Korean Job Discussion Forums

[hojucandy]

my hagwon has recently decided to deliver a short ohone teaching session to our elementary school kids. each thursday half of the kids receive a 5 minute phone call from me (its a very small hagwon, just me and a korean english teacher).

after doing this for a couple of weeks now i find i have run dry on ideas... the old "hi jenny how are yu? what are yu doing" routine is wearing thin.

does anyone have any ideas, lists of simple questions, conversation ideas, etc for phone teaching young kids?

thanks in advance

[rapier]

I phone teach all my students once a month. For each class write up 5 simple questions based on their level, or what they've been studying lately. fairly simple really. Each student in the same class gets asked the same questions. just look at what dialogues they're learning. along the lines of:
1) Hows the weather today?
2) Where are you?
3) Are the bananas yellow?
4) Do you like pizza?
5) What does your father do?

They have to answer in full, grammatical sentences. give them a quick grade and use it for their report cards...

[Beeg]

I have to do phone teaching one a month. I usually just chat to them abour general stuff and ask them the meaning of a few words that we have covered in recent lessons.

Most of the time my students just give me yes or no answers, i.e.
Me "so Hyun-Suk what is an immigrant"
Hyun-Suk "Yes"
Me "come on an imm-ee-grant"
Hyun-Suk "Yes"

Its amazing just how nervous they are over the phone, even really talented kids who can speek english fluently.

[Son Deureo!]

[some waygug-in]

peaking a foreign language over the phone is quite a bit more daunting than trying to speak to someone in person because you have no visual cues to help you understand what you're hearing. I don't blame the kids for being a bit more freaked out.

I had to do phone "teaching" my first month at my previous hogwon, and it was probably the biggest waste of time I've ever experienced. The only reason we did it was so that the parents would see their kids speaking English with a foreigner. About 1/3 of the kids just hung up on me as soon as they heard my voice. Getting the rest of them to actually talk to me was like pulling teeth.


I had a similar experience with phone teaching. My director gave me a list of students to call each week, for the first couple of months I had no idea if I was even talking to the right student or not. Often I would ring up an angry grandparent who had no idea who I was or what I was supposed to be doing. They would usually start griping at me in Korean, which I couldn't understand a word of, except for the aggressively rude tone! Then they would hang up. I was supposed to call back any numbers where the student wasn't home, so often I would have to keep bothering the same angry grandparent. Finally I got wise, and just called each number once.

Once I got to know some of the students, it was a bit easier. I knew what they were studying in class and could ask them questions related to class material. But it was really not very productive, as most of the time the students couldn't get past "What are you doing?

My best estimate would be that it was effective only 10% of the time (and that's being generous) and that was only with the few students who would actually try.

Good Luck