Korean Job Discussion Forums

captain kirk · Joined: 29 Jan 2003

My Korean co-teacher says a lot of schools have, on the school website, an English corner where students can correspond by email with the school's foreign teacher. I've been at the school two months and today she announced this 'service' to the students. It means I'll be answering emails to me from students practicing their English.

Does anyone else do this?

BS.Dos. · Joined: 29 Mar 2007

No, at least, not to my knowledge, but I'd welcome it as I've a very light workload at my school and would happily subscribe to a program that encouraged my HS students to correspond with me in English although, I doubt that many of them actually would.

ttompatz · Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Location: Kwangju, South Korea

Yes, I have been doing it for just over 2 years.

It takes a grand total of about an hour or so per week on a quiet afternoon.

They are usually short and my replies are usually 1 or 2 short sentences or a quick question.

Atavistic · Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 11:51 pm Post subject:

We have a bulletin board that students can use. Only my advanced class students use it. My time investment is probably 30 mins a week. I enjoy it, they write some interesting stuff.

Skippy · Joined: 18 Jan 2003 Location: Daejeon

Have not done it. But until you actually do it I would not worry. I think it might either go two ways.

1. Very little email mostly those few eager students

OR

2 Hell on the wire. Teachers decide to try and start some program on the Internet such as writing and they want you to correct their emails. Then, every student tries to submit and is told to do lots of homework online.

But until it starts do not panic.

Also make sure you have a extra account for email. Never give you personal.

I think you might get a few drive-by "hi" email

captain kirk · Joined: 29 Jan 2003

That's reassuring. When she mentioned it to the grade fives today it was 'IF you want to email the foreign teacher please put your info on this paper'. So it's an optional program and not a homework correcting job for me. Then it'll be casual which is good.

There are 150 grade five students or thereabouts.

ddeubel · Joined: 20 Jul 2005

I think anything a teacher can do to make their teaching more "digital" and more available outside the classroom -- is a godsend.

About privacy issues and email -- why not just start a Ning? www.ning.com Ning gives any K-12 teacher an ad free site . Post up your page there. Make a banner for your school and you are set. Nice thing is that students can email you there and you will get notification at your email address but everything is kept private. Nice mail system they have.

Each student gets a home page etc.....

Or you can make a classpage on EFL Classroom and take advantage of all the direct resources there. The whole class / school can use the same ID/pw to access....

Cheers,

DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

shifty · Joined: 21 Jun 2004

Once those few s/s who actually deign to do it get over the novelty and see that it's more like work, it quickly peters out.

Otherwise good fun, you can demand that he/she gets busy with studies, less shalaa shalaa in class etc.