Korean Job Discussion Forums

[matthews_world]

Depending on abilities of students, textbooks can provide respite in our never-ending task of teaching our native tongues.

There's always discussion on this board about the quality of text books but one thing to consider is the quality of the teacher.

Think of a textbookas merely a guide. Use your own style.

For example, today, we were learning about family in a low-level English class. A picture of a family was included in the text. Besided the obvious grammar and sentence patters that come with the topic, I gave the students 2 pretty simple reflective questions alongside the sentence patterns which they were to answer in a pair share format (A, B).
Based on the student's past experiences, they next shared their answers with in the group.

The question was designed to use brainstorming ability and to have the students use their sense of humor at the same time. During the group share, language based on different experiences was communicated
The students in the group were able to draw on these experiences to make language learning more personable and enjoyable.
It's so much easier to have students learn English when they enjoy the material.

Spice up your teaching technique and students will learn and love to learn.

Use extension activities such as applicable games and projects to the topic you are discussing in the chapter. For example, have students bring in pictures of their families, etc.

Keys: Have students use debate by giving them statements that have answers that are two-sided. Make the textbook more personal to the student. Humor is a key!

How do you make textbooks more exciting?

[Gopher]

Teachering styles are important, and you are right, a good teacher can indeed teach with nothing more than old-fashioned chalkboards and dirt floors. Some of my colleagues in Chile did just that.

These franchise textbooks are still shitty.

[some waygug-in]

A bad teacher can also screw up a great textbook.

I had finally gotten my haggie to start using a textbook, and thankfully enough they were using English Time as per my suggestion.
Unfortunately for me, the Korean co-teacher quit and was replaced by a university student with no teaching experience whatsoever.

She started whining and complaining that the book was inappropriate for the students. She gave an example of "bean sprouts" as being something that the students should not be learning.

Golly gee willikerz on a cracker! You'd think that since Koreans eat bean sprouts every day they might want to be able to learn how to say it in English!

She avoided using the textbook as much as possible and started having them memorize lists of words from some kind of exam or other.
Words like "exacerbate" and "facilitate" were common. This to kids who were still learning to spell basic 3 - 5 letter words.
Then to make things even more ridiculous, she started making them sing kindergarten nursery songs....... not that those are bad in and of themselves, but these kids were a bit old for them...

On top of all this, she started to criticize me and complain that I wasn't following the program!

Sorry for the rant, I had to get it out.

I feel much better now that I've left that job behind me.

[zappadelta]

[buddy bradley]

Yeah, right, the book is what you make it, but why make the damn things when they can just be bought?

Cheapskate ESL teachers - they only come out on message boards...

[Ya-ta Boy]

Text books are the platform that a teacher builds a good lesson around. I doubt that is news to anyone. I think what the posters here at Dave's mean when they ask for recommendations is: What is a good text book that has lots of suggestions for how to use the material that is provided in the students' book? The majority of teachers here are beginners, without a professional library of their own to derive ideas and activities and inspiration from.

There are lots of internet sites with great ideas, but most are unorganized, providing a list of activities with quirky titles that don't tell what the activity teaches. I find this frustrating. I've spent hours and hours going through the list on idea pages just to re-label activities so I can find them later when I need a nifty activity.

I've always thought Dave's needs to divide the Job Discussion Forum into one for discussing problems with bosses and contracts (like this page) and one where teachers offer ideas on how to teach specific grammar points to students at different age/ability levels.

[Bunnymonster]

I think the bit that makes a good textbook is more the exercises to practice the point at hand. Thats what I look for in a good book. But thats just me.

Out of curiosity what were the two easy reflective questions you asked?

Did you learn any or all of the jargon you used on your TEFL course? I think I might do one of those so I can make my lesson plans eve less comprehensible to others...............

[Hans Blix]

like ya-ta said, being new to teaching means i need many crutches and textbooks are the biggest and best. i could use one to adapt to my own 'style', but it's too time consuming at this stage. that's why i want a good one - to both teach me and the kids.

[The evil penguin]

Not meaning to be rude to the OP... but... mate.... are you REALLY here... I mean in KOREA????

Sorry.... but you sound a little bit too...... positive...... come on fella.... this is the forum where we CRITICISE korea.......

