Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Medic]

I'm doing part time work with a homeschool teaching programe, and I've noticed that many of the teachers (all of whom are housewives) can't speak English. The amazing think though is that their students learn to speak English quite well. Now how this happens beets me, and I'm wondering what the teacher does to get them to learn a foreign language as well as they do.

I can only surmise that the enthusiasim of the teacher and not Her English skills motivates the students tto learn. So all the English speaking skills don't do a hell of beans unless you have the right personlity to go with it

[Eazy_E]

Perhaps the importance of having a native speaker teach English is vastly overblown. If I think about how much time my students have spent listening/studying from me and how incremental their improvements have been, there might be some truth to that.

If I think about the teachers that taught me the most in French, it wasn't always the ones who spoke it as a first language, but often the ones who could explain things in English.

Don't publicize this too much though... I think we'd like to keep our jobs.

[ryleeys]

The last teacher at my school and the current one speak English horribly. The last one at least had child development skills (college degree in said field). The current one has no experience.

I was looking at the scores from level tests from Friday and the thing that was consistant through all of them was that their scores from the last unit (which I taught without any Korean teacher) were 10-20% higher than from the other 5 units.

Why? I don't know. But I teach through reptition. I make them repeat after me until they whine. Then we repeat some more... then some more. Then I make them write until they cry. Then they do it again another 5 times for good measure.

[Eazy_E]

I think the advantage that a foreign teacher of English will have is building the confidence of the students to communicate in English.

Most of us know that most Korean parents only put their kids in English hogwans to pass a test. Teaching to a test involves repetition, learning by rote, and memorization. Not exactly the best way to teach communicative English, which the Korean education method is sorely lacking.

This isn't a knock on anyone's teaching style, but I think that as a native speaker of English, our primary task is to get the students talking. Plenty of Koreans know the ins and outs of grammar, but no matter how you look at it, learning a language is about being able to speak it and communicate with it.

[ryleeys]

No doubt... spend 4 days a week drilling, drilling, drilling like Haliburton...

Spend Fridays playin' cards and talkin'

[SweetBear]

[hellofaniceguy]

A few years back at a university I was teaching at...
I had the audacity, according to the university after it was published, to write an editorial about the korean English teachers and professors who were teaching ESL but could not speak English, hold a decent conversation nor did they have good grammar skills. I went on to point out that many of these professors and teachers came to the foreign teachers day in and day out asking for help about this or that, to ask what this sentence means, what does this mean, why does it mean this, etc...
You are suppose to be teaching English!?!?!
MOST korean teachers of English are teaching the same grammar and pronunciation mistakes that they make to their students.
How did they get their PhD in English I asked?!?! Just buy/bribe it?
I see these so called "Dr.s" as they want to be called, calling the foreign teachers names incorrectly such as, if your name is Paul Smith, they call him Mr. Paul, if your name is Tom Kim, they call him Mr. Tom. So I say to these professors, your name is Kim Young Soon, I'll call you Mr. Young Soon.
Maybe it's a pet peeve of mine... my grip to these korean teachers and some foreign teachers is that, let's do the job correctly and teach the students correctly. Not half assed. Well all cringe at times when we hear non native English speakers try talking in English using horrible English.
I can't believe that they learned to speak bad English from native English teachers! Or are they?

[TJ]

I teach in a girls middle school and work closely with two Korean women teachers and one Korean male teacher. The two women teachers' english is OK It's not what I would call good but it is sufficient on most occasions. However, the Korean man's english is poor.

It is glaringly obvious which classes 'belong' to which teachers. I know that when I go into the man's classroom I will have to work my butt off trying to get some of the little darlings to absorb a smidgin of english. His students are so far below the other teachers' students it's just not funny.

And before anyone tells me to ............ I have adapted my lessons especially for the lower ability classes. Unfortunately this puts them even further behind other classes of students who are supposedly in the same grade.

On the other hand, teaching any of the women teachers' students is a pleasure. The students are bright, polite and keen to learn. Even the few who have the potential to be difficult respond to a little one-on one attention.

All the teachers here are really nice people. The man with the poor english is especially nice. I don't correct any of them in front of students - that would make them loose face and they would resent me. I try to diplomatically correct their errors in private but they usually forget and make the same errors again within a day or so.

