Korean Job Discussion Forums

[whatthefunk]

I've been teaching in Korea for 6 months now, and things are going pretty good. Lately though, my students have been speaking alot more Korean in class than I would like them to. I've tried a few different punishment methods, but nothing seems to be working that well. Any suggeestions?

[rockr1]

Tell them to shut the funk up

[Pyongshin Sangja]

There is nothing you can do. Welcome to Korea.

[whatthefunk]

You're telling me that there is nothing I can do to keep them speaking English...that's horrible. I refuse to believe this.

[blackbird]

I feel for you. I fought the good fight my first month at this school and have had no Korean in class for over 10 months. It is a hard fight but well worth the effort. As far as dicipline goes I have a theory that works for me. You don't have to punish all of the kids who speak Korean. You just have to punish one kid really bad. Make an example.

Find the leader and break him of the habit first. The others will follow. It does not really matter what the punishment is as long as he is embarassed and/or unhappy. Leaders are especially conscience of peer pressure. Be sure to be consistent, firm and fair. Let him know that it is not personal, you like him alot but he must behave or face the consequences. If he thinks it is personal he will fight you twice as hard. If you have one who is really bad you can get drastic. Send him to the corner and play his favorite game with the rest of the class, every day for a week if you must.

I wonder sometimes if the Koreans understand our body language. I have found that it is effective to pretend to be REALLY mad or REALLY happy to get a point across. Notice I say pretend. I make it a point not to dicipline a child when I am agitated. I wait until I am perfectly calm and then act as if I am a maniac. It works wonders sometimes. If a kid has been on my bad side for a few days I make a point to get REALLY happy when he does something good. He soon figures out that he likes happy teacher as opposed to maniac teacher and the corner.

Hope my two cents helps. It may not work for everybody but I have the only school I know of where no Korean is spoken in any of our classes. If one of our teachers say Kimchi our kids say "Teacher, go to the corner!"
You would be amazed at how quiet a low level class can be. I actually encourage talking sometimes because it helps their English.

Being called teacher all of the time is my new pet peeve. I am thinking of making a school wide rule against that. What do your kids call you, Teacher or Mr/Mrs WhateverYourNameIs? Does it annoy you to be called teacher?

[crazylemongirl]

"my name teacher" doesn't bother me... I guess it's a respect thing.

As for korean... I have rule you talk as much as you want in english but I'll give you grief if your chattering in korean...

A few classes have worked this out if only to say "john crazy"

Bought tears to my eyes to hear them now say "john is crazy"

CLg

[Pyongshin Sangja]

Koreans will not help you, if you punish the kids they will leave the hagwon. Your presence is tolerated. You are a vehicle through which your boss makes money. If you blow a fuse, he will get a new one or have you fixed. Don't bother.

[blackbird]

Yes, can understand the tears for "John is crazy."

I think you and I have similar styles. I even encourage a little banter between the kids in English. I have them begging for new evil things to say to each other. I always make them master "John is crazy" before moving on to "Jane looks like a monkey."

I get tickled with them and they know it. It helps to build a better relationship. I feel for the people who do not have control over their classes. I know that I am lucky to be at a place where my opinion matters to the owners. If the owners didn't let me discipline the kids I would go crazy.

It is funny. The tighter discipline gets the more students come to the school. They recently hired a new teacher to cope with the overload. It goes to show you that school owners who try to make the kids happy by playing games and not teaching English are poor business people. They are digging their own graves.

[whatthefunk]

I know my boss wants me to disipline kids, its just a matter of how to do it. My coworkers actually recommended that I hit the kids with a stick, but I can't do that. They're good kids, so I haven't had to discpline them much for anything, but the speaking korean thing is getting bad. I'll just have to be harsher with my punishment....

[The Hamster]

Balckbird has a good teaching style. I too have banned Korean from my classes. It has been 10 months. Of course it is hard to enforce at first. Give it time and before you know it, they will be turning each other in. I am lucky because I have younger kids. Their ages range from 7-14. I am the dictator of the classroom and they know it. Like Blackbird said, make an example of one student, always enforce what you say. Not "Don't speak Korean" half a dozen times and then get them for it. You have to do it immediately, one warning, afther that--punishment.

My punishments consist of "the corner", squats, singing, and the dreaded "ear flick". If they do something minimal like not paying attention I flick their ears, head, or hand--whatever looks vulnerable.

I do not hit my students. Although I did have a wall map that I rolled up. I would use it to smack the table really loud. This would scare the **** out of them. Unfortunatley it came to an early demise when one of the students kidnapped it.

I like to play "good" teacher. "bad" teacher. It helps to have a really mean teacher. You can use them as punishment tools. I scare the other teachers students and they return the favor. This way all we have to say is "Do I need to have (so and so) talk to you?" This works with my older students. They are terrified of the head teacher.

[kylehawkins2000]

Let them speak Korean I say.

Imagine yourself in a class where you were told you could only speak Korean, when you were at a low or intermediate level. Tell them they must speak English when called on but other wise I see no problems with them helping each other out in their mother tongue.

When I study a foreign language I frequently ask others (in English) for explanations about certain items that are difficult for me to understand. i also socialize while in class, although I certainly make an effort to respect my teacher or instructor in this regard.

[Hank Scorpio]

[blackbird]

The no Korean rule is more about discipline than learning. I have given the impression that the kids speak no Korean in my classroom. This is not correct. Sometimes they can help each other if one student does not understand and another one does. If this is the case they must ASK to speak Korean. In my lower level classes perhaps all that they can manage is "Teacher, Korea OK?"

I agree that Korean has it's uses in the English classroom. It is my OPINION that the children learn more when they are not allowed to speak Korean for entertainment purposes. It also does wonders for my state of mind.

I have found that this is easy to enforce once the initial fight is over. In fact, when a new student comes into class the other students will discipline him/her for me.

[kimcheeking]

[blackbird]

Perhaps this would be a good time to say that I am not teaching at a university. Obviously you would have problems sending a 40 year old woman to the corner for speaking Korean in the classroom. She would look at you like this.