Actually no.... Good luck to you. I mean that sincerely.... And what you say is of course absolutely true....

But, as with most things, it is a lot easier said than done....

Maybe I'm just not a gifted and "good" teacher.... (having said this... how many naturally gifted "good" teachers are there actually here in the land of funny smells...) Most of us hagwon jockeys are simply non or partially trained graduates trying to do the best job we can..... in a system that seems to promote ineptitude and stifle creativity and common sense...

This is my third year... Maybe I'm not a veteran.... but I'm not a runny nosed greeny either. And I'm halfway thru teacher training back in Oz AND I've done TESOL. (For whatever THATS worth....).... So yeah I guess I do think that I've got just a little inkling on teaching practises and so on.... Trust me.... I would PREFER to design a lesson with purely my own ideas. Start from scratch. Let me select my own discussion topics. Let me illustrate my own pictures..... Make my own roleplays.... Let me make my own lesson plan incorporating warmer activities and relevant (to the students lives) topics.

But what do you do when you are stuck to a textbook? When you are told to follow the text book lesson plans and not deviate into other areas AND when the book is so shit that you read through the days lesson and think to yourself "what the *beep* is THAT about?"...

[Captain Corea]

[matthews_world]

[Bunnymonster]

Lucky you getting those responses I'll role play the scenario from any of my classes:

Bunny "Jason hush be quiet please, now, how do the family look"
Jason " they is dong"
Emily "Teacher no pencil!!!!"
Mark " They ugly, Emily ugly"
Emily "Mark, Mark,uh , ummm TEACHHHHERRRR NO PENCIL"
Bunny "hmmm noooooo... they look happy, why might they not be happy?"
Jason "they is dong, teacher is dong"
Bunny " no think about why they might be sad."
Mark "Because they saw you!"
Bunny "maybe one of them is sick?"
Emily "They is happy"
Bunny "almost Emily its 'they are happy', now lets open our workbooks to page number 16......................."
Emily "Teeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaachhhhhher no booooooooooook! NO PENCIL!!!!!!!!"
Bunny *sigh*

As for taking kids outside the confines of the classroom especially unsupervised HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAAHAHHAHAHHAHAH.................................

I don't wish to come over as abusive because they all sound like excellent ideas for lessons given cooperative linguisticly gifted children, I just don't get to see many of those................... perhaps I'm just jelous, I wish my students were able to deal with those concepts.

[matthews_world]

Try doing roleplays based on situations and grammar in the book. Give your kids a model that you've prepared and then have the kids come up with a sample with totally different characters and scene based on the grammar point or topic.

[bosintang]

Perhaps theoretically a teacher should be able to do without the textbook, but theoretically a teacher should be doing an hour prep work for every class hour. In most teaching environments, this is not realistic.

A good textbook can really make a difference in my opinion. It not only saves you loads of prep time (Why bother with a textbook if you have to gather your own materials anyways?), and it also motivates the students to learn and you to teach.

[Hanson]

Bunnymonster brings up an important point, often overlooked in the ESL industry IMO. Not all students are motivated to learn. Especially here in the Hub of Hagwons, kids are forced into so much 'school time' that hagwon time is play time for them.

You could design the best textbook, with tons of supplementary activities, with excellent, fun, active stuff for the students to do, but if the students are into mucking around, you're not gonna be very successful without motivational skills - something most newbies (and a lot of 'oldies') don't know enough about.

Bunnymonster - you're scenario sounds like something out of some of my Uni classes, I $hit you not!

Me: Where is your textbook, Bum-seok?
Bum-seok: (stupid grin)
Me: No seriously, textbook - 'chek' odi-issoyo?
Bum-seok: Obsoyo. (stupid grin)
Me: Ok, well, you lose a participation point today. Minus one, ok?
Bum-seok: Ye-ye.
Me: Ok, well at least take out a pen or pencil to work on this handout.
Bum-seok: ye?
Me: Pencil or pen. 'Yeonpil animyeon Boll-pen'.
Bum-seok: Boll pen - no.
Me:

The best activities in the world won't do anything for a class of unmotivated students. This is almost word-by-word a conversation I had with a couple of students in my Sports class in UNIVERSITY.