Korean Job Discussion Forums

[agoodmouse]

I work for GEPIK at an academic high school in Gyeonggi-do. For my classes, I take participation and presentation points down in a gradebook, because students' points in my class are incorporated into their other English Conversation grade.

Is this typical? I wonder how many other GEPIK teachers are doing this, and how they feel about it.

Personally, making students earn their grades empowers me to reward student participation. For example, I take down a student's student ID number when he/she answers a question, and I give them larger points for giving presentations in the ending 20-25 minutes.

It's a big pain, to be sure, to record every participation point, but I feel it makes students take my class more seriously.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

It's unfortunately not typical, but if you can do it, great.

[Fishead soup]

Consider yourself lucky my school forces me to give out a terrible oral exam. Students memorize a dialogue and I'm not permited to give them below 7 a total waste of time.

[I-am-me]

I am very interested in your grading method. I had the same idea planned since I will be focusing on their participation and speaking. I hav not heard about any grading yet, but those are the only areas I have to grade on. Student ID number? I have to look into that.

[espoir]

[schwa]

Heres what I've got going on in my middle school (epik):

All my classes are group-based (6X6) & the co-teacher & I keep a running scoreboard on the chalkboard every class for every positive student input. Each student has a personal score chart & earns a teacher's signature in a box if their team comes in first. Only takes a minute at the end of class. Groups are periodically shuffled to keep things fair. Come report card time, my co-teacher tabulates results & awards from 0 to 5 points for participation as a percent of their final grade. It does motivate them.

I also get to write 5 of the 25 questions on their midterm & final exams, based on the content of my conversation classes (which arent textbook-related). Granted, multiple choice questions are a poor test of listening & speaking, but it improves attention in my classes, students keep my handouts filed, & they study them. It puts an onus on me to come up with clear & suitable materials, which is fine.

I think my school is quite progressive but a native speaker teacher in any school struggling with inattention in their classes could suggest ideas like these to their co-teachers. I just wanted to point out that such arrangements are feasible.

[xCustomx]

I have a class list, with each students ID number and their name. If they participate, volunteer to speak, or do well when called upon, I can give them a plus. If they don't bring their book, talk too much, don't complete their work, etc., I give a minus. This is very effective and I wish I had started this two years ago. At the end of the semester I will give my tally to their English teacher and their score in my class will have some effect on their participation grade.

[Countrygirl]

I work in an elementary school and not a highschool, but I have learned to value of the student number. If one of my students is not listening and repeating or singing the song then I call that's student's number and make them stand up and we go again.

I am trying to learn Korean and I cannot, for the life of me, replicate Korean pronunciation perfectly. My kids make fun of my pronunciation all the time. So, although listening and repeating is so perfectly boring, I've used the lazy students as an excuse to repeat the video again and again.

Normally it takes 3 or 4 times for all the students to repeat the dialogue at the same time. I think this is enough repetitions for the students who don't go to hogwans to get the dialogue into their brains. My theory is that I am really there for the students who don't have the luxury of going to hogwans and that listening and repeating is a necessary part of language learning. If I didn't know the student's numbers then I wouldn't be able to control the class as well as I do.

I find that even though I have absolutely no control over their grades, the students don't know that, and even if I just call their number and tell them to behave, it's much better than in the past when I tried to disciplined the class as a whole.

[adamosity]

While I'm at a private high school, some things I do may work for you.

1) My school just has a general English grade--I get 10 points out of 100 for their average grade in my class.

2) My grading consists of book checks (to make sure they do the work), quiz grades (about every 3 classes), participation/behavior (but be careful here, if they move every class, that makes this almost impossible to do, and making a seating chart is okay once or twice is okay, any more is a waste of class time), and a memorized speech in front of the class.

3) That being said, remember that in Korean schools (at least at the high school level), it is impossible to flunk out as long as you are there. Students can get a diploma even if they are failing every class.

4) Everything has to be done by student number. There are too many kids to do it any other way.

5) If you have a co-teacher, they can help with checking kids. I do not use a co-teacher in any of my classes, so there are times that the checking interrupts the class flow.

--adam

[Nierlisse]

I am very jealous of you. I have no power. None. It makes motivation (already terrible in my vocational HS) almost non-existent.

[bassexpander]

It's my opinion that it's all a ruse.

I don't believe agoodmouse works for GEPIK, or at a high school.

[agoodmouse]

bassexpander, retreat to your thread about linking the CELTA with death threats. You are so unbelievable.

To everyone else, with that said, I do work at a public high school in Anyang, and I do grade my students according to their participation in presentations. My English conversation class is cross-listed and tied into first graders classes as 'Specially Designed English' class (as the best Korean translation of the course title permits) and with the second graders as English Conversation. My class constitutes 5% of the aforementioned class counterparts, and on the listening and reading tests, for which every mid-term and final I write questions for the Waykook/English Language exam, I've got a sizeable chunk of their grade there, too.

I break down the grading into a spread of 5 points, with all 5 points given to perfect presentations with focus on key intonation and enthusiasm, and points 4, 3, 2, and 1 given to lower quality presentations. Fluent students do not always get the full five points, though. I've made a small, handy rubric for the 5 points, because students come up to me when they've received their grade and begin confer with me about it.

For participation, I give students one point. Participation points are gained by answering and asking questions when I'm eliciting information in the post-presentation times (as students are now keen to give their ear to what their classmates are saying in their presentations), and when I'm concept checking key points and fleshing out the nuances of meaning in the sometimes quirky, but always engaging dialogues we read over when we do such dialogues.

This year it's easier to quickly record a student's ID number because they sit in sequentially ordered desks. However, last year, they didn't. This has its advantages and disadvantages. Last year, students could sit whenever they pleased, and usually the most engaging students would sit together and so give outstanding presentations each class as they so pleased. This meant the not-so-engaged students sat together and would wander in thought. This year, students are sitting sequentially. And so there's a mix of different-leveled, or differently engaged, students sitting side by side; it's not always that the smartest students get the better presentation points -- the ones who produce the best are sometimes the funniest students, but not the most academically engaged ones. There was the problem of desks getting scribbled on last year. This is why the students are now sitting in sequence. It's better for me, a bit, though, as I don't have to ask for their student ID numbers so much and at the same time sound so impersonal or almost unaffected by their presentations or participation.

Here's a fun little photograph I took with my Nikon D90 today (with edited barrel distortion fixing with PTLens). It's got big Buddah float balloon in it that looks like the Michelin tire guy.