Korean Job Discussion Forums

[withnail]

Just looking at my Uni's choice of Textbook for this next semester lets me know once again - I have my work cut out!

The topics in there, such as public transportation and city facilities/household items are just not interesting or relevant to Korean Freshmen.
Insulting-intelligence communicative tasks and silly, irrelevant reading passages, hundreds of grammar exercises, pron drills etc....aaaarghh.

Once the books have been sold, teachers feel the pressure to validate the expense by using as much of the stuff as possible. We don't need the complaints!

Textbooks - I've never seen a good one!

The last one which was relatively usable was Compact 1, 2 & 3 back when I started teaching 13 years ago! You even had murder mystery riddles in there and two-page units!!!!

Made realise that what these textbook writers have done is choose 12 or so topics and then tried to find ways to make relationships to grammar structures which might be useful, spoonfuls of vocabulary and a bunch of pron activities - a little something for everyone for the well rounded unit!

Just doesn't work though. Any self respecting teacher ends up avoiding more than he/she uses, ultimately writing their own material. There are just not enough mini discussions or communicative tasks in there, very little vocab and crap topics. Seems to me the better activities hived off into some of the teacher's books, workbooks ought to be in the main units but I guess the need to make money always prevails!

I think a book should have sections at the back you can dip in and out of of the book for reference from time to time, a grammatical structure section, wordlist section, pron section. A separate section for short reading passages. Another for listening work. Appendices if you will.

The actual units themselves would be full of images and questions for discussion, picture stories and other prompts to induce speech and have fun!

It seems we have just got to write our own course materials!!!!

What do you think?


When you think of all the topics that do work i.e. Music, Fashion, Clothes, Internet, love and relationships etc, you realise how relatively easy it could be to put together your own.

Have you ever thought about making your own text?

Instead of being topic based, wouldn't we have more success if it the units were a mix of topic, function, situation, lexical set?

Another annoyance is the higher up the level you go, you just get lengthier reading comprehension tasks and longer more difficult listening tasks.

Dunno about you but I think unless we are teaching IELTS reading or listening, we've no business to be using up so much class time on these activities.

I think there should be much more on functions, expressing different types of feelings/emotions etc. Very neglected area! The received wisdom is "ah but those things would require us to have the students using phrases with grammar structures which should come at a later level"

Rubbish! That's what the lexical approach is all about - teaching them useful phrases/chunks for particular situations! Here, rote memorisation actually helps!

I think for Korean students, the time for really learning vocab sets like household items etc will come when they actually want to go and live in the US/Canada etc - when that stuff will actually be needed.

In the meantime, it should be about being able to express oneself and talking about stuff that is meaningful to them.

[andrewchon]

What's happened to that book by Welsh guy, Finch? Isn't that good enough?

[withnail]

I'm a big fan of Dr Finch and Dave Deubelweiss and others but these guys don't really deal with Freshmen or aren't acquainted with the harsh realities of university administrations/university grading systems.

Perhaps I do them a disservice but it seems most of their good work is aimed at kids from middle to high school.

Finch is a strong apologist for peer/self assessment and while that is cool it won't fly in most Korean universities. They prefer textboks of their own choosing (profits to be gained from publishers' agents?)

As for their preferred type of teacher - what I have previously described as "whiteboard soldiers"!! http://forums.eslcafe.com/korea/viewtopic.php?p=2053043&highlight=#2053043

[maryjanes]

Deubelweiss, deubelweiss
Ev'ry morning you greet me
Small and white
Clean and bright
You look happy to see me.

Thank you, I'm here all week.

[Young FRANKenstein]

[withnail]

bump.

[Hanson]

I usually end up picking some pages from the textbook and then supplement the hell out of them.

[withnail]

That's what I would do too, at most. Problem is I guess we are all mindful of the fact that the students had to pay for the book!

Another issue that in many student evaluation questionnaires, one the first questions for students is "Did the teacher use the book".

There's a reason for this.

In some universities, the regular use of it is policed by administration or at least they are definitely keeping an eye on you and how much of the book you are using. Head Instructors might say here "I was consulted about the book and they took my choice!" That may be true. Often the choice of book doesn't matter but...
Here's how it works just for anyone who doesn't know.

Someone, somewhere in the university hierarchy is receiving a considerable "payment" from the publisher's agent for agreeing to choose their book from amongst all the othe options out there!

In many universities there can be around 5000 freshman for whom your course is compulsory! The students may also have to buy the accompanying workbook too. You do the math! That's a lot of money!

When you don't use the book, don't use it much or give the students the impression that's it's not so important, you are messing with someone's profits!!

Not to use the textbook regularly or even just giving that impression can actually be a capital offence bringing a swift and merciless reaction from admin...