Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Squire]

You will (I assume) be teaching straight from a textbook. I was in your situation just over three months ago, no experience or qualifications what so ever. The thing with textbooks is the book looks like it can be powered through in about a month, but it should take 45 mins to do about 2 pages. You need to learn to slow things right down. Here's an example of how to milk a textbook question to waste time and hopefully get them to learn something:

Often you will listen to a dialogue (from the CD) and the students just have to choose true or false and mark it in their book, but don't just leave it at that and move on. Ask a few questions about the dialogue, then display the script on the board and explain some difficult terms and why the answer is true or false. Then read out the script line for line with the students repeating after you. Next assign the students (as a class) as one of the characters and yourself as the other. You will be taking turns to speak the dialogue. Then choose individual students to speak the dialogue aloud with each other while the rest of the class sit quietly. They'll sit quietly because the ones that don't will be reading out in front of everyone next

I teach at 3 schools- two elementaries and one middle, and they are all on a rural island (albeit one connected to the mainland). I have a coteacher for my elementaries but I was dropped in the deep end with my middle school classes. My so called co teacher just sits in the staff room all Tuesday. But I was lucky that I could learn how to teach from my elementary school coteacher. You'll probably find there are 2-4 kids in each class who are genuinely interested in learning English and will answer any question you shout out, then the majority who...

Ah, I'm falling asleep... this post isn't turning out how I intended, I'm rambling... anyway, my point is the trick is to learn how to elaborate on what the textbook gives you. Oh yea, and tell them you are ex-army. They'll respect you more. Good luck.

[alwaysbeclosing100]

[some waygug-in]

I hope you have some resources, as in computers and screens in the classroom.


I worked in a rural middle school for half a year and the computer systems were always broken, everytime I tried to use something like a video or something from the net, it was no use.


I had to do everything the old fashioned way, chalk and board.

You will do well if you can keep them from wrestling matches in the middle of the room. As others have said, use a lot of games and don't think of it as teaching.

Best of luck to you.

[Ramplo]

I'm looking to get into EPIK in the future, so I don't have teaching experience yet BUT I would like to share some second language experience.

When I was taking French in High school they tried out a program and this is how each day ran:
1. read a short story (~1-2 paragraphs)
2. learn signs for important or new words (only a handful - a few words heavily practiced daily instead of huge word lists all at once)
3. use these words and create our own stories

Obviously this all depends on the level of your students but the students and teachers agreed, we spoke much better French than out of a traditional textbook.

Positives:
Little planning
Encourages kids to work in groups and actually use the language
Can be very engaging/lots of fun.
Doesn't require equipment that you might not have access to.

Negatives:
Teaching spelling/grammar this way is very difficult
They might rebel against the signs and/or working in groups to make stories

Just an idea, and could be modified to fit into your teaching style.

Good luck! I hope it works out well for you!

[edwardcatflap]

[Ramplo]

@edwardcatflap Thank you for pointing that out! That was actually a mistake, this was the best part. Generally we wrote it down because it was easier to remember but we actually made skits and then performed them for the class.

Depending on how ambitious the group was, some were as short as one or two speaking parts each and other skits that were like acts in a play. We randomized the groups so it wasn't always the same slackers together.

Eventually we got so into it that we brought in generic props we could reuse every time.

Our school had longer blocks and fewer students, so this would all happen in a day but it is something you could probably drag out a little longer.

[young_clinton]

Don't buy anything period, you will be given books and DVD's that you're co-teacher will have also. Every district has thier Communicative Language teaching program that has books and DVD's. It is a lot more sophisticated than you think it is. The program includes the games, comes with the materials the only problem is it probably is explained in Korean. Your co-teacher will help with that. If you teach after school classes you might have to adopt some of the games out of your regular classes to use in the program.