Korean Job Discussion Forums

[natto2020]

I am heading over to Korea next week to fill a position at a very rural middle school.

I have no experience teaching, I have no idea what to teach or how to teach them. I am told I will not have a korean teacher in my classroom to help. The class sizes are 30ish.

Any advice, posted here or PM, would be really helpful. For the average middle schooler, is there a website with great teaching ideas?

Etc. I appreciate any help I can get.

[kimiki]

No teaching experience at all... so you didn't take a TEFL course or any other prep course? Most people would recommend this. They usually offer some kind of classroom experience as part of completion requirements. (They're not that expensive, even after coming here you may still wish to do one online or during a break.)

But since it seems you didn't, well, then, you must have some basis of confidence about simply diving in.... So that's good.

The web is truly loaded with ideas. If you have a starting point in your mind of some directions you want to go in, a tone you want to set, things you'd like to try, etc... then just a little bit of research will help you build up some actual plans.

Either way, experience is the best teacher. My best ideas have all come from moments of great pressure and even failure. Don't be afraid to just ride the wave a little bit....

Good luck, and try to enjoy it!

[pan.98]

http://www.barryfunenglish.com/index.php

It has powerpoints and other fun games for lessons. You do have to pay. I'm not sure how much though.

[sojusucks]

Hopefully you'll have your own English classroom so you can set up powerpoint and some games. No Korean teacher in the classroom? Is that even legal? They need to support you, at the very least with discipline.

[natto2020]

No Korean teacher, no esl experience.

I'll check out the webpages. Thanks for the help I'll figure something out!

[sojusucks]

If you're left alone in classes of "30ish" middle school students, expect a hellish time with discipline.

[andrewchon]

Or it could be not so hellish.
Rural schools kids, while lacking abilities compared to their city cousins, can be better behaved. They also lack motivation to learn English (they see no benefit in it). So, expect apathy.

Think of it NOT as teaching, but giving them an EXPERIENCE with English.
You'll still need to have a 'lesson objective' in your lesson plan but have it very simple: e.g. learn to say "Today is Wednesday."

Try;
"Ask Me Any Questions!": If there is one kid who can semi-speak, the class can do this. Do not give truthful answers, but an answer that'll lead to another question.

[Fishead soup]

Find out"Why" you are not getting a Korean co-teacher. Some schools have opted to splting the classes in half and giving the foriegn teacher half and the Korean teacher half teh class. Many of the teachers I've talked to actually like this method. If the reason for you not team teaching is simply the Korean teacher doesn't want to or claims doesn't have time for it that's a pretty piss poor excuse.

Will your classes be streamlined, or mixed ability. It will be easier to teach if your students are at approximatly the same level. With mixed ability classes you'll have two extremes the students at the top who are expecting a lot from you. and the students at the bottom who will most likely not even be able to function in your class. If you alienate these two groups you will lose the class.

[natto2020]

this is an ultra rural town, like 5000 people live in it. I assume that they just don't have the resources to have a teacher tag along with me.

I have an army background so I'm not worried about discipline or being intimidated by a bunch of 12 year olds.

I can speak Japanese well, so I think I can learn Korean fairly quickly. So far Korean seems like what the Spanish language is to Portugese.

Finally, I really, really appreciate the help. I want to deliver quality lessons.

I will try and use powerpoints and things like that. I'll do my best.

[natto2020]

ld

[natto2020]

sorry duplicate

[Ramen]

[ippy]

Some stuff off the top of my head:

Wordsearch scrambles. Find a nice wordsearch generator, then scramble the answers. 4 fruits, colors, sports and vegetables is always a good one - fit in a cabbage (bacabeg) and karate (tarkea) in there, and that'll destroy a whole lesson.

Other slacker games are as follows:

Typhoon (very famous in ESL); jeapordy; snakes and ladders; mariokart; bombs and hearts.
(all these games are team games that have an infinite number of generic questions meaning you can crack them out every 5 or 6 lessons with no bother).

Smaller games might be things like bingo, karuta, and fruits basket. These are all staples of JAPANESE elementary school games, but korean kids arent that familiar with them so the novelty hasnt worn off (except bingo of course).

Months of the year for example in karuta.
Laminate some pictures with an appropriate month, make them nice and small. Get 6 sets (or you can skip the lamination and just print them out and cut them up - expect destroyed paper at the end though).
The students sit in a circle in a group of about 5 or 6 people, and spread the cards out at random in front of them. You call out the month name, and the person who picks it up first, keeps it. Tally up the points at the end and give a prize.
Its super easy, and even has third grade middle school students into it if you can build it up a bit. FIrst years go crazy for it.

Fruits basket: I used to do this in japan for what can you do, but in this case ill use days of the week.

Target sentence: I did something or other on [day of the week]
I went shopping on Monday
I did my homework on Thursday. Just for example.

So cut out days of the week cards. Theyre going to be about half the size of A5. Then have the students move all the desks out of the way. Now you get them to bring their chairs and you all sit in a HUGE circle.

Assign a card to each CHAIR (not to the student - very important).
So all the students are sat down, now you are in the middle. You have the students give you an appropriate question (for example, what did you do last week?) and you say "I [000] on SUNDAY!!!"

All the people sitting in the sunday chair have to run and switch seats.
Now obviously you need to also steal a seat so theres one person too many. This means one of the students is now in the middle and has to answer the next question. And so the game goes... to make it actually fun and crazy you can do two things.

1. "Fruits basket!" (only YOU can say this - and you can say it any time (but i used it rarelyt at the start and often towards the end). It means EVERYONE has to switch seats. Its where the game gets its name.
2. Move from one day up to 6 in the course of the lesson. So I played soccer on monday, becomes i played soccer on monday, i stuidied english on wednesday, i ate a banana on thrusday etc.
Thats where it starts getting chaotic and fun.

