Site Search:
 
Speak Korean Now!
Teach English Abroad and Get Paid to see the World!
Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
 
 FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   MemberlistMemberlist   UsergroupsUsergroups   RegisterRegister 
 ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 

University - Does each course have set goals, skills?

 
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Job-related Discussion Forum
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
SeoulMan6



Joined: 27 Jul 2005
Location: Gangwon-do

PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2009 9:49 pm    Post subject: University - Does each course have set goals, skills? Reply with quote

Calling university instructors!

My university has very little structure to its program. For example, there is no list of what grammar, vocabulary, skills, etc. are to be taught at each level. We are given a textbook for each course and that becomes the "goal". I'm finding this to be a major problem.

Does your university have specific course goals so that you know what to teach and what your students have learned previously?

If so, would you mind sharing so that I/we don't have to reinvent the wheel?

Your help would be much appreciated!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
D.D.



Joined: 29 May 2008

PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2009 9:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are you there to teach conversational English or to teach grammar and vocab?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
SeoulMan6



Joined: 27 Jul 2005
Location: Gangwon-do

PostPosted: Wed May 20, 2009 10:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

D.D. wrote:
Are you there to teach conversational English or to teach grammar and vocab?


Well, that's the thing... we don't really have any guidelines so who knows what I'm supposed to teach.

We have "conversation" courses and we have "writing" courses. A co-worker said (far from anything concrete) that we aren't supposed to teach grammar. But who really knows because, again, there are no set goals or anything.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Young FRANKenstein



Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Location: Castle Frankenstein (that's FRONKensteen)

PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 1:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

SeoulMan6 wrote:
Well, that's the thing... we don't really have any guidelines so who knows what I'm supposed to teach.

We have "conversation" courses and we have "writing" courses. A co-worker said (far from anything concrete) that we aren't supposed to teach grammar. But who really knows because, again, there are no set goals or anything.

In my case, we have no set "goals" either. I'm left to do what I want in my classes. With my sophomores, I have them for conversation. They have Korean profs for grammar, reading, and listening; total of 18 hours a week between the four of us.

For conversation, my goal is to get them speaking. One day I'll do vocab with them, but the other three days are nothing but speaking exercises. I don't teach grammar unless there seems to be a problem or they direct a question to me.

My juniors are not even taught conversation. At the junior level, they get EAP classes. My class is EAP tourism management (I use a T.M. textbook), and the Korean profs teach EAP hotel management or EAP restaurant management. The goal is those classes are to use English within those subject areas, not conversation, so we do a lot of situational English and customer service English and phone English and....
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
SeoulMan6



Joined: 27 Jul 2005
Location: Gangwon-do

PostPosted: Sun May 24, 2009 2:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Young FRANKenstein wrote:
SeoulMan6 wrote:
Well, that's the thing... we don't really have any guidelines so who knows what I'm supposed to teach.

We have "conversation" courses and we have "writing" courses. A co-worker said (far from anything concrete) that we aren't supposed to teach grammar. But who really knows because, again, there are no set goals or anything.

In my case, we have no set "goals" either. I'm left to do what I want in my classes. With my sophomores, I have them for conversation. They have Korean profs for grammar, reading, and listening; total of 18 hours a week between the four of us.

For conversation, my goal is to get them speaking. One day I'll do vocab with them, but the other three days are nothing but speaking exercises. I don't teach grammar unless there seems to be a problem or they direct a question to me.

My juniors are not even taught conversation. At the junior level, they get EAP classes. My class is EAP tourism management (I use a T.M. textbook), and the Korean profs teach EAP hotel management or EAP restaurant management. The goal is those classes are to use English within those subject areas, not conversation, so we do a lot of situational English and customer service English and phone English and....


Thanks for the answer.

You're lucky to meet with them so often. At my school we only meet once a week. I think once a week is more usual, right?

You said your goal is "to get them speaking." That's a goal of mine too, but I want something much more specific and that differentiates between levels.

Can anyone help? What goals do your university courses have?
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
PRagic



Joined: 24 Feb 2006

PostPosted: Sun May 24, 2009 2:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In general, consider your 'goals' to be whatever is outlined in the book you were assigned to teach. The assigned title of your class might help to clue you (and the students) in, too.

Is it a conversation book? If yes, then your broad goal is to facilitate conversation. Is the book taught over one semester? If yes, then your goal is to cover the material in the one text book, plus, time considered, whatever else you think may be important for the students in your professional opinion.

Too bad your department can't answer your question, and too bad ESL professionals aren't included in the program development stages. Seems like you want concrete examples from others' university programs, but I doubt you're going to get many. Besides, even if you did, it is dubious as to whether or not it would be applicable to your specific school and situation.

Roll with it. And, hey, a little LESS structure is sometimes what you need here to get the ball rolling!
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Young FRANKenstein



Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Location: Castle Frankenstein (that's FRONKensteen)

PostPosted: Sun May 24, 2009 2:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SeoulMan6 wrote:
At my school we only meet once a week. I think once a week is more usual, right?

At the uni level, I would think twice a week is more the norm than once. All English classes on my campus meet twice per week normally, with the exception of intensive classes (4 times per week, like my sophs) or night classes (once per week, but for three hours each).

Quote:
You said your goal is "to get them speaking." That's a goal of mine too, but I want something much more specific and that differentiates between levels.

I don't have to differentiate between levels. My students are already divvied up by ability before the semester starts. As for speaking exercises, one on one "interviews" works best at the beginning for me... they pair up with their friend who they are presumably comfortable with and start answering the questions given them. Since I don't lecture, I'm free to walk around and help where it's needed or stand there for "encouragement" while they speak. Get them to write down the answers (and later on, followup questions and their answers), so they have to practice listening as well.

