Korean Job Discussion Forums

[wild sphere]

i'll try to work on that fault.

(new page! )

[jajdude]

Here's why I dislike teaching beginners.

Middle school class Thursday: One lesson includes the question: "What size do you wear?"

We listen to a tape of a dialog, and I say the dialog too, the students practice it. The question is repeated several times, with answers, "I wear a small." I wear a large." "I wear a medium."


After that I ask a boy, "What size do you wear?"

He looks at his friend, doesn't seem to understand the word "size" ... perhaps if I had spoKen the Korean way he might have.

I am shaking my head in disbelief. I repeat,

"What size do you wear?"

Answer: "Yes."

I do not consider my time well spent in a class like that.

[babtangee]

[livinginkorea]

No, plain and simple!!! It's very difficult to get your point across and you have to prepare a lot for those classes. Beginners should be taught by Koreans and then after a couple of months we step in! However most people, beginners or advanced want to be taught by a native teacher.

[Gopher]

[jajdude]

They knew the words small, medium and large. Pictures were there too. I think the kid just got nervous, like I put him on the spot by asking him directly. It's still a freaky thing to be spoken to directly in the foreign language by the foreigner. I experience this at times with koreans. I sort of freeze up. Then a minute later I get what was said to me and know how i could have replied.

[Grotto]

That is definately part of the problem.

Every day I greet my classes the exact same way.

Good morning/afternoon everyone

Students: good morning teacher

How are you?

I am good/fine/excellent/not so good....

What day is today?

It is M/T/W/Th/F

What is the weather like/

It is cloudy/windy/sunny...

After a year of greeting the students the exact same way every single day I still get responces like:

How are you?

Its Tuesday(with much enthusiasm)

Whats the weather like?

Its sunny cloudy(despite telling them for an entire year that you cannot have sunny cloudy and no I didnt teach scattered clouds)

In the mornings we have hall monitors to patrol the halls before class.

I always greet them: Hi how are you?

Blank stare...deer caught in headlights(and these are the grade 6's)

Sometimes you wonder if you are making any difference and then you have some students that try out all the English you taught them and you feel vindicated.

[SweetBear]

Grotto:

Good morning/afternoon everyone

Ah hah! So you're the guy eh?

Was wondering why every kid on my block was greeting me and my dog with " good afternoon everyone."

[deessell]

Off course we should be teaching beginners. They are definately not every one's cup of tea, but you will never see a bigger learning curve.

A good text combined with solid methology and motivated students and you can see some quick results. It's also a lot easier to correct pronunciation from the beginning than having to correct local teachers disasters later.

[diablo3]

yeah, we should teach beginners, why not.
the earlier they are exposed to us, the earlier they can cope with us.
many beginners like to be nurtured, if you can do this, then they will appreciate you.
Much of my experience teaching beginners was good.
It can help if you have Korean knowledge also.

One quick suggestion, do not tell any jokes in english, because they face the language and culture barrier.
It would be good to play games also, not often though.

[keithinkorea]

Native speakers should teach early learners. An English only environment is very good for young kids, ealry learners are like sponges and soak up the information you present them.

Korean teachers can often give the kids really bad konglish habits and we all know how evil Konglish is dont we. Some Korean teachers are really good but they are a minority.

[Hans Blix]

during my celta course was given a single lesson in mandarin and no english by one of my turors (what's standard in the course i believe). i learned so much that i now believe this to be the best environment.

[joe_doufu]

Your frustration with beginners is that you think it's important that their grammar be perfect, and you get upset that the student doesn't understand "What size do you wear?" Imagine you are a 3 year old American learning about clothing sizes. What do you learn first, the grammar, the conjugation? NO! You learn the word "size" in conjunction with the concept "clothes" and the letters "S", "M", and "L".

If you're a decent teacher, your students may not be able to distinguish "what size is it?" from "what time is it?" spoken at conversational speed, but if you say "size???" while looking at t-shirts and indicating the label, your beginning students should be able to say "oh! i'm M". Later they can say "what size?". Later they learn "What size it is?", or "What size you wear?" before finally developing the pefect, inverted sentence structure.

The problem is the expectation of learners and/or their parents that they can go from zero to TOEIC level grammatical understanding in a straight line. And the textbooks that encourage them.

[joe_doufu]

[bosintang]

I guess the better question is should native speakers teach false beginners?

In the example that jajdude gives, the middle-school students are not true beginners. They've probably had plenty of exposure to English lessons previously, but through lack of motivation, bad teachers or teaching methods/materials, they didn't develop properly.

I don't know the answer. At my hagwon, some of the low-level middle school students don't study with a native speaker, some do. Thankfully I don't have to teach them.