Korean Job Discussion Forums

[moosehead]

what's the first thing you would do?

I'd introduce more mulitmedia classes - music, movies, comic books, the works.

and I'd eliminate these stupid sentences the kids have to memorize every 6 weeks - they work on them w/the K Eng teacher - total waste of time.

I'd also require the K E teachers to attend E classes and improve their speaking ability through regular presentation practice, book reports and other professional development.

anyone else?

[aka Dave]

I was prepping my students for the last (interview) phase of the Korean teacher exam, asking them about how they'd lesson plan, etc.

Their responses were quite similar to your ideas. They're *big* on multimedia, and emphasize life long learning/development. All of them plan on going to grad school.

[ThingsComeAround]

#1 I'd give myself a big fat raise no, seriously!
#2 Learn Korean and teach them English the way I learned other languages, by explaining in their own language, and if they had a question, they would be more encouraged to ask
#3 Make English pass or fail (meaning they cant graduate unless they pass )
#4 Have a program set up where the K-teacher would have to travel to an English-speaking country and be immersed there (may be spinning my wheels but it could work )

[Seon-bee]

[moosehead]

[mnhnhyouh]

I would reduce the daily vocab lists, and substitute them with sentences to memorize. This way they would at least know one way of using the word.

h

[Ilsanman]

I'd make principals accountable for how the money is spent. No samgyeopsal parties using the foreign teacher budget.

[Seon-bee]

[ThingsComeAround]

[Ukon]

[moosehead]

there are times in my classes if students are writing or doing other quiet work, I turn on jazz or other Western music just to expose them more to what our culture offers.

One of the reasons I, and other NETs wish to add more multimedia to the classroom is to encourage students to seek this out on their own.

I KNOW I'm not the only NET who quizzes students about how much exposure they receive to E outside the classroom only to hear - consistently - it is or almost nil.

another important facet of this - and I've stressed this to my superiors many times - is hearing just one native voice, and seeing just one native face just doesn't cut it -

they need to hear as many accents and ways of speaking as possible, not to mention these voices interacting in natural ways.

[D.D.]

I would have the students learn reading, writing, listening and speaking. Not sure what they do the other 2 classes of the week but they can't make a sentence.

It's like they learn about the language rather than how to use the language.

This would be like a pilot learning everything about the plane but not being expected to fly.

Movies and youtube are great for teaching if you just use short clips to stimulate conversation. Also it helps if it is a topic they find interesting.

It is 2009 and people are still debating if multimedia is effective?

Getting students interested in english is more effective than trying to teach them about it.

[sobriquet]

I would reduce the curriculum content to make it more manageable and spend more time on things like writing, especially for the teachers who cannot write a paragraph.

I would also fire most NET's until the Korean teachers were up to speed and doing their job correctly and had been on a Co-teaching course.

At the moment in most school's we are a waste of time.