Korean Job Discussion Forums

[aka Dave]

Today, at my uni (I teach English education, all the students want to be English teachers), the results for the second phase of the Korean English teacher exam were released (this test is called 임 여 고 시, I believe).

In the first phase of the exam, just 13 of 60 or so from our department passed. The first phase is linguistics, reading comprehension, and a lot stuff I don't really deal with in teaching my students. I teach essay composition and conversation.

The second phase is just essay writing. I taught seven essay courses in the past year, 4 being added on in preparation for this test. Finally, for the students who passed the first phase, I taught an intensive class where they wrote 5 essays per day, and I graded the lot and spent 3 hours that night going over corrections one on one with them. I only dealt with undergrads (seniors) so there were just six. But this was 8 hours a day of essay work getting them prepped. The others were graduate students on their second/third try.

Anyhoo, 10 out of the 13 passed (typically less than 50 percent pass, at least accoding to them, and I believe all of the students I prepped passed the essay test). The essay test (phase 2) is supposed to be as hard as phase one so this was just awesome, awesome news.

Especially the ones I know who passed, I'm so happy for them, it's wasn't by any means my teaching, it was their relentless effort that paid off for them. They showed up when the entire uni was dark, shut down, with tons of content to go over.

The third phase is in about 10 days, but it's supposed to be by far the easiest. They pass this test, they're pretty much set for life with a a job, and they are just great, great students and potential teachers.

People on the board complain about co-teachers. I feel quite certain you'd never complain about these women. They rock.

[Xuanzang]

[aka Dave]

Sadly, no undergrad males pased the first phase. However, there were some grad students who did, but I didn't deal with them (even this is inaccurate, I did teach a class for grad students in November). But I don't know which male grad students passed. At most 2 passed.

[Bigfeet]

I have six KETs and they're a mixed bunch. I think, generally, the younger they are, the better their English speaking ability is. My main handler is the exception though. She's one of the newest teachers, teaching middle school, and she can barely speak English. She must be super book-smart.