Korean Job Discussion Forums

[HollyLove]

I have absolutely no curriculum to follow for these students and most have little to no understanding of English. I teach the class twice a week for a full hour each time and will normally do simple themes (what's your name, how are you, numbers, colors etc.) but I don't have enough material to continue much longer and I have to teach the class for the next 11 months. Can anyone recommend books or something (anything!) that can help? I usually get material and Ideas off the internet but I want some sort of structure to follow. I never taught before coming to korea and trying to teach these 6 year old kids English with absolutely no basis (either on their side or my side) is incredibly frustrating and exhausting for both of us. HELP!

[gillod]

Same here. My kids speak 0 English and don't know the Alphabet. I have them an hour a day, 5 days a week. No co-teacher.

Barryfunenglish.com worksheets, games for about 20 minutes. Then 40 minutes of movie and craft. Usually the just SCREAM when I give them a worksheet, some of them throw it out, some of them tear it to pieces, but. Figure I gotta try.

It's pretty impossible. Even if I had completely obdient kids it would be hard. With utterly disrespectful kids who don't understand a word you're saying? Show them a movie. It's babysitting.

[b-class rambler]

mes-english.com has lots and lots of really great free flashcards that are appropriate for using with young kids.

You could easily get at least a couple of dozen topics to cover from what's available there, which would be more than enough to base a year's curriculum on.

It'll be frustrating as a new teacher to have no pre-set curriculum to follow, I know. But in some ways it's a big advantage if you're actually left to make it up yourself. When you find certain topics go well, you can milk them for an extra couple of weeks. And you can conveniently shorten the ones that don't go so well. It can be a real pain to look at a book you've been forced to use and think, hell, how do I teach this chapter....and then think the same for the next chapter and the next and the next.

I'd suggest you don't try to do too much in one lesson. You mentioned numbers, colours etc. I'd spend at least a week on numbers, a week on colours, in fact at least a week on any topic. Keep reviewing and regurgitating, because that's what they need. Kids of that age will often respond well when you're giving them stuff that they CAN actually do because they did it all last lesson as well!! At the end of each month, have a special quiz/review week where you do activities based on the topics covered that month.

I'd say don't give worksheets to kids of that age if you can possibly avoid it. (Or at least, don't do more than just try it briefly and see how it goes.) Really unusual cases aside, kids of that age can't read and can't write so you'd be giving them a task which will frustrate them as it's beyond them; and will frustrate you because you wasted time making it and their repsonse to it is driving you nuts in class! You might make an exception for practising the alphabet for short periods. But there are ways of practising writing the alphabet letters without using worksheets.

Anyway, PM me if you want any more specific suggestions.

[tomato]

Hello, HollyLove!

Since I started keeping count, 43 other people have started threads with questions similar to yours.
These threads contain most of my own ideas, as well as oodlums of other ideas submitted by other veterans of the battle.

43 42 41
40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31
30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The next time someone asks, this will become thread number 44.