Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Wrench]

OK I first asked for help teaching Kindy and I got many great responses I appreciate all the help I received. I took all the advice to heart and I am now in my 3rd month of teaching Kindy and I am loving it more and more. I have lots of fun my kids have fun and best of all they are learning English. Only problem is that I wish the Korean teachers WOULD stop teaching phonics since they can't pronounce English sounds properly in the first place. Big part of my job is un-teaching the shitty phonics taught by the Koreans. Puple is NOT purple.

Any who my problem is with the Elementary grades which I have to teach and they are becoming a serious pain. My school has absolutely NO direction or focus when it comes to teaching in English. (They love teaching nouns, if you can make a sentence that makes sense with nouns I will eat my hat). They don't focus on grammar, pronunciation, reading, NOTHING Nada zip. The main director has a silly idea that by hearing English from a native speaker they will magically learn English. From first hand experience of learning English I can tell you that you can't magically learn a language but they don't listen to me. On top of that they handed me ridiculous material to teach. They gave me North American books to teach. These books are straight out to hard to explain with pictures and games and are intended to be taught to some one that speaks, understands and reads English. Now of course they also felt that the teachers edition is not important because its to expensive. I don't have access to the website that publishes the book either and I have no access to activities, movies, experiments etc.. How do I make my classes more fun and educational?

PS.
Oh and the Korean teachers don't teach the same stuff as me either, they teach Parade books which are basic compared to mine..



*Rant*

Its becoming a hair pulling experience. Now I have training coming up in 1 week with an author of by far the worst set of books for teaching English (Sha Sha English). This guy is going to review the books and sit on one of my classes and give me pointers. (Apperantly every one hates this guy as well, at least they are torturing the Korean teachers with his crap as well. Even the ones that can't speak english. MUAHAHAHA) I just can't sit through another boring "meeting" (in Korean) that only focuses on negative aspects of me and my coworkers teaching methods, we hardly get any positive comments to begin with. Me and my American coworker are new to teaching, (I thought adults back in Canada, corporate customers) and we have been greatly improving. I spend more time preparing for my classes then most of the Korean teachers since our books blow I have to heavily supplement. Korean teachers seem to do squat for prep, they follow the books day in day out with coloring and crappy phonics. Me and my coworkers make games, activities, crafts, cooking days, game days, sports days etc.. We get very little or no help and too boot they steal our work (one teacher anyway). The Korean teachers rather put on their make up or sleep during free time. :angry: Thank god I learned not to care or depend on any one a long time ago.

PS
How the hell do I explain Hypothesis with pictures and simple words? Grr

[dulouz]

Wow. You work with an American?

[Ya-ta Boy]

Yikes! Sounds like a mess.

I have one idea you might be able to use.

Since the K teachers are focusing on nouns, maybe you should focus on verbs and do Total Physical Response activities with the kids.

Example:
Pick up the blue fish.
Put the blue fish on the red box.

Is the blue fish under the red box?

Touch Soo-Mi's elbow.
Did you touch Soo-Mi's elbow?

[Qinella]

Wrench, I can definitely relate to your pronunciation woes. I'm constantly unteaching my students. They think that V is pronounced "bwee" and F is "ep-uh". What you must do is physically show them how to form the words with their mouths. For example, with F, I point to my top teeth, then point to my bottom lip, and tell everyone to watch. FFFF!!!! They learn if you show them. The only one I can't figure out yet is R. How to teach it... hmm...


Anyway, I'm learning a valuable lesson: screw the books. I only use the books as launch pads and gap fillers for my teaching. I make hand-outs, I draw on the board, I do what Ya-ta boy said (physical response teaching), etc. You sound smart, so you can figure things out on the fly, I'm sure.

Just don't stress too much about the books. The important things are the teacher and the student. If you study Korean, that will help you, also.

Good luck.

[Dan The Chainsawman]

Here is my question,

25 classes a week, each class I only see once per week. That means I get a total of 4 hours per month with the students. My predictament is pretty simple the owners while bless their hearts have been wonderful so far, have not indicated really what is expected of myself.

I am of two opinions,

1) I am supposed to be super teacher.

2) I am even more of the utter waste of teaching space that a fair percentage of the Foreign population tends to take up in the Korean penisula.

I have come to the conclusion I am the token face of the English speaking world for my school.

