Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bosintang]

I'm assigned to teach one of my middle-school classes a middle-school level 'Earth Science' textbook.

The students speak English quite well for Korean students, but this textbook is not an ESL book, it's the real deal meant for native speakers stuying science as part of a core curriculum, not for some ESL-teacher who knows *beep* about earth-science himself to be attempting to "teach" once a week.

I can't for the life of me imagine how any parent or educator could possibly think it would be a good idea to throw a book like this at their native speaker and expect them to work with it.

And yet, it seems so typical. They have no particular goals or objectives for their foreign teachers, don't particularly understand what foreign teachers provide, besides "proper" pronuciation, as if that's end-all be-all of language-learning. In fact, I haven't got the impression from many people here that they have any understanding why they're trying so hard to learn English in the first place!

Anyways, back to the point, I feel like a scam artist attempting to teach this and would outright refuse to if I wasn't so near the end of my contract. In fact, that's what the whole ESL industry in Korea feels like to me, one big ugly scam. It's a flimsy house of cards based on some vague premise that it's necessary for everyone to learn English.

Sigh, I have no real point here. I'm just in need of some badly needed venting space, and just can't wait to finish my contract and be rid of this mess. I'm going for a beer.

[ulsanchris]

I use this book at my hogwon and i think it is great. They are learning English in a natural context. Not some made up conversation from a boring text book. Its great for building their vocab.

[bosintang]

Are you serious? I understand why they might want to learn some English in a natural context, but these kids are dreadfully inprepared for a North American middle-school level textbook, especially one-hour a week over six months. North American middle-school students (native speakers!) would spend 4 or 5 months on this book with at least three or four lessons a week.

I'm supposed to go through about 4 or 5 pages a day. I counted on the first page at least 30 vocabulary words that the students will absolutely not understand. The explanations of these words in the back of the book are not much better, as they only introduce more vocabulary the students are not familiar with. It's absolutely ridiculous. There's no way these students are going to internalise this amount of material, and I would just love to ask one of their parents what the hell they think their kids are going to accomplish by doing this.

[Kimchieluver]

Damn... I thought I had it bad when my director told me I had to teach the new edition of "teen talk" to grade sixers who only picked up 1/4 of what I had to mime and gesture.

[cruisemonkey]

Teacha, teacha... teach me well (and know I love you)... reminds me of a song.

[fidel]

I used to teach that book back in the days to advanced middle school students and both they and I loved it. Damn I miss that book and wish I were teaching it right now! (well maybe not now because it's Saturday).