Korean Job Discussion Forums

[lastat06513]

I am in charge of teaching a TESOL course this month at my college for English majors who want to study more to become English teachers after they graduate.

One of the biggest questions asked by my students (and on this board) is about class preparation.

I use the textbook ONLY as guidance and ONLY if the lesson is beneficial for my students at that given time. Most of the time, I take what I need from the textbook and type it up as a handout for my students to learn from.

That way, I feel comfortable and confident with the lesson I'm teaching and the students see it in the way I teach them.

I see many posts about how people are just "winging it" in class because they are restricted from using any kind of text in class or the text is too boring to study from.

What about supplementing the material or creating your own material in class and use that as the text? I think if the students see that, they can feel confident they are learning something and if an activity is pasted on it (IE, game found on the internet), that can make it much more enjoyable for you as teachers and for the students learning from you.

I tried telling this to my friend, but he got pissed because he thought I was telling him how to teach~ but I'm not. I'm just giving an idea that might make the class more fun than just looking in a book or just copied handouts- and it shows originality and creativity.

I don't know how many times I would walk into a class where I was given no book (actually this semester- there was NO book, just my handouts) and told to teach and I did just fine by using my own material.

It also helps you costumize the lessons you are going to teach, especially in those private one-on-one lesson programs (like Direct English) and fit them into the level of the students.

We are here as teachers....and businessmen/women. We must provide a service to our students/clients/customers.

The better we prepare our work and the more we put our ideas on paper, the more people would respect us as TEACHERS





Thank you

[manlyboy]

So true. You'd think it'd be a no-brainer, wouldn't you?

[crazylemongirl]

I totally agree. I never give my students stuff copied straight from the book, everything gets tailored to their needs by me. I create extra hand outs, graphics, slides, games in order to make the lesson better and more relevant than them. Seems like people are just trying to cover their own laziness.

[antoniothegreat]

i hate using books, but in those people's defense, i might not always call it laziness, sometimes it is just lack of experience. when i first came here, i had some trouble making lessons, we all remember thinking " god,what the he)) do I teach them today?" we rely on the book, get some experience, and then get to the point you are at now.

[deessell]

Why not use a good textbook?, I say. Why re-invent the wheel. As a language learner myself I prefer a text book. I always use supplimentary activities to enliven the exercises but I think most adults like the safety net that a good text provides.

However, children love it when you say "No book today".


Linguistically naive people should not be in charge of their learning. (I saw this written on a teachers staffroom noticeboard)


P.S. Presently I don't have a text book and I teach High School. If I could find a suitable text book for next year I would be much happier. I think it's much more difficult to find suitable textbooks for young learners.

[SuperHero]

for PC users the best program for making slick handouts is MSPublisher - very easy to use and your handouts look slick.

I regularly use it for revising material from textbooks and resource books.

[kathycanuck]

I had no textbook at my high school....nobody was even sure what it was I was supposed to teach! For my very low-level juniors I photocopied a picture book I found of this character doing various activities. I wrote questions and answers re what he was doing in each scene. Then I wrote 4 or 5 different dialogues using the vocabulary, then role-plays which the students acted out. I find the situational roleplays work really well, as you can incorporate idioms to make their interactions sound more natural than the stilted and overly formal language usually found in most textbooks. For example, although, "Would you like to eat lunch?" is technically correct, a native speaker would say, "Would you like to have lunch?" The students really loved the one where he meets a friend after work and goes to a bar.....thought I might hear from the parents on that one, but not so far. I've found lots of good ideas here on Dave's that I was able to use as well. Mind you, a good textbook that I could adapt would have made my job a LOT easier, especially as the photocopier rebelled against me (overuse?) and tended to break down when most needed.

[weatherman]

[jajdude]

It's great if you can create your own stuff to use in class. Time-consuming perhaps. Many of us slugging through 5-6 classes daily may find that time hard to find. I guess we don't want to put in an extra hour or two daily?

[Ya-ta Boy]

weatherman expressed my view exactly. I like the structure that a text book offers. When planning my lessons I open the book and see what it has and then start organizing how I will teach that material. For example, the book we are using introduces new vocabulary on the first page of each unit. I work out which activities I will add to the one picture the book gives.

