Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mercury]

And so I figured I would spend the last 4 weeks of my vacation brushing up on my German since Ich habe Langeweile, and I enroll in this class, and the teacher is a young, pretty girl, and she is LAZY! I mean, she does not write anything on the board, she writes really sloppy, she never moves around. I am ready to ask for my money back! But then, in the afternoon class, a really old woman comes, I mean she must be in her 70�s! Now this lady was a teacher! She wrote, and corrected us, and helped us! Well it caused me to put myself in the chair of my students. I usually don�t write words on the board, I don�t write too neat, and it gave me insight into my own classroom. I am sure Koreans judge us by our classroom skills. It is nice to be able to go back to school and reflect!


In my class there are about 6 Japanese girls, and one poor Korean girl. The Korean girl sits in the middle of them. They are constantly speaking in Japanese, I asked the Korean girl if she spoke Japanese, and she said no. And so now we talk in Korean, back and forth, the Japanese girls are awed by this. They keep asking "what did you say".

[ajuma]

I always write EVERYTHING on the board! Granted, my penmanship leaves a lot to be desired, but it IS readable!! I find that most Korean students can READ much better than they can speak or understand verbal communication, so I've found that if I write EVERYTHING, it cuts down on the confusion. I can't imagine how you could teach WITHOUT writing!

[mysteriousdeltarays]

I don't write "so neat" either.

Perhaps a recruiter could help me.

[hypnotist]

Ach, wie schade, dass Sie in Pusan wohnen. Ich suche nach einem Sprachgebrauchpartner / einer -partnerin.

[plattwaz]

Especially with words that are not spelled like they sound (something like "dough" for instance) I DON'T write it, until all of the students can pronounce it like it should be, and use it correctly in sentences.

Sometimes I will then make a small game of it with guessing how it should be spelled, so that it sticks in their mind that the spelling and pronunciation don't match.

But I find that with relying on writing everything, this continues to encourage the fact that as ajuma said, most students can read better than they can listen -- I want to improve their listening comprehension, and if I write everythings, they stop listening to things. That's one of the reasons native speakers are here....right?

However, I've gotta say, that I am a visual learner, not an audial learner, and I can't survive in a language classroom as a student, where the teacher is not writing new vocab but only speaking it.

[simone]

I don't teach now, but I might go back to teaching biz english when we have some kids - gotta love the hours...

My last teaching job had access to powerpoint. Love it, love it, love it.

You can set up powerpoint animated game shows, drills, and best of all, make all the slides available either as handouts or via email.

Also, you can drop to windows at any point, and open Word to type in any phrases or words that students need to see. Diagrams still go on the white board...

I would make it a mandatory requirement of any future classroom job I have.

--- Sure, if you google it, you'll see lots of Biz-related articles saying "powerpoint is evil" and in some contexts, I agree. One point in Biz school I actually convinced my team we SHOULDN'T do a ppt presentation, in order to stand out from the crowd. We were dealing with two contrasting viewpoints, so we staged it as a debate-style skit. It went over very well... -- So yes, powerpoint can stifle creativity in some environments, but I think it's far too often underused in the language classroom.

Simone

[Ya-ta Boy]

[itaewonguy]

I would say 95% of the SO Called ESL teachers in korea are not even teachers! so what can you expect. I always say to myself and my friends
I would never hire me to teach my kids! hahahahha

[Gunnery Sergeant Hartman]