Korean Job Discussion Forums

[southboca]

The first hagwon I worked for gave lots and lots of homework. The hagwon made a lot of its own workbooks, so the books were big revenue generators for the school. In order for the parents to continue to fork out money for new books every three months, every page of the workbook needed to be completed. Every class began with a homework check and assignment book check. Students had to write down their homework assignment before they could leave the class. Parents had to sign the assignment book for the next class. Sigh.

For the first missed assignment or unsigned book, students had to do "hands up." No exceptions. You had to go to grandma's funeral in Busan? Too bad. Next time don't forget to take your homework with you. Mom forgot to pack your assignment book? Hands up! Double sigh. Students then had to make up the homework before the next class.

Students who missed homework three times got a yellow card. The school principal got one copy. They had to take the second home for their mothers to sign. These were in Korean. Children (even middle schoolers) cried when they got them. A few of tried to offer bribes. Teacher, do you want a snack? Then no yellow card? Teacher, borrow my MP3 player? Yes? Please?

The bad things about the system were it felt a bit like military school and teachers lost 5-10 minutes out of every 45 minute class to admin. The good thing? Parents who complained about kids' homework got shot down before they even started.

The key elements seemed to be yellow paper, mom's signature and having the offense written down in Korean. Maybe you can adapt it to work for you? Best of luck....

[Fredbob]

I give homework just about everyday. For speaking class I ask them to think about the next day's topic. For reading I give them the text based exercises which are almost always too easy for me to bother with in class and for writing it is always sentence and paragraph writing based upon the topics in the other two classes or the writing points we've practiced. Yes it's important and yes, it helps, even if it is only getting extra practice using new vocabulary words so that they actually-Gasp!-get practice using them.

Most of the times the students do the homework because on the first day I let them know, the homework will be corrected, not graded and that if they don't complete the homework it is unlikely that they will understand what we are doing in class. For reinforcement I point out one or two model students that -amazingly- have progressed faster than all others and ask them how often they do their homework, the answer- of course-ALWAYS.

Of course I work with adults, with middle school kids, which are the only ones I ever had problems getting homework from- I ignored the ones that didn't do their homework and quickly asked for verbal answers to insure homework was done, when they are called on they get embarrassed (as long as you ask randomly ordered students to answer the randomly asked questions so they can't try to figure out what question you will ask them) and if that doesn't work, sucks to be them-I'm not their parent-It's my job to give them relevant and hopefully interesting homework assignments, not make sure they do it.

[chilgok007]

As for the value of homework, I think it has it's uses. As a student of language myself, I can say firsthand that repetition has its benefits as does putting the language to use as frequently possible (of course, I'm an adult who is self-motivated to learn). But, as I've said before, the homework here is not for the benefit of the students, but rather for the benefit of the parents. I have a lot of great ideas I've come up with through my own experiences or read on boards like this that I'd love to apply, but I feel my hands are always tied down by the business end of things. I feel like I can't make the impact I'd really like to make in my students lives because either my boss shoots the idea down, or more frequently the "parents" complain, resulting in a weeks worth of my boss sitting in on my classes to make sure the "offensive" teaching method dosen't repeat itself. Even though my boss admitedly has no teaching (or management) experience, she still believes her teaching ways are best and there is no room for compromise, and even if they're just plain stupid, she still believes it coz shes the boss. The one thing I've definetly learned out here is how not to be a crappy boss.

Just out of curiousity, does anyone know if there is any scholary critiques of the Hagwon System? I know it's hard for me to judge as my experience with other hagwons is extremly limited, but I can't help but wonder if these unregulated schools truely are detrimental to students or is it just my perticular school? Yes, I'm aware this is a seperate topic altogether.

Just in case anyone is wondering, I said nothing to the girl in the way of an apology. She was friendlier and happier than usual in class on Wednesday, though. I just figured that even if I did say something, since she's a first-year, she probably wouldn't understand it anyways. No one has said anything to me about it yet.

I forgot to mention this, and it really is the icing on the cake: I have the boss's son in one of my classes and he NEVER does his homework. I mean NEVER. Her excuse: "little Johnny is just too busy!" (side note: I never assign more than five minutes worth of work). I've tried to address this issue to my boss on several occasions. I've told her the absurdity of her questioning my homework assigning practices when her own son refuses to do it. I've told her how it makes the other kids in the class think they don't have to do their work (afterall, if the boss's son isn't doing it, why should they?). Yet, logic seems to be beyond her grasp. She smiles and nods and tells me change will happen, but it never does, just like that lunch-time break she's been promising us...

Btw, thanks for everyones assistance and advice, I appreciate it.

