Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Qinella]

Here's the scenario: my most advanced class consists of three middle school students who are able to understand most of what I say, even if I speak at a regular speed, and are quite adept at all of the TOEIC assisgnments they do. They're quite good at detecting grammatical errors, doing fill-in-the-blanks, dictation, answering questions based on listening, and all of the other standard exercises that run the gamut in English textbooks. However, when it comes to creating original sentences, they are woefully lacking.

Today I gave them sets of words that I knew they were familiar with and instructed them to create sentences. Neither was able to create a grammatically perfect, or even good sentence. In fact, most sentences were in such disarray that I couldn't even approximate their intended meanings. The main problems I deduced were these:

- subject/verb agreement
- usage of "is" and "am"
- sentence organization
- object usage
- requirements of a logical sentence

I realize now they need to take baby steps toward independent writing. They've apparently never been free to roam the great white page with ink and English, and hence are daunted and crippled by the attempt. I've considered two things that may be helpful:

1. More reading assignments. As of now, they are doing mostly TOEIC, which has scant reading assignments, and that's overstating it. I have "What a World" and "Reading Challenge", and I think reading those every week may cause them to learn sentence structure by osmosis.

2. Translating simple Korean to English sentences. I'm sketchy about this one, due to VanIslander's and others' recommendations not to learn by translation. However, this is my own main method of learning Korean (translating back and forth independently), and I'm learning much more quickly and effectively than any of my students, who do not do it. So perhaps it would be helpful?


I'm sure there are others who have had this problem before. How were you successful? I'm looking to you to help prevent me from turning my students into educational lab rats, subjected to whatever solution pops into my inexperienced mind. Are there books? Specific resources? Exercises? Anything at all would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading. I know it was long-winded.

Cheers,
Q~

[some waygug-in]

The translating thing can be OK if it's not overused. I used it sometimes with some of my middle school classes. They seemed to enjoy it.

I used a book called English 2020, it's actually for Koreans to self study.

It has some good sentences to practice.

I wouldn't do it for more than 5 minutes in a 50 minute class though.


Other activities, well what you said...... reading practice.

Grammar auction. they have to decide if sentences are correct or not and then bid on them. It's going to be a bit of a hassle to get them to understand how to play though.

I can't remember all the rules, maybe someone out there can help.

Other:

Listening to pop songs (that have good sentence structure)
Not always easy to find, but if it's at all popular, they will pay attention and start repeating the song lyrics.

Not that I like this music personally, but the kids seemed to like it:
Brittney Spears, Avril Lavigne, Alanis Morisette, Back Street Boys, 'N Sync, Kylie Minogue, etc.

hope this helps

By the way......... they loved Aqua - Barbie girl. even my adults.

[deessell]

The grammar auction rules and is popular with all students.

1. Photocopy lots of $10,000 won notes.
2. Give each team (2 students) about 150,000 in cash to bid for sentences.

3. Hand out the list of sentences typed up on a sheet of paper. Try and use errors from their own essays and it is more pertinent.

4. Give them a few minutes to try and correct the errors.

5. Explain that the winning team is the team with the most correct sentences, so don't spend all your money on one sentence.

6. Start the auction with sentence number one. The highest bidder gets to try and correct it. If they are wrong start the auction again.

You can give them clues as to what the error is ie, plural or subject verb agreement.

This activity gets the class going and makes grammar fun and should take about 45 minutes if you do about 10 sentences.

Good luck.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

One of my best hogwan classes consisted of three middle school boys. They were only intermediate level, but two of them were very smart. We got into a routine of making up our own sentences and it was quite a bit of fun. I'd do this by writing lists of subjects, verbs and adjectives, prepositions, and objects. They could skim across the whiteboard and make different combinations. Then we'd take turns asking questions and giving answers, trying to make it lots of fun. It was amazing what they'd come up with once they were used to it - "will you be crazy in front of the gorilla?", "will the stupid girls be curious in the men's room?", "were you noisy in the boring church on Sunday?", etc. After they get used to it you can go from tense to tense and start off using different interrogative pronouns. Recycling favourite adjectives (and teaching them opposites), but bringing up lots of new nouns works well.

Of course, if the kids have attitude problems, all the strategy in the world can go by the wayside.

[Hanson]

[deessell]

Another good idea is to teach Q.A.S.I. for making questions.

Q= Question word

A= Auxiliary Verb

S= Subject

I= Infinitive

What music do you like?
Question word Aux. subj. infinitive

[Qinella]

Pretty good ideas so far. I'm going to the English language bookstore in Daejeon later today, so I'll try to find English 2020 and see what else they have.

