Korean Job Discussion Forums

[robbyt]

would this be annoying to you? it is to me. i'd like to know if this type of arrangement is common in hagwons.

now, to explain what i mean by by this. basically, i only have a few groups of students who consistently attend the same classes. the scheduling at my hagwon is structured around the individual student instead of the class. students arrive every hour and stay for 2 hours. they get sent to study with me for 25 minutes. the time when they come depends on the work the've completed with the K-teachers. students attend either 5, 3 or 2 days a week. some come at the same time every day and others come at different times depending on the day.

the students i teach during any given time slot are a semi-random mix and match of students who happen to be at the hagwon at that time. for example, the 1:00-3:00 students can be mixed with the 2:00-4:00 students, MWF students mixed with M-to-F students and so on. an effect of this arrangement is that any group of students during a time slot is a mix of students with various English capabilities. i teach kindys, intermediate and advanced all in the same class.

my solution has been to have about 3 or 4 different work sheets available during a class and hand them out according to level of difficulty and what the student has already completed. needless to say, the mid-level students get upset when they see the easy kindy worksheets with letters and numbers. i end up running around from student to student for the 25 minutes helping them with whatever they need. i'd like to use textbooks, but then every student would be on a different page, so it would be senseless.

holy crap. what a BS way to run things. i thought the idea of a classroom is that i teach a lesson and all of the students follow in unison. the only advantage i can see is that wonjangnim gets more customers because parents can create any schedule they want for their kid.

does anyone else have to deal with this kind of arrangement? is there a way to sort this out?

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Do you have any A/V aids? Songs as listening excercises work well with mixed-level students, as you can give the lower-level ones more hints. The same goes with games like Scrabble - you can help the weaker kids out more. Task-based activities like group dictations also work well as you can assign the stronger students the more difficult roles.

Basically with a situation like yours it's going to be a matter of small victories and creating a good impression with the parents. If the kids can go home and sing a verse to a song or recite a short dialogue the parents will be happy and think they're getting good value for the fortune they pay to have them spend 25 minutes in a room with a white person.