Korean Job Discussion Forums

[shane556]

I suppose many of you out there are also participating in this wonderfully valuable EPIK Pre-Orientation training experience. *cough cough

I'll admit that some of the training could be useful, but most of it is faulty or irrelevant to the job. Anyone in agreement whose done it?

There are 2 parts to the EPIK training, with 10 lessons on pedagogy and 5 on Korean culture and the Korean experience.

My criticisms:

The pedagogy section -
-Lessons 1-2 are short overviews about psychological theory and utterly irrelevant to teaching. The spirit of these 2 lessons can be summarized in one sentence. "Your students's backgrounds will be a combination of nature and nurture."
+These lessons could have been made more relevant by discussing specific cases related to students. IE. I was teaching in Busan and had this one terrible student. I later learned he was an orphan being bullied by the girls in his school. NOW talk about psychology, perhaps...


-Lessons 3-5 are in-depth discussion on the theory of language acquisition. Lesson 3-4 are too general and focused on pre-schoolers and first language acquisition (very different from second language acquisition) so pretty much useless.
+Lesson 5 actually started to discuss the school going ages, but only at the end. Mildly useful.

-Lessons 6-10 discuss the teaching of language and classroom management. These ones will be hit and miss depending on your background in teaching. I've been in Korea for 4 years, working in public school for 3, and I've heard it all before. Good only as a refresher for me.
Now, I've never taken the EPIK Orientation training, the one after you get off the plane, since I was already here in Korea when I was hired. Isn't that whole training week filled with discussions about teaching of language and classroom management? Yay for repetition repetition.

-Only done the first Korean lesson, lesson 11, but already it's factually inconsistent with reality. Lesson 11 sucks you into the over-generalized world of 'Korean culture.' Everyone raise your hand whose seen buses and subways filled with young people who would never get up to give their seats to an elder even if said elder were crippled.
Korea is globalizing and westernizing fast, and a lot of what you read about Korea mentality in travelers books can be thrown out the window. Koreans are as diverse a people as any other people. Individualism is strong in Korea, grandparents are more frequently living on their own or finding places in 'Silver towns,' and for god's sake, CATHOLICISM is filed under CHRISTIANITY. They are not 2 distinct entities.

[shane556]

Oh yeah, and the guy in Lesson 6 is convinced that 2 approaches to teaching language, the Comprehension-Based approach and the Communicative approach are all the rage in Korea right now. I can't speak for Seoul but here in at my school in Gwangju Korean English teachers teach grammar and reading from a textbook, which are completely at odds with the 2 approaches listed above. Unless Gwangju isn't in Korea that statement is false. English teachers teach to the book, they teach to the test, they focus on grammar and reading comprehension, with no time for encouraging actual communication in the language. I know this is true of many schools and offices of education around the country.

[DingleBerryLarry]

I thought the same thing about the orientation and all of the forced meetings throughout the year. They are a complete waste of time. What a joke.

[NYC_Gal]

My coteacher told me I had to do this after renewing for a second year. I smiled and said sure, then never did it. It hasn't been brought up again.

[oldfatfarang]

Never done it. Never going to.

Good luck with that nonsense.

[Thiuda]

[sojusucks]

GEPIK has an orientation that teaches nothing about actually living in Korea or co-teaching. All you hear is that "kimchi is good for you" and that "foreigners are bad so you should be more Korean in every way."
The GEPIK officials go out drinking every night but complain if any foreigners have a drink.

If you're really lucky, you will be invited to "advanced training" where you will hear Dain Bae preach that she knows everything about teaching because she just got a Master's Degree and you will be locked down in horrid dorms and forced to deal with 20 year old "advisors" who have never taught at any schools but they will treat you like you know nothing. Then, the night before you finally leave, they will hold a chanting contest and give awards to the same "advisors" for nothing, absolutely nothing. GEPIK thinks foreign teachers are all fools and that the longer you teach in Korea the less you know.

[toniyellow]

For the March intake they made a fuss about completing the training before we got to Orientation. A big fuss, lots of emails. We got to Orientation. Then they changed the deadline for completing it until JUNE. Four and a half extra months. If you have the time do it, but if you have other things to do, don't stress. They don't want to lose face so if noone has done it the deadline will magically be extended.

Most of it is the same stuff you would get from Psych 101, or Korea is the best at everything propaganda (the culture part). The sole thing I liked was the co-teaching videos.

If you let the video run for 15 minutes, go off, come back then do the quiz, the questions are easy enough to get from general knowledge. If you attempt to skip to the quiz without spending 15 minutes on the video or reading, it will let you, but then it will mark your attendance as incomplete and you have to do it again.

They did eventually check we'd done it. I don't think I got anything from it except an introduction to how full of useless tasks Korean bureaucracy can be.

[sojusucks]

My GEPIK orientation book has a long chapter dealing with all of the kinds of kimchi but nothing to deal with: co-teaching, living in Korea, dealing with students, dealing with co-workers, dealing with banks, dealing with parents, and dealing with the Korean language. That's right, nothing about speaking the Koream language in a classroom setting that involves Korean students, but my orientation book shows me every kind of kimchi.
Priorities?

[shane556]

[Steve_Rogers2008]