Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jurassic82]

I was wondering if someone could help me with my particular situation that I am in. Right now at my school I am teaching both writing and speaking. We recently got our books for the writing classes and I discovered that they aren't writing books but speaking books. Anyways this makes things rather difficult because the Director won't order new books so we have to deal with what we've got. The Students also have another book that has 22 Essays that they must write through out the semester so I have been focusing a lot of time on that book but there really isn't much to spend a whole class time on. THe book just has a section where they brain storm, then prewrite and then write their final essay . I have been trying to put together worksheets but have been running out of ideas. I was wondering if anyone could recommend a web page and some links that would help me in teaching writing to young learners because I am struggling. I would appreciate any help.

[Atassi]

How old are they, what level are they at in speaking and writing, and how long are these 22 essays they have to write? Also, what do they do with the essays, and exactly what do you do with them?

[jurassic82]

The kids are at an intermediate level. The essays they write aren't long at all. They are usually only two paragraphs. Usually I have them write me an essay and then I collect them the next class period and make corrections. I also try to look at the prewriting that they did to see where they may have made mistakes. Recently I've noticed that many of the students begin their sentences with conjunctions and use very little pronouns so I have been trying to go over with them both of these topics.

[Atassi]

I was wondering about the age of the students, as there are some things you can't do with 5-year-olds

I think it's fine to have targeted mini-lessons about certain grammar topics (such as conjunctions and pronouns as you mentioned). You know your class and what may work or not, but why not somehow let them work together to make the papers better? This can be done in group writing workshops with the teacher, or as a whole class (especially at first).

There is really so much you can do. Just keep in mind that the priority should be process over product. I would also have the students focus exclusively on content and organization of ideas. Grammar instruction can always come later or as needed.

I should add that if you do this, it means that you will not correct grammatical errors on students' papers, unless of course an error interferes with the meaning of the passage.

Do you think that you can significantly reduce the amount of writings the students do? If they can write two paragraphs on first attempt, then a full essay will be no problem with enough time. And if you reduce the amount of writings you have them do, you'll have more time to have them produce better quality work. If you're patient, you may be surprised with what they can produce. And it would be awesome if the strong writers can be trained to help the others. I hope this is helpful...best of luck

[Smee]

Anything that reinforces the formulaic nature of essay writing helps. Get them to see how arguments are structured in academic English (whether paragraphs or full essays). Intro, three supporting points, conclusion. I first got students to write paragraphs . . . then we wrote outlines for essays . . . then we wrote essays.

I used to make worksheets for my classes where students would write their opinions on silly topics:
- "Would you rather have 9 fingers or 11 fingers?"
- "Would you rather be a meter taller or a meter shorter?"
- "Would you rather kick a puppy or make a baby cry?"
etc.

For each they'd give an opinion and tell me why they think so. (This works for advanced learners or intermediates.)

Also, what about having students make corrections on other people's essays? I used to invent and type up essays in about five minutes. Sometimes I'd leave out verbs, or forget to indent, or have no topic sentence, etc. You can have students both identify the errors and offer corrections.

You don't necessarily need a textbook for a writing class. But, the textbooks "Great Paragraphs" and "Great Essays" have lots of good exercises and samples. Sorry, I don't have publication information on those titles. If you have them lying around the campus---we did---you can make photocopies.

[cubanlord]

[Pak Yu Man]

First thing you can do is teach them the form of a paragraph. Then teach them what a sentence is.

Every sentence and a subject and a verb. You'll have to teach them what a verb is (that'll be one class in itself), then teach them that the subject is usually a noun. (teaching them noun will be another class).

Work your way up from there. I suggest silly stuff...it's better for them and easier for the ids to remember. If worse come to worse go out and buy your own book and photocopy it while your dumb, cheap-ass boss isn't looking.

[noguri]

I'm also new at teaching writing. I'm teaching uni students who already have years of grammar and conversation classes under their belts. However, what they really NEED are to learn what Smee called " the formulaic nature of essay writing."

I have found that most textbooks address this at two levels: the sentence structure and the paragraph structure.

Every book I'm looking at suggests that the structure of the sentence and the structure of the paragraph depend on each other. Yes, you have to begin by reviewing the parts of speech and how they fit together in a sentence. THEN you can move on to ideas like using phrases and clauses with coordinating and subordinating conjunctions and/or adverbs.

If your students are at an appropriate age, I recommend looking at the "cram books" that people get for studying the writing section of the SAT. I have one that lays out the types of sentence structure used and the common errors. It also has a very clearly worded intro to the basics of paragraph organization.

[ajuma]

When teaching writing, I don't corret the students errors, but I DO tell them that an error has been made by marking their essay with symbols. For example V means verb error, A means article error, etc. They must find the errors themselves and correct them in the back of their notebooks.

Smee had some great suggestions for topics to write about. Others might be "If you never had to go to school, what would you do?" "If you had to give up TV or computer games for 6 months, which would you choose?"

I do a little "structure" teaching, but I assume (ok, I know...BIG assumption!!) that Korean students learn to write fairly good essays in Korean, so they DO know about structure.

I'm a fanatic when it comes to not letting them start sentences with "and", "so" or "but"!!! Even though this is possible when writing Korean, it's NOT done when writing in English!

[Hotpants]

Check my site (below) for decent writing links. Scroll down to find 'w' for 'writing'...>>>

[gang ah jee]

[Hotpants]

Yes, the Koreans typically put the thesis statement at the end, but not always. I think what Adjuma means is that the Koreans know all the individual parts of an essay, but they don't necessarily have the same order as an English essay. I also find that Korean students are very reluctant to express 'In my opinion' in their essays and fail to back up their opinion with good supporting detail especially with personal example. Overall, Koreans can improve their essay organization considerably with just a little instruction, but if they have weak grammar from the beginning, that isn't overcome in just a short course.

The poster did specify that they were teaching writing for young learners, so I think things like thesis statements/topic sentences are not appropriate for this stage. Just focus on repeating sentence structures with a bit of freewriting on certain topics. Make up a diary for them to keep at home to help them increase their freedom and risk taking with written expression.

[gang ah jee]

[ajuma]

When I taught TOEFL writing last year, one of the hardest parts was teaching them how to write the thesis/topic sentence. These were very high level writers and speakers, but we spent about 3 classes on how to structure a good thesis sentence. Of course, this is probably the most difficult thing for native English speakers too!

I work a LOT on grammar because if a student continually uses present tense verbs instead of past tense, or if they leave out the articles, no matter how high the vocab level is, they still sound uneducated when they make these mistakes.

When you teach writing to kids, you've got to make the topics fun and interesting for them. I almost never assign a topic that they can look up on the internet. I use things like first date, first kiss, first time I drank alcohol, my first best friend, my favorite childhood toy and the like. It makes it personal for them, and fun for me to read!