[Juregen]

[Fredbob]

I do note whether it is done or not and reinforce the students that do it, I just don't spend a substantial amount of time- mine or the class's- on those that do not do it.

[OiGirl]

Read on only if you're REALLY interested in this issue!

There just happened to be a paper on homework in the current Journal of Educational Psychology. I wlll try to summarize as relevant to this discussion.

Trautwein, Ludtke, Schnyder and Niggli. 2006. Predicting Homework Effort: Support for a Domain-Specific, Mitilevel Homework Model. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 98, No. 2, pp. 438-456

Much of their research was based on English as a foreign language and French as a foreign language homework, so I think it's relevant to the Korean situation.

They found that homework is a multi-level problem, that is, there is a teacher-level effect (the quality of the assignments themselves) and a student-level effect (the quality of their work, encompassing time, effort and strategies.)

They found that tight teacher control (checking up on whether they've done their work, reporting it to the parents and higher authorities) results in students that are more likely to complete their homework, but also more likely to copy their homework. Teacher control was weakly related to actual homework effort.

The factors that were related to homework effort were expectance -- the feeling the students had that they were competent to complete the assignment, and value -- the students' feeling that the assignment was actually useful to them in some way.

Briefly, I would recommend, based on this article, that rather than breathing down your students' necks to get their homework done, you make sure you give them homework they are able to do (and that they know this) and homework that is useful to them in some way. If you are stuck with assigning homework from a workbook, you can still spend some time making sure they know how to do the assignments and discussing their utility.

(In my experience, this journal is widely available in Korean university libraries. Although I understand that most af you are probably not as bored as I am and willing to do this kind of reading.)

[Dan The Chainsawman]

I rarely ever give homework.

1) I am not convinced that my value as a teacher is so high that I need to torment my middle schoolers with yet more homework.

2) Every other jag off teacher my students have loads them down enough already. No way I am giving them more.

[igotthisguitar]

No ... duh ... teachers are NOT to blame.

How absurd!

Unfortunately ( apologies if this has already been mentioned ... i'm not going to weed through all posts here today ) it's apparently "KOREAN CULTURE" to target the ( especially western ) teacher w/ the blame ... if the students don't do their homework.

IS that like totally messed up or what?

Should offer a little more insight into the Korean way of "thinking".

Remember, K-kids are perfect and free of any blame.

According to this "logic", do parents also blame the dentist if the children don't brush their teeth?

Blame the doctor if they don't take their medicine?

Blame the travel agency if it rains on their holiday?

Finger the butcher if they overcook their ham?

Frickin' pathetic whiners

[chilgok007]

Well said, igotthisguitar. But, I really hate it when the bosses use "Korean culture" as a cover for their own mismanagement and stupidity, coz I don't think Korean culture is "bad." I've met so many friendly and helpful Korean people in my short time here, all of whom are sincerely revoluted by my bosses actions. I don't think the problem is so much Korean Culture as it is that the people we work with (the boss and some of of the parents) are utter idiots. If the problem occured with another Korean they wouldn't say "oh, it's Korean culture so you must do it," but with us foreigners its easy to pass the buck off in that way, coz frankly, we're ignorant when it comes to their complex culture and they take advantage of it.

I feel the problem is deeper, though. I hate to target all rich people, but they (some, by no means all) do tend to be stuck up and conceited. It dosen't matter whether their are Korean or American or Japanese, their attitude is the same: "I have money, so I have a carte-blanche to do and say whatever I feel like." Now, I'm not trying to say that poor people are somehow inherently better or nicer, but, I stress, my point is that I don't think the problem is so much a cultural problem, rather it has more to do with the clientel we deal with: people who are used to being fed from a silver spoon. They are pathetic whiners and they'll do anything to try to blame the easy targets for their own shortcomings as a manager, a parent or whatever.

[chilgok007]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[jacl]

[Grotto]

[chilgok007]

I have to agree, but can you really blame all of Korean society for a bunch of crappy, selfish losers? It's like saying American of Canadian culture sucks because a use car salesman ripped you off and congress isn't doing anything about it. Yes, its the Korean government's fault for being currupt and sitting on its hand depsite repeated complaints and ignoring its own rules and regulations, but can you really target EVERY Korean person for this?

The only thing we can really do is vote with our feet, try to get the word out about bad Hagwons and prevent unwitting foreigners from getting sucked in. If there are no foreigners, there is no English Hagwon. Afterall, its not the directors "supurb" curriculum that attracts the parents, its not the "wonderful" teaching skills of the KTs that get Mommy and Daddy Kim to fork over fistfulls of won... it's us! We are the reason parents send their kids to these school, and sometimes these jerkoffs seem to forget that.

No foreigner = no kiddie hagwon!

We have all the power out here, we just have yet to realize it.

[jacl]