I wouldnt use fruits basket with third graders unless theyre a fun class, but you could probably get away with second graders.

Other things off the top of my head:

Theres a really good game i use to try and get them using dictionaries.

Its deceptively easy.

Categories:

Have 6 columns and about 22 rows.
Column 1 is a letter of the alphabet; 2 is animals; 3 is fruits; 4 is countries; 5 is colors; and 6 is anything.
In the alphabet write the letters a-z in each row.
A
B
C
D
E
...

For example. Id skip some of the more difficult letters like x, v, z, q.

Now all the students have to do is think of a word for each of those categories beginning with the letter you choose.
So for example, you choose P

Pig, purple, pineapple, poland, paper.
The first three to finish get a candy or something.
It sounds really easy right.... it is. For some of the letters.

Easy letters: p, b, g, s (dont let them use skyblue - itll tyake ages to figure out silver exists ),
challenging: a, c, w, k, l
Start with a couple of easy ones, then move to a few difficult ones, then back to some easy. But if you want seriously challenging go to any of the others. Theres always one thing throwing spanners in the plan

You can also do variations on this with jobs, or foods, or verbs, or adjectives, or whatever you like.

Another variant is findings stuff in the room beginning with the letters a-z. There are quite a lot of silly category games you can do. You can get a scrabble bag and play scattegories if you like, or you can just set up a scattegories like game.

What else? Hmmm, speaking of scrabble, i once did a game entirely based on boggle. The students drew out 7 letters, i put them in a grid of 9, and added two blank letters. Gave each letter a point score and in their group they had 2 minutes per round to come up with their best word. Pretty easy game.

then there are actual board games. As in you BUY the games and the students get to play them. Single rule is this: you must say an english sentence before you play your turn. No english equals a punishment. (i use a dice roll which includes one or two embarrassing punishments like singing a song or doing star jumps and 1 where they dont have to do a punishment - adding an element of chance always helps to make students cooperative).

what else?

Ah yes, (made up) board games (there are plenty of templates on the net) and battleships. Never in all my life have i found students to be interested in either of these. They are staples though of communicative activities. Battleships in particular has always failed for me, but i guess others have had success so i mention them. Co-Teachers LOVE these activities though.

Read and run. Again, another classic. 1 student sits and writes, their team mates look for clues you placed earlier around the room and have to tell their writer what it says. The writer then has to write it down. They cant touch the clues, so its entirely spoken english. Ive used it for a superlative logic puzzle (can you work out the tallest and shortest from these 5 comparative clues, for example), and most recently at the behest of my co-teacher in a song lyrics scramble.

Speaking of comparatives, theres an awesome betting game i use on higher level students. Get them in groups, give them some fake cash, then have them bet it on comparative questions:

Which is faster, a chicken or an elephant?
The motorbike is older than the car, true or false?
Who is younger, sooyoung or tiffany?
Which group debuted earlier, bigbang, or dbsk?
etc etc.

If they get it right, then they get double their cash. If they get it wrong, you keep the cash (strictly regulate how much they can bet each round so it builds up).

Another game i use is two truths and a lie. Students come up with two truths about themselves and one lie, and the other teams have to bet on which one is the lie. (again same system - regulate the cash flow).

Ive never done it, but you can also do it for sentence/grammar correction betting games. I also had an idea of doing one based on myth busters.

Then theres some other activities like palm reading, blind drawing (2 students describe a picture to 2 other student who cant see it and the other students draw it). Personality quizzes, pictionary, post its with famous names on the back of students and they have to use yes/no questions to find out who they are.

Finally, theres also this site which is the holy grail of emergency lesson planning:

http://jhsenglipediaproject.com/jep.aspx

Its all for japanese textbooks, so you may have to change references to japanese culture or celebrities, but its got a wealth of appropriately leveled lessons for your students.

Anyway, good luck. That should at least give you a few ideas

oh, and another generic fake game:

Rock paper scissor games.

Get two or three packs of playing cards (which reminds me, there are STACKS of card games you can adapt). Mix them up. Give each student 3 or 4 (depending on how many students and how long you want the game to go on).
Give them a standard generic conversation

Hello, whats your name
my name is 000
Whats your name
My names 000
Nice to meet you!
Nice to meet you too!

(thats the simplest one i can think of)

Now have them rock paper scissors, and the winner gets to take one of the losers cards. How easy can you get.

At the end of time randomly assign points based on the card (the jack is worth 2 points, the 4 is worth 1, the 8 is worth 6 for example). And also include a card that guarantees they wont win (for example the 9 is worth MINUS 100 points). Mischief is important Then have them all stand up and go through the numbers having students sit down until you find however many students you want to reward, and thats that (you can of course flip it so that the lowest score wins just to be cheeky - it is arbitrary after all).

You can do this with color cards, name cards, whatever you like. So long as theres something in it for them, theyll enjoy doing it

I also use random youtube videos like "real life" ghost stories and the like when i want to do a specific grammar point. (what happened? Why was she scared, what did she do? etc). Anything can be adapted.

And finally theres powerpoint activities which youll find pretty much everywhere. Lots of games and lots of activities abound.

[Weigookin74]

[Weigookin74]

Also remember that TESOL is geared towards Adults that want to learn. They will study vocabulary, do the assignments, and participate in class. In school, you have kids who don't want to be there and teaching them is different than TESOL. You can speak only in English, but some kids will just ignore you and not try. So, don't listen to any of those theories. Try to make it as fun and interesting as possible with lots of comedy and pictures. Root out the bad kids as much as possible. Make them stand at the back, report them to their homeroom teacher, etc.