Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Spixe]

The Student:
-Lived in New York for a year, two years ago
-Extremely studious and very diligent
-Superb grasp of grammar rules
-25 years old, graduated with BA in "English Education"
-Has passed test 2 of 3 of the Government English Teacher exams (so far)

BACKGROUND:
I met this student a year ago. At the time, her English was great, just about fluent. She talked quickly, rarely got the grammar wrong, and if she did, it was usually the articles.

Now, a year later, her English conversation skills have noticeably dropped. When we first met, I was tutoring her (conversation only) once a week 4 times a month. Not a lot of practice, but better than nothing. Over the last 5 months however, she has been focusing on studying for the government English exam. Poor girl studies probably 12 hours a day. Our meetings dropped from 4 times a month to 3, then 2, and then none at all. Now she's preparing to take the 3rd test of the exam, which is heavily focused on conversation. We will start to meet 2-3 times a week soon.

PROBLEM:
After talking with her for awhile recently, I admit, it has regressed quite a bit. Though on paper, her grammar is perfect and she can explain to you the rules better than most ESL teachers, now when shes TALKING, she constantly gets it wrong, uses wrong forms or tenses, mixes up rules, and stutters as she tries to get the grammar right and thus ends up repeating the same sentence 3 or 4 times as she tries to correct herself. All this while still speaking quickly.

Orally, she went from making mistakes about 5% of the time to over 50% of the time. I could really use some advice on what kind of teaching methods would most benefit this student. I don't feel merely conversing while correcting her grammar will help - she'll just repeat the mistakes. I think some sort of structural conversation that can help her reinforce correct habits would do some good, but honestly I have no idea where to start. Does anyone have any good material or information they can share? Any books you might recommend? What do you suggest?

Any help from the ESL gurus is appreciated!

[some waygug-in]

I don't know the best approach, but I've seen this happen to students who've returned to Korea.

You might try recording the student's speech and then going over the various mistakes with her.

Ask her why she is making these mistakes because she obviously knows better.

See if she can correct some of her own mistakes before you do.

[Whistleblower]

This is a common pattern for those improving their fluency. Have a look at Krashen's theory of language acquisition. She is aware of her mistakes and she constantly trying to self correct. My advise; don't show too much attention on her mistakes and praise her when she gets it right.

[legrande]

It could be that she needs to relax a bit, it seems like her circuits are perhaps overloaded studying 12 hours a day, then meeting with you and not being able to speak accurately might be further damaging her confidence.

If she did establish a decent foundation while in New York, after she relaxes and cleans out all the overstressing and anxiety, it should re-emerge naturally on its own.

If a good foundation wasn't there to begin with, she may have to take a bit more time to shore up her fundamentals.

Basically she should know there's no quick fix for real fluency.

There are people out there who claim there is and make a killing on the Korean hagwon circuit (some Korean instructors broadcast their snake oil on the net), and there are others well-respected in TESOL/CELTA/Linguistics etc who imply they have the grail when giving talks, and like to lecture elementary/middle school/senior high ex-pat instructors without ever having taught in Korea themselves, or at least within the past 10 years.

[recklesscognition1]

Make a couple of the classes take place at a drinking establishment to help loosen up.

[Subtitle]

I think that at the beginning of each session I'd start with a drill. Have some index cards with subjects and verbs and verb tenses. So you'd do simple past, then . . . "I ran. I ate. I slept. I wrote. . . " Keep going through the tenses, past perfect, past progressive, past perfect progressive, etc, etc. Simple, I know, but they're just used as a warm up drill. Five minutes tops.

Secondly, she must slow down. I don't know about this particular exam, but speaking rapidly isn't usually a goal. Maybe use a metronome to slow her pace.

[Slowmotion]

Using language is a very natural process. I'm no linguistics expert, but I've noticed when students "try too hard" they tend to make more mistakes. She might be caring too much about making mistakes or not.

Since I also speak Korean, I've noticed this problem for myself.

[le-paul]

1/ you want to be fluent, youre going to have to go over a lot of grammar points for example prepositions, and countable nouns etc. as that is where a lot of people make mistakes and sound un-fluent.
An example is saying 'Im going to the downtown'
or
there are many cars in the street - poeple just dont talk like that. They usually say a 'thes a lota cars'

2/ its important to teach 'expressions', as that is how people usually speak - for example 'Im dying to go home' or ' i wish it was home time'.