Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ESL Milk "Everyday]

Here is a list of things that are currently driving me insane:

1. Students who pull out the 'the previous teacher was better' line in an attempt to guilt me into giving them food/candy or playing games. It's times like this where the game day that I had planned for week five starts slowly transforming into some uber-boring worksheets in my head... but I would never really do it, because the thought of not lightening the mood every now and then is actually really depressing.

2. The fact that so many of my students are so used to speaking nothing but Korean in their English classes that they don't even speak English when they actually know how to say something in English.

3. Students who have somehow made it into the third grade of middle school without being able to write their names in roman letters or legible Hangeul, or count to 20 in English (apparently saying 11 and 12 is 'too difficult for them').

4. Co-teachers who translate everything I say, thereby rendering my entire purpose for being there (well, with the exception of making materials) null and void.

5. The fact that over half of the students at my school received a failing mark on their English exams last year, and no steps have been taken to try to figure out why or change anything, because everyone at my school just chooses to think that it's 'because they're stupid', which is actually probably one of the reasons why so many failed in the first place.

[sadguy]

number 4 sucks. i've had that happen, and i told them to stop. i told them to only translate if i ask them to do so. i ask students questions to check for understanding, and if they don't respond, then i ask the co teacher to translate.

number 1 must suck too if your students are saying that. i have new co teachers that came in this semester who are apparently talking behind my back about this and it pisses me off because it's only my third week of teaching from the book and they are already talking smack. one of them suggested i play more games, but i don't play games every week. i'm not sure if other teachers do this, but i only play games that are relevant to the info they need on their exams. so it's usually after i cover 2-3 lessons.

[Fishead soup]

Tell them their dancing monkey teacher is now working on Ariyang television

[ESL Milk "Everyday]

Here's another one:

My idea:

I really want to let the kids be creative and do creative writing. I will give them a short lecture everyday on how to set up a plot, characters, etc... we'll brainstorm vocab together every day, I'll show them some basic sentences to help them set up scenes, move forward and backwards in time, etc. We'll talk about different stories that we know, and different characters, heroes, villains, etc. They won't be thinking 'I have to get this right' and we can all talk freely.

They'll write using their own ideas, and I'll correct their grammar. At the end, they will have something that is theirs, they can be proud of, and that we can show to the boss (and he will be impressed).

I've done this before and the kids like it, I like it, we talk, we have debates, everyone is smiling and participating and everyone is interested in the class... it's pretty much the highlight of my entire ESL career so far.

Her idea:

Because you're a foreigner, I'm not even going to ask you what you want to do or talk to you at all, and buy some grammar books. Sure we could have just bought one, handed out photocopies of the relevant bits and scanned pages for powerpoints, but instead let's get each of the kids their own book so that we're completely locked into it and their parents will get all upset if they see that some part of it isn't filled in.

You can stand up there for an hour and a half teaching them grammar lecture-style (which is about the only way to do grammar), and even though they already get endless amounts of it at their hagwons and in school and know everything anyways, this is going to help them be interested in and get good at English.

I've just been locked into a whole year of pointless grammar-based drudgery because some girl was afraid of talking to me/didn't respect my opinion/thinks that foreigners aren't capable of making decisions like this.

[3DR]

[ESL Milk "Everyday]