I guess my question is other than the obvious benifits of 25 different classes per week, HOW in the good lord do i alleviate my boredom. I was so bored in class today I got at least three chapters of the latest book I am reading while they were working on their assignments.

While I do like to get some reading done I think it better to be spending my time trying to accomplish something with the kids. What can I realistically expect to accomplish in one class per week? Most of the class is spent dealing with disciniplinary issues that would have been resolved a long time ago had I had them more than once a week.

Anyway if anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them as I am worried that I might fall over out of my chair and go to sleep on the floor if this keeps up much longer.

[Ya-ta Boy]

Mr. Chainsawman,

Your position sucks. You didn't tell the age of your students, but it sounds like kids.

1)How about concentrating on pronunciation? There are lots of pronunciation games you can play that are educationally valid and fun for the kids.

2)As an extension of that, you can teach phonics with activities, including spelling. /a/ai/ay/a-e/, that will improve their reading.

3)Get the vocabulary list from their main English teacher and do activities that reinforce those words.

That's the only thing I can think of to maximize the use of your limited time with the students. Improved pronunciation is one of the benefits of having a native speaker.

Good luck

[joe_doufu]

Yeah, I think if they only see you once per week, you are sort of like the PE teacher or the Art teacher when I was in elementary school... you are there to give them a break and offer something fun to do. Your job is actually pretty good... you can get away with having only one lesson plan per week!

Vocabulary BINGO is a good game. Write their recent vocab on the board, and have them write the words in random order on a bingo card.

With little kids, you can make a kind of board game with flash cards on the floor (organized in a square). They roll the dice and move forward so many cards. Whatever card they land on, they must make a sentence or answer a question with the word.

Try to teach something about your culture once a month or whenever there's a holiday. Good luck!

[JacktheCat]

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I got myself down to one kindie class. The kids play under the table while I make up bingo cards, crosswords, and quizes to use in my hogwan classes. Teaching kindie has never been so productive!

[peppermint]

Chainsawman- are you a public school teacher by any chance? I had the same drill last year, so I sympathise. If they're seeing a Korean English teacher for another hour that week, I'd leave stuff like asignments to do with them.

Pronunciation is big, getting them speaking is important too. . I find giving the kids a short script, and some props and letting them do roleplays is good for that

[Dan The Chainsawman]

Nah I am a good old haggie teacher peppermint.

Funny enough as it is my school really seems to want me working out of a book. My guess is they seem to like the idea of being able to show the parents how much their kiddies get done with the foreign teacher.

My emphasis so far is getting them through the assignment fast enough, even if this means helping them with it or doing parts of it for them, so we can play some sort of game before the class is done.

Its all kids I work with so my favorite came so far is super duper ultimate hangman, this involve a stuff ball getting chucked about the room (a combonation between dodgeball and hangman, one of those ways to jazz up a class). The other is the dice game where I get a big foam dice that they roll for different fake money prizes while trying to solve a puzzle.

The last thing i happened onto this week and I do believe I am going to develop this further is comic strips. When the copy machine broke down I grabbed a heap of scratch paper and had them make comic strips for very basic conversation.

I guess the trend I am seeing is that yes my position sucks, but on the other hand I tend to believe that not a lot is particularly expected of me. I think what I need to do is find away to shorten down those book lessons and pump up the game, and other activities. I tend to try to stay away from word search unless I am having one of those very rare, "I am gonna stab that kid in the brain with a pencil" days, then certainly I will grab a fist full of word searches. Thanks for the pointers I think I will spend sometime drawing together some activities and games that help with pronunciation.

[peppermint]

well, www.enchantedlearning.com has a ton of stuff you might find useful, including comic strip templates

[Wrench]

Thanks for the responses guys.

I am going to have to find some way of teaching these North American books. I think I am going to have a talk with the director and say that I need access to teacher edition and website for the book. My classes are boring the students to death (they bore me to death too) I try hard to make classes fun like Word Bingo, experiments, cooking, etc.. I guess I am dreading the fact I am going to get criticized by some guy that has never actually taught any students. By the way I am atempting to teach Harcourt English Grade 1 and 2 and Harcourt Science 1 and 2. They make me give these silly spoken tests every month yet there is no spoken parts in the book because you don't need to teach North American kids to speak English. No one looks at the tests and basicaly I think they grade me more on them then the kids.

Any one know any websites for good science experiments?

[Wrench]

[joe_doufu]