Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sketchforsummer]

I teach at a rural boys' middle school. My students are engaged and largely sweet, but they are incapable of forming complete sentences. In fact, I think they don't know what a sentence is. They don't know any English grammatical terms so S+V+O explanations are of no use. My co-teachers don't think this is important and I don't have any ideas of how to teach them how to create sentences. Has anyone successfully managed to get their students to do more than shout out single words? How??

[moosehead]

teach them to read. out loud. talk to them. it will come.

[EzeWong]

This is my largest concern when teaching ESL to middle school students. Those without English hagwon experience don't have proper understandings to identify proper sentence structure and the necessity to form complete sentences.

Ie. My students will always group adjective with noun, with always the ajective following the noun... eg. Students want to tell me that a student is using a cell phone they will say "Teacher bad."

Unfortuantely I haven't enough time to get them to understand it.
I'm planning for next semester to play a number of games (a months worth) that's based on ONLY stucturing sentences.

They will be given a list of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. And have to forumlate them so it matches the picture and what I say.
So for example, They have a bunch of lamenated words cut out. I will show them a picture of dog chasing a cat. They will construct a matching sentence to fit the description. Unfortunately, this only addresses visual and tactile learners. I'm still thinking of something for auditory learners to work with.

And each time they can forumlate a sentence, I'll up the game by adding prepositions and articles. Where does the preposition go? Where does the article go. In the beginning it WILL be a guessing game, but I'm hoping they will learn through instict where they go. If not they will practice the game so much it will become second nature...

Now the only problem is actually GETTING them to play the game... I work at a Public school. It just reeks of boring to me.

[D.D.]

I show my students youtube videos and they need to write 5 sentences about the video. The rule is that each sentence must be 7 words or more.

This helps them to practice writing and gives them an activity to keep them busy so I can go from group tp group talking to them.

Their writing has improved and they talk now almost using sentences most of the time.

[blackjack]

[losing_touch]

This one bothers me too! I teach middle school students at a hagwon. I was told they know their parts of speech. My boss loves pronunciation, so I decided to jump in. I was teaching word stress when I realized that my students didn't even know their parts of speech! I was trying to illustrate that some words have different stress patterns with identical spelling. Everything was going well until I had to separate a noun from a verb.

I have now been teaching grammar for the last two weeks to get them up to speed. My students are fairly advanced. I can't talk about English clearly without identifying certain parts of speech.

Each class is progressing at a different speed, but they are getting the idea. Now that I have covered nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, I am framing in terms of sentence creation:

I walk.
He walks. (subject-verb agreement)
The boy walks. (taught the articles too)
The small boy walks. (adjectives)
The small boy walks quickly. (adverbs)

Well, it has been a real pain and seriously boring for me. However, my students have made it this far. I will finish off the week with prepositions. I hate teaching grammar, but they should be able to talk about English in English.

[rooster_2006]

This is a problem for me, too.

I explain it to my students in Korean and they get it. They churn out grammatically perfect sentences -- FOR THAT LESSON.

And then the next class, when the grammar could be used very suitably, it's back to:

Teacher: What is this?
Student: Pen.

Teacher: How was your weekend?
Student: Good.

Teacher: What did you do over the last week?
Student: School.

It helps to say "문장으로 대답해!" in an irritated voice, but generally only for that student. Then you ask the next student and once again, it's one word.

Seriously, this was not a problem when I learned Korean. I was making complete sentences a few weeks in. I don't get why it's so hard for Koreans learning English to do the same thing after YEARS of instruction.

[Fishead soup]

Side By Side

Listen and repeat+ Fill in the blanks+ Substitution activities.

[Underwaterbob]

I like to do information gap exercises. That way all the students can be working at the same time, and many of them genuinely try to do the activity actually reading the sentences in the dialog. Something about having that little incomplete slip of paper all to themselves gets them motivated. Making them perform them in front of the class afterward also gives them some incentive to actually do the speaking and ask questions when they're not sure of a word.

The transition from reading a dialog to actually speaking is another matter. Call and response exercises work somewhat well, but if you do them too much their responses become formulaic. "I'm fine. Thank you, and you?" being a prime example.

Unfortunately, especially in middle school, as long as speaking is not a major part of their grades or has any effect on which High School/University they'll get into, it'll never be a huge priority for any student. Unless you've got a super-keener who's trying to get into some international high school in Seoul.

[Fishead soup]

[Becka]

I give students visual cues by colour-coding the basic parts of speech or key phrases that get substituted in the lesson. I'm at an elementary school, so I keep it limited to 2 or 3 colours. With a few basic examples, the pattern becomes easy to see. But then again, I'm a visual kinda person, so I tend to teach that way.

[DrOctagon]

[Ya-ta Boy]

Lots of good ideas so far.

One of my nicknames when I teach lower level students is 'Mr. Sentence' because I demand they give me answers in complete sentences. They groan about it at first, but my (adult) students know its important and appreciate the help.

One method that I find useful is to write the question on the whiteboard, then the answer just below it, with arrows showing the switch in position between the subject and verb, with the words that keep the same position immediately below so they SEE what changes in word order and what doesn't. Then I ask a series of questions that follow the same pattern and point at words if necessary.

I think it's also vital in the first or second lesson with low level students to teach the names of the parts of speech. Then later you can say, "You forgot the preposition".

It's also useful to use hand gestures. In the beginning I hold out my hand with the thumb and forefinger wide apart when I say, "Make a sentence". Another is to make a flipping motion with the fingers to indicate the word order is backwards.

[VanIslander]

Make a game of it.

Three word answers = 1 pt
(1 pt more for each word added)

I have no problem whatsoever getting even a 'B' class of beginners to say at least three word answers in a matter of minutes, the more knowledgeable students scoring easy points until the others catch up (helps to team them up, have strong with weak students, require rotating team members to answer).

Of course my class sizes are 10-12 students in a hagwon. But still, works like a charm from day one.

Large public school classes might require more prep, patience and less participation. Dunno.

[VanIslander]

Another game I play with them is to use a deck of cards:

the number on the card indicates how many words in a sentence must be said (2="thank you", "of course", etc.... 3="I don't know." 4="You can do it" etc). NO repeat of sentences. At first they can repeat patterns and change a few words but as they get good at it the rule changes and no copying of any words from previous answers.

8, 9, 10 are challenging but even grade 3 elementary B-level classes can do it (they figure out: "I like pizza, chicken, cake, hot dogs, soup, cookies and hamburgers" reviewing lists but I insisting on the proper single use of 'and' second from last).

J, Q, K, A is fun: Jack means ANOTHER team has to answer two words, Q= another answers 3, K= another answers 4, Ace means every other team must answer with 5 word sentence (and if every other team does answer correctly then the team that played the ace must pick up a card, if even one other team doesn't answer correctly that team picks up a card).

The team with no cards remaining at the end (or least number if time runs out) is the winner!

I made the game up on the spot one day, tweaked it with various classes, and now it's an excellent tool I whip out at least once a month for every class and play it over the last 15-20 minutes of a class.