Tie in their speaking to a daily participation grade, and let them know every day what they got. When their participation scores are 20% (or more) of their final grade, they'll start to pick it up once they realize sitting on their ass silently will lose them 2 whole letter grades.

They're uni students, so by the time I get them for their sophomore year, there is no expectation on their part to play games in English class any more, and they are expected to work.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
SeoulMan6



Joined: 27 Jul 2005
Location: Gangwon-do

PostPosted: Mon May 25, 2009 5:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm shocked that university instructors are content to have no goals beyond getting students to speak and covering what is in the book. I'm not satisfied having Pearson-Longman (or Cambridge, etc.) tell me what I'm supposed to be teaching.

To me, conversation class is not just conversation practice. It's about learning HOW to have a conversation in English, and that includes teaching a variety of skills and information including grammar, vocabulary, conversation micro-skills (see Brown's Teaching by Principles), conversation strategy, functions, tasks, etc. This is where I want to have set goals and standards.

My classes are labeled things like "Intermediate Conversation." Without goals, how do you label some as ready for the intermediate class or having enough knowledge and ability to warrant a passing grade?

I AM an EFL professional and I want to create standards in my department. I assumed that other universities around Korea would have these already and we wouldn't need to completely re-invent the wheel.

Anyway, thanks for the responses and good luck.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Young FRANKenstein



Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Location: Castle Frankenstein (that's FRONKensteen)

PostPosted: Mon May 25, 2009 9:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

SeoulMan6 wrote:
I'm shocked that university instructors are content to have no goals beyond getting students to speak and covering what is in the book. I'm not satisfied having Pearson-Longman (or Cambridge, etc.) tell me what I'm supposed to be teaching.

I use the text only to give us a skeleton frame to guide which topics we're doing during the semester, but I go way off the reservation in how I teach each topic. With four 90-minutes classes per unit, I have to come up with 75-90% of my own material.

Quote:
To me, conversation class is not just conversation practice. It's about learning HOW to have a conversation in English, and that includes teaching a variety of skills and information including grammar, vocabulary, conversation micro-skills (see Brown's Teaching by Principles), conversation strategy, functions, tasks, etc.

As I said, in my case, the Korean profs are there with the grammar and vocabulary. I'm there to bring everything together as a whole. As you said, I'm teaching them HOW to have a conversation... when I started getting them to actively listen and ask followup questions, they hated it. They were not used to listening actively, they were not used to creating questions off the cuff relative to what the other person said, they were not used to talking about something not in a book sitting in front of them. Conversation is not simply a list of related questions in a book. It took a while to disabuse them of that idea.

It took a few weeks of practice, but now they are quite comfortable having conversations mostly textbook-free. Compared to the beginning of term, it's like night and day. I'm looking forward to having them again next semester when we can tackle topics beyond the regular fare.

Quote:
This is where I want to have set goals and standards.

It sounds like you already know what you want and need to cover. Just do that, and if admin doesn't like it, it's not exactly on you, is it?

If there are differently-leveled classes, do they not have standards on who is qualified for each class? Use those standards to guide what to teach them (ie teach the beginners what they need to know to qualify for the intermediate class, and int to qualify for advanced, whatever).

If your school doesn't even have standards for what a beginner student is or an intermediate student, then leveling them is pointless and you are completely on your own. Without support from admin, there's not much you can do except govern your class the way you want to, rather than worry about what the school wants (since it would be obvious the school has no idea what they want).
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
ddeubel



Joined: 20 Jul 2005

PostPosted: Mon May 25, 2009 11:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It sounds like you are looking for some standards by which to base student achievement (and goal setting ) upon. The WIDA are the major world standards (outside of MFLs area). http://www.wida.us/standards/elp.aspx

I use and think the functional approach of Canada's "Benchmarks" where student achievement is rated upon what they can do with language, are invaluable. See them here. http://www.doxtop.com/browse/1e941d0b/ont-curr-guidelines-k-12-esl.aspx

The SOLOM (Student Oral language observation model) is a rubric which gives a non criterian reference assessment of speaking ability. You can use it to give a more placement/generalized assessment of speaking fluency.
http://www.doxtop.com/browse/bf79b7fd/solom-rubric.aspx

But for that matter, you might take any of the objectives from any textbook like Interchange etc... (these guidelines are located at the front) and pull from those and make your own achievement standards. It is invaluable to have some way to assess and achieve in a classroom or what's a heaven for?

cheers,

DD
http://eflclassroom.com
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
SeoulMan6



Joined: 27 Jul 2005
Location: Gangwon-do

PostPosted: Tue May 26, 2009 2:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Young FRANKenstein wrote:

It took a few weeks of practice, but now they are quite comfortable having conversations mostly textbook-free. Compared to the beginning of term, it's like night and day. I'm looking forward to having them again next semester when we can tackle topics beyond the regular fare.


So I imagine it would bother you tremendously if you had to do this every semester with every class because your co-workers are NOT doing this, and so you have to do this "basic" stuff even with "advanced" learners? If your goal was the same as the departmental goal, then everyone would learn to do that at the same level.

Young FRANKenstein wrote:
If there are differently-leveled classes, do they not have standards on who is qualified for each class?


No, they don't. Would you believe me if I told you that students choose whether they want to study Basic, Intermediate, or Advanced? It's a cluster*@#!





Good links. Thanks! I've also found a similar one for teachers in Europe that has a huge list of "can do" statements.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Post new topic   Reply to topic    Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Job-related Discussion Forum All times are GMT - 8 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 
Jump to:  
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page is maintained by the one and only Dave Sperling.
Contact Dave's ESL Cafe
Copyright © 2018 Dave Sperling. All Rights Reserved.

Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group

TEFL International Supports Dave's ESL Cafe
TEFL Courses, TESOL Course, English Teaching Jobs - TEFL International