[lastat06513]

I am not saying textbooks are the "devil"
I am just saying that if a person is restricted from using a textbook in class, it might be better to have some kind of STRUCTURE to teach from, which in this case is a teacher's own material.
And sometimes if the textbook is ALWAYS used, stagnation sets in and the interesting lessons a teacher taught a few months ago have become so routine that they are becoming UNinteresting to their students.

That's when the alarm bells should be ringing.

I'm not saying that a novice teacher go and start preparing their own stuff, it is good to get some advice and a textbook is very good for that. But after 2 or more years of teaching, a teacher should have in mind what is needed in their classes and they can start preparing material on their own.
A textbook is great, especially if used in the appropriate manner.
But sometimes supplementary materials can work charms on winning the hearts and minds of the students.

[bellum99]

Sometimes you put in that effort and the people don't appreciate it anyway. I have actually had people complain that I wasn't using the book enough. It can make you insane. People have an idea of what they want and everyone is different. It is impossible to actually explain to some Koreans.
Remember that you will probably get no extra recognition from the koreans. You can work very hard and they will say "OH (person name) is such a good teacher" but the person is only good looking and plays bingo for 50 minutes or uses a word search with impossible difficulty to kill the time.

So I use the book for every class and try to suppliment with other
material, but I always use the book. The almighty holy text book that the mothers were convinced is the best.

[some waygug-in]

Where I am working (hagwon) we are supposed to be using 3 different text books, depending on the class. The problem is that the way things are organized (dis-organized), I am never quite sure what class I am supposed to teach next, what book they are using, or even what level they are at.
The schedule seems to change daily or even hourly, so I am always on my toes. I try to use the text for about half the class and then the rest of the class is filled by "activities" (games)

I also use the workbooks from the series "American English Today" and
"Finding Out" which I photocopy as handouts.

The biggest problem with textbooks here is that students are usually given books that are way too high level for them and have no clue what the book is trying to teach. The classes are rushed through the books and then moved up before they have had a chance to absorb anything from the last book, and on top of that the Korean teachers are teaching them from completely different books which have different vocabulary and are usually focused on different grammar points. This leaves the student totally confused and frustrated. It's no wonder they have trouble with English. One book is telling them that a picture of a guy on a bike
means, "ride a bike", another tells them it means, "riding a bicycle" another tells them it means, "ride the bike" and still another says, "go bike riding". While these things seem like not much to us, they can be hugley confusing to students.

The best I can do is focus on basics, pronunciation, spelling, word recognition and simple conversation questions. I am finding that I am teaching "in spite of the book" rather than with it.

[joe_doufu]

I just don't have time to prepare lessons, there are too many different classes. We change textbooks every three months, so I've tried to get most of them using the same few books, much easier to prepare for five lessons than for fifteen.

What I'd really like to see is a syllabus... this is what you learn in month 1, month 2, month 6, etc. We have books but there's no set pace at which I have to get through each chapter, other than the 3 month deadline, and when we change books we tend to get the same lessons over again... a chapter on introductions, a chapter on 'can you...?' questions, etc. There's no plan to it. I think our hagwon might be able to keep students longer if they knew there was something valuable coming at the end of six months or a year... like a certificate perhaps.

[khyber]

at my school, if i take "too long" to finish a textbook, they start to question my teaching ability. I spent some extra time on a really great food unit in one book with a lot of great activities and what happens, the head teacher starts complaining about me going to slow.
We have SOME books where we are REQUIRED to do 2 pages a class. Of course, it doesn't matter cause the textbook is utterly attrocious. If anyone is teaching Let's Chat at a BCM school, can we agree those are the worst textbooks in korea?
Chapters are "themed" and the 3 line conversation on each page is it's own entity with absolutely no grammatical theme throughout the unit and (in my current unit: Describing places) will use the EXACT same structure for 4 of the 5 pages).
I think that, in order to teach kids HOW to actually DESCRIBE things, i'm going to HAVE TO use supplemental activities.
Of course, the kids "like" the book. It's simple...
listen, repeat...practice with a partner (under the korean teacher)..next page...
boooring