Korean Job Discussion Forums

[spyro25]

just finished mine. the title was 'assessment and its effects on an elementary-grade EFL program'

i set up a set of learning objectives in the curriculum of the kid's efl program at edit. these objectives are part of what would be considered as a criterion-based assessment program. the students received monthly speaking tests based on these criterion. i set up a 3 month long case study involving parents, teachers and students at the academy to see how these stakeholders were influenced by the assessment process and the effect that the assessments had, as well as any summative of formative benefit the assessments brought. the results were negative in that the new system did not provide much of a true summative or formative aspect at all, and that the learning objectives as well as the montly tests were a detriment to student learning. hence, a more holistic way of assessing students was called for, taking into account each student's progress individually and taking each piece of work produced into account when determining their success or failure in the curriculum

that's me though - i'm very curious to see what those of you with MA TESOL majors did as your dissertation piece, and what research you did to earn it.........

[polonius]

I am considering doing a Masters in the near future. The idea for my dissertation that I haven't been able to shake is, "Considering the different nodes that culture, history, geography and borders create for language acquisition, how diverse does the instruction, methodologies, techniques and materials have to vary?"

I have taught EFL for six years, French as a Second Language for 3 years, and there are certain differences needed to take into consideration when teaching different languages. That said, seeing as Koreans have a certain starting point, just as Spaniards or Russians have different starting points, the teaching must also take into consideration learning patterns based on cultural differences, obviously alphabet differences, grammatical structures and so forth.

We can all agree that there are three types of learners, however, within that given structure, is there anything we can do as teachers to facilitate the task at hand. Certainly many of the basics will be true for all different backgrounds to learn English, and these are very well focused on in much of the literature out there. However, we see many books available here in Korea that focus on Spanish learners, as they were created for an American market, or perhaps some for Thai, Pilipino or Malay learners published in South East Asia.

I have seen some books that a geared toward Korean learners, however, those Vocabulary books that I see students with their noses stuck in at all times disappoint me, as they are to MEMORIZE 20-40 new words along with sample sentences. These sentences are not ones that are practical in everyday English, and furthermore, they will be forgotten as soon as they try to start memorizing the next day's assignment.

I have seen some Listening books which were created here in Korea, Listening Juice for Junior, and I thought that they were terrible. Some of the vocabulary choices were out in left field. Really, who is going to need to know what a lexicographer does? And the accents the voice actors put on where terrible. I have no problem with accents being incorporated into language acquisition, but at least get the accent right. That said, their other books for lower proficiencies were ok, Listening Juice for Kids.

I wrote a grammar book for low proficiency level students. I tried to make it as mathematical as possible, considering that many Koreans tend to think in terms of mathematics. Subject + Verb + Object = Sentence.
As the book progresses I gave different equations to incorporate adjectives, adverbs and so on.

[Tobias]

The reading of this status report required considerable top-down processing. After the first reading, I felt I had overlooked some of its deeper meaning. I thus duplicated my efforts and discovered it contained unncessary verbiage. I then submitted my rebuttal.

Translation:

After reading this post once, I said "what the *beep* did I just read?" I then re-read the minutae, hit the reply button, and typed away.