Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bigqt4]

Does anyone have experiences teaching adults who has taught kids previously? Did you prefer one over the other? Positive? Negative? Indifferent? Are the adult learners easier to work with in terms of motivations?

[misher]

If you can discipline kids and keep them on track, they are way easier.

Adults are demanding and you have to be on your toes. Especially when they pay gobs of money. You can get away with a lot teaching kids. Adults (especially extremely educated ones) will know when you are full of crap and will complain when they are not getting their money's worth.

You also get adults with incredibly arrogant and difficult personalities. Try telling a 55 year old adjossi executive that he is wrong or failing him in an interview. THey are used to getting their asses kissed. You may think you are the man because you know you are in the right when you get into a disagreement about grammar or whatever, but the business will suffer when he cancels his classes.

THe guys I know doing after school programs right now say it is a breeze because they have a good co-teacher that takes care of any disciplinary issues. IF that isn't an issue, teaching kids is way easier I think.

I've only taught adults because I can't handle kids. I freeze up and it jsut wouldn't work. My personality isn't geared for it.

[tyrobinson]

Adults, all day, for a number of reasons. They actually want to be there and have paid to sit in your class, so their motivation is higher. There are no discipline problems. You won't find yourself uttering the phrase "And what did we say about hitting each other?" to a group of 40 somethings. Odds are, most of the adults will speak decent English already, so your ability to communicate with students is far greater than it is with most children. You will learn more about Korea and Korean culture. They will be as eager to answer questions you have about Korea as they are to learn more English. All the kids will teach you is the fine art of forcibly jamming index fingers into unsuspecting people's butts. Adults will take you out on the weekend, get you drunk, show you a great time and more than likely pay for everything. Some of your adult students might even become very good friends. I know a guy who recently married a girl that started off as his student.

I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with me, but if I could get a job with a decent schedule teaching just adults, I'd go back to Korea and never come home.

[atomicdeathmonkey]

With adults you still have some classroom management stuff - especially if there are groups of different students from different countries - I taught Italians, Spanish and Portuguese back home for a while and typically they sat and conversed in L1 during class - mixing them up solved made their reversion to L1 less common and promoted English only.

Anticipating questions they may ask is a big thing too, having your lesson thoroughly prepared is necessary as they'll know if your winging it but being prepared for likely questions and having a complete understanding and being able to be coherent in answering any of their questions helps hugely.

Confidence wise I found teaching adults in Korea a bit easier, participation can be a bit of an issue as they are hugely fearful of making a mistake or sounding stupid in front of their peers.

Hopefully I get to teaching adults again sooner rather than later, I liked the interaction with adults more than I do with younger children and you have more possibilities as regards abstract thought and discussions based on experience typically.

[ttompatz]

[Isehtis]

Tyrobinson, you mentioned something I was curious about- Are you allowed to socialize with your adult students? I suppose it changes from company to company

[iggyb]

It depends on your personality and what you want.

Kids take energy and patience, but they can be more fun. You can laugh and have a good time with them.

If you really want to teach --- then go with kids.

Adults take less energy in class and you can learn a lot about Korea from them, but you can't really teach them.

I don't care if they are paying a lot of money and have "motivation" to learn --- Korean adults won't let you teach them.

That was my experience over 10 years ago - and it is my experience now that I'm back teaching Korean adults again...

Korean adults expect to learn by simply listening to a native speaker speak. They used to call it "free talking" - now they call it "authentic communication".

If you try teaching techniques common in the West and in all the TESOL professional development journals and try to cover all 4 areas of language learning - prepare for resistance and headaches.

But - if you aren't worried about really teaching and can be satisfied with sitting around trying to get adults to respond to your chain of questions - then adults can be fine.

In short, you need flexibility and patience with either group. Both have their +s and -s.

--- A key will be whether the adults are on a split-shift or not....

Many adult hakwons have classes in the morning and evening and you can be milked into doing classes inbetween as well ---- and that can grind you down to a nub.

Right now, I'm switching from adults to kids, because I want to teach, and the resistance from adults annoys me more than resistance from teens and younger.....

I'm also teaching Korean teachers, and hearing them refuse to believe in contemporary language teaching methods that are advocated in every TESOL journal and book I've read is too frustrating for me to do for more than a year....