]

thanks for the link to all those questions...

anybody else have some useful links?????


cheers

[SuperHero]

http://teentimes.org - it's for Korean teens in English and pretty good. I use it for my university students occaisionally.

[OiGirl]

This site has current news articles (with simplified versions, summaries, audio, and video) with comprehension and discussion questions:
http://literacynet.org/cnnsf/

This site has news summaries for learners and comprehension/test-prep type questions:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/pop/index.html

[just because]

I use teen times for my high school students and it works well as they have articles on Korean pop culture.

Also, i'm a big fan of the BBC world site as world. Very good English as well as a world perspective makes good teaching for more intelligent students.