Korean Job Discussion Forums

[JFuller317]

Some quick background info: When the new semester started in September, my hagwon reorganized the classes and started with some new curriculum. Teaching has been generally unsatisfying since then. I have been looking for some good curriculum to teach to my students and have been pretty unsatisfied so far. Some of the biggest problems:

- Textbooks that focus only on one aspect of learning (listening skills, reading skills, pronunciation skills) and do little to help the students actually understand the words they are learning.

- Textbooks that hold the students' hands far too much.

- Textbooks that throw the student into the deep end of the pool, so to speak, with little or no explanation for difficult concepts or difficult vocabulary words.

There are other problems as well, but those are some of the biggest. Seeing so many flaws prevalent in a great number of ESL textbooks makes me think that it might be possible to make a good amount of money by designing my own curriculum and then selling it to the schools in Korea. After all, if people can make money by selling terrible ESL textbooks, why can't I make money by selling good ones?

Does anyone have any advice regarding this idea? I am fairly confident that I could make effective sales pitches to hagwon owners once the material was complete, but what else do I need to think about?

[jadarite]

I am in the process of developing a curriculum, taking ideas and lessons from the past schools I have taught at in Japan and Korea. Let me tell you, it isn't easy.

Currently, I have 57 individual lessons I want to focus on and some of them could be divided. The main issues I see are lack of familiarity and lack of interesting elements. Students are simply not familiar with the "awesome" and "great" (better?) lessons I am making, and so when they get introduced to the class, they fall short of being able to appreciate the lesson at the level I want them to. So, I end up dumbing them down during classes, and they look more like the textbook lessons we are all aware of.

They also lose interest in the lessons if they only go in one direction. If you don't let the kids be part of the lesson, you will lose them after 10 minutes and they won't want to participate in your activities, regardless how well they are planned out.

I could go on for pages with my theories and ideas, but I will sum them up with one base idea/position I have on this ESL stuff. I think a Korean teacher needs to start and end things. Some might argue immediate immersion, and nothing else, but I feel a Korean teacher should help students understand the basics before they try to communicate with a native English speaker. Then, they can focus on pronunciation and conversation without being bogged down in vocabulary and grammar at the higher levels.

Hagwons, and as I am finding out with public schools also, don't care about the learning process. They don't care if teaching 10 students at a time is more effective than 30 students, and they will do whatever fulfills their personal agenda.

The missing link is not you, nor a proper book, but rather a Korean teacher who will get things started so you can more realistically practice English with students and a school owner/principal who understands this and funds progress over profit.

[JFuller317]

It's true that the lessons themselves could be better if I had a dedicated Korean teaching assistant, but the textbooks themselves have quite a lot of room for improvement, I think. When I see this, it makes me think there might be a business opportunity here.

[ddeubel]

JFuller,

You are correct about the books -- but I'd suggest that the last thing that is needed is "another book"!

Please, the book is not the "curriculum" and that notion has been the ruin of many classrooms. The curriculum is the English language, that is what you teach. The book is just another tool designed to facilitate that. The fixation with the textbook is what is holding back so many students, students in particular who are now more and more digital natives.

Of course there will always be textbooks but unless you are going to leave out all the gap exercises, dialogues, reading passages blablabla and do something really innovative and in tail with the times -- I'd say think again.

Further, how many years of teaching do you have under your belt? How many years in diverse / different classrooms? Teacher training, you might get by through personality, presence, communication skills - with 5 years experience. Writing a textbook , you need of any note, you need at least 10. There is a lot to be thought of and thought through and a lot that comes "artfully" through experience. It is not a science.

Discussing another textbook, a better textbook reminds me of the guy in the self help book section asking the store staff why the shelves are all empty.

My two cents worth.

DD
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

[Seon-bee]

[ddeubel]

Seon - bee,

[Juregen]

Running my hagwon I have been running in some difficulties getting a curriculum implemented.

My first question would be; What do you mean by a curriculum?

Parents come to me and ask me what my curriculum is, and I ask them the same question. What I tell the parents is that we first do an assessment of their childrens "Capabilities", you know, what can they do. Not "what do they know." Our levels are also designed on that.

But then comes the question, what is the content of the classes. How can I guide the teachers what to teach the children?

This guideline is very much open to interpretation to the teacher, and inexperienced teachers might get lost. So how can I assist these teachers in building up lesson plans on how to go from point A to point B.

I tell my parents I do not use one book, but I use a lot of books. I constantly purchase new materials to get a new angle on how to teach a specific set of capabilities.

What I am actually looking for is more of a loose format, based on a sound base. The teacher would be able to pick up part of the book and say "mhhh this would be good for my class, they are not so good in XY".

The problem with a book is that it puts you in a straight jacket, you have to teach this next! While that might be completely unnecessary to that particular class. It also stops children from breaking free from the "logical part" of the language.
Especially Koreans look upon English as a logical puzzle that needs solving, rather then a flexible communication tool with grammar being the basis of good communication.

I try to break them from those logical pathways, so instead of thinking "about" English, they should be thinking "IN" English.

I have yet to find a way to clearly show the parents what it is I am actually trying to do.

Apart from all of that, we are showing results, very clear results with feedback coming from scores the children receive on their tests and the ability for children to say simple things in English, to the displayed pleasure by children to actually learn English.

Any ideas expressed here will be certainly greatly appreciated by myself

[Seon-bee]

[Poemer]

The reason people make a lot of money selling crappy textbooks in Korea is because the schools don't care about their "curriculum" or the quality of the instruction they provide. The schools only want to make money. The parents are only interested in the "curriculum" on a surface level. The school can easily plagiarize a curriculum from the internet, force uncompensated/under-compensated and underqualified employees to make it, or just plain go without and then pass it off to the parents as really great by printing up flashy flyers and internet ads that say it is and then charge a lot of tuition. (It's expensive it MUST be good!)

It isn't easy/cheap to make a good curriculum. Schools will never pay money for good materials because they can get something cheaper/free that will do everything they want it to, namely, keep tuition dollars coming.

[QbertP]

The main reason I would welcome a well made course book is the fact that many teachers are told they must cover certain areas of the text book.

If the text book in question were more useful or adaptable it would be a plus.