Oh well, I will just have to practice what I preach to others on Daves ESL ......... 'go with the flow'.

[ryleeys]

Well, here's my problem with teaching. All my experience is teaching high school or college... and mostly teaching history (all in the States). It's a different beast than teaching English. When I teach history, I always love to give them a basic outline of what's going on, then as I'm going through the material with more specifics, I always have cool stories to tell to give the history a humanistic aspect (people tend to forget that history isn't something that only happened in a book, it's real). I've been reading every history book I could get my hands on for awhile now and I've got pretty good stories for probably 100 different civilizations.

Anyway, yes, you can tell stories in English, but it's not quite the same. The key is to get the kids talking with me and for that, you need some effort from the students. But anytime I try and relax a bit and just try and practice speaking, they start going ape s--- and bouncing off the walls. They're Korean and so all they really know about a school is that it involves sitting at a desk and writing... anything else must not be school, so they don't have to behave like they're in school. So, if they choice is between a minimal amount of speaking and poor behavior or alot of writing and good behavior, I'm going with the writing and good behavior.

Now, the only other thing I know about this field is that when I study Korean, Chinese, or Spanish, I have to write the words a good hundred times before I remember the vocabulary. The grammar I learn by speaking, but first you have to have enough vocabulary to be able to use the grammar. So, that's how I teach vocabulary to my kids... they repeat after me about 10-20 times, then they write each word 10 times, then repeat after me again, then write again. Then we can try and use that vocabulary in sentences.

I'm certainly not going to claim to be the best teacher or even a good teacher, but I can only work with what I know. So I try and adapt to the Korean mindset and teach in a style that the kids will recognize as school. Then I teach in the way that I know works for me to learn. Yes, I know everyone learns differently, but I'm honestly not trained to handle that and I don't have the time to experiment (each class has two lesson books and a phonics book that I am required to teach one lesson from each book per week in)... nor do I feel as though it's my position to try and change the way Korean children think about school... as if they do change, then when they go back to regular school, they'll have problems.

Yes, that's all a very confused and muddled way of explaining why I teach the way I do... but I'm honestly just trying to do the best that I can without going crazy.

[Zyzyfer]

I had that problem at my middle school last year. Of my 5 coworkers, 1 was proficient with English, one was pretty good, 2 others were okay, and 1 was absolutely horrible. There were people who weren't even English teachers in the school who had better English than some of my coworkers.

[jajdude]

Have met a few who couldn't hold a conversation. Working with one now who prefers to use as little as possible. Went out one night a month ago for a few beers with the two Korean teachers and a Korean friend. A good hour or so was translation even though that woman's English has to be not bad. Better than my Korean for sure. She realized I know a little Korean, and said "Oh, I better be careful!" (strange).

You walk past the korean teacher's door you hear very little English. A lot of Korean explaining English. I guess we'd need the same amount to English to understand a bit of a very foreign language.

It's good to remember.............

English is VERY foreign to Koreans.

[SweetBear]

[peppermint]

At my current gig, I don't think there's a single teacher here who's comfortable speaking to me. I assume they're great at teaching math and science etc. I can mostly handle things on my own, but it does make for a lonely work environment sometimes.

[just because]

I work at an Ib Shi (all subjects) hagwon.

5 English teachers (1 can talk well, 1 tries and is friendly, 2 can say hello and 1 runs away at the sight of me).

1 Math teacher(no English)

1 Science teacher (No English)

1 Korean teacher (can speak English better than all the English teachers )

So that gives me 8 teachers and 2 that can speak at 50% capacity of English.

My korean is better than 3 of the English teachers, does that mean i can teach korean now????

At least I am getting a lot of practice speaking Korean

[bulgogiboy]

Hey just because,

Good on you for learning to speak Korean.

Mine's coming along after a few months study and I really enjoy speaking their language(they're often elated too).

When complaining about the English teachers who can't speak English, don't forget the native-speaking teachers who live in Korea and either through sheer laziness or arrogance haven't bothered to learn the language of the country they are in.

All excuses aside- if you live in Korea for any notable time(6 months+) and can't even manage a few basic words then you are worse than those Korean hagwon teachers. At least they make an attempt to learn 2 languages.

BB