The auction game sounds interesting. However, it seems like more of a glorified grammar lesson than a sentence construction lesson. As I said, they are good at finding errors and knowing which sentences are good; the problem comes when they have to make a whole new sentence on their own. I found a game on Dave's Cookbook that would probably be helpful, and I'll share it here for others who want to try:

- Make a bunch of small cards with one word on each card. Make at least two of each word, and then 4+ of the more common words like "and" or "to" and punctuation marks.
- Divide the class into teams.
- Create the longest sentence you can think of, then give the necessary cards to each team.
- Whoever can properly arrange the sentence first wins, or gets points.
- If the first team to submit an attempt is wrong, they must wait a predetermined time to prevent random, fanatical guessing.

I think this game would be helpful in teaching sentence construction, as it gives them the tools necessary to make a sentence and isn't quite as intimidating as having to work completely from imagination. Also, this avoids the translation route.

[pegpig]

Just another version. When I do the auction game it takes 15~20 minutes. Maybe I hurry too much or I've been here too long and have gotten the bali in me. I've only got them once a week, so time is critical.

I usually sell all the sentences first and then we get to checking them after. At the end of the buying portion of the game I take away any money they have left. That encourages them to spend wisely, but also realize they'll have nothing at the end. 5/10 sentences are correct. If they correct an incorrect sentence they get 5 bucks back. If they correctly identify a correct sentence they get 3 bucks. The rewards make them consider their purchases a little more in the buying phase.

The brighter students generally find it more interesting.

I guess this could go, or was already, in a games thread.

[ladyandthetramp]

There are plenty of Korean students who understand what you say and know a good deal of words but can't create a decent sentence. I'm not sure why, but one guess is that their parents sent them to hakwons that relied on talking and games to teach students, while ignoring grammar and grammar exercises (considered boring). You might want to check out Grammar Time 4 (3 might be okay, too) for them. It's a very good review for grammar with a lot of practice for them. Granted, it's not as fun as playing Bingo, but it's much more useful. Teach the chapter (over a few days) and have them create sentences focusing on the chapter's grammar point. You have to (re)teach grammar if you expect them to write well. Most important, although Koreans hate this, is to go slow and make sure they understand it.

Remember, class is not always fun and games!

[some waygug-in]

I agree, except that in most places that I worked, as soon as I tried to give them traditional grammar type work to do..........there was suddenly a dramatic increase in complaints about me as a teacher, an increase in student inattentiveness, disruptiveness etc.

If you can ... go for it, but not everyone will be able to pull it off.

They may be called into the office and given the "you must funny English"
speech.

[Qinella]

The particular class I wrote about actually very rarely plays games. They all seem to enjoy learning English, or at least claim they do, and every day we're busy doing either TOEIC books (grammar, reading, listening) or whatever exercise I've decided to have them do. Every few weeks I give them a break and we can play Scrabble or something, but it's rare.

They already have a grammar book, so perhaps I could let them write original sentences based on the models given in whatever section they're studying? That might be helpful. Just tell them to switch out the nouns, adjectives, verbs and whatnot to get a feel for how to make a sentence.

Hmm... good idea ladyandthetramp, thanks.

Q~

[joe_doufu]

They don't have practice making sentences "on the fly". It sounds like they can create sentences following a model, and probably can make sentences in homework (with time to check reference books) but can't do it on the spot. As a language learner (Chinese + French), one of the activities that puts me "on the spot" most is chatting on MSN. It's like a workout, I feel winded and ready for a beer after a good 20 minute chat in Chinese.

It would be cool to try an online chat with a high school ESL class sometime... too bad for me, most of my students are too young or beginner level to do this. I have lots of ideas for an imaginary future when I have a lot of HS and Uni students.

[ulsanchris]

one way to practice sentence construction is give them sentences with mixed up word order. then they have to put the words in the correct order. after they practice that for awhile they will be better able to write original sentences of their own.

[Qinella]

[d503]

I have to say that sentence construction is usually the hardest thing for my kids to grasp.

The series my school uses now, has a nice section of unscrambling the sentences. For the lower level kids they are the focus sentence like "time What it is?" and the kid writes What time is it?

For the older kids it will focus on more on what order to put the prepositional phrases in, SVO order and the like. I know you mentioned doing it with cards.

I would recomend taking some of the sentences from their readings and mixing them up (within themselves). Like you said these kids really have never had to create independently before, it was stock question stock answer. Having them organize the words in a sentences is a nice way to baby step away from that.