Korean Job Discussion Forums

[iggyb]

Before starting at an elementary school, I taught Korean teachers.

One thing I heard from the few teachers who talked about trying communicative language teaching activities is --- they don't work.

Basically, they didn't like the confusion and seeming chaos or the noise.

I told them that almost any new method is going to be rough the first few times you use it. Students get used to patterns, and when you try something they aren't used to, it takes them a couple of times to adjust.

I think that is another reason why NSETs have a hard time getting past the Human Tape Recorder situation: The co-teachers immediately don't like what they see because the students aren't used to it yet.

And being used to it seems to be the key for "effective" teaching in the public schools.

That seems to be why the textbook moves so slow and we "teach" the students stuff they already know...

[Fishead soup]

The decision whether to use The Communicative Approach or Audio Lingual approach is not just a taught decision it can also be a career killer if you make the wrong choice. Unfortunatly Audio Lingual classes commonly lead to parroting. Students repeating meaningless expressions they have absolutly no understanding of. Most teaching methods used in Korea can best be described as fussion methods with a strong leaning towards edutainment. If you are working in an Elementary public school forget about theory and just focus of what works.

[Ramen]

[ESL Milk "Everyday]

I hate Listen and Repeat... I do it every now and then, but it sucks. I also hate grammar... it's important, so I do it, but I don't like it. There's really no reason why you can't do it all, I say.

But I definitely think that language is about communication, and listen and repeat and grammar are not communication. You really have no idea how much your students really understand and how much they're just realizing 'you have to put this word in this blank'.

You have to listen and repeat with the lower levels, but it really shouldn't be too long before they're ready for real communication.

[Fishead soup]

[iggyb]

Listen in repeat is good for quick learning especially for lower levels but OK for all. And it is useful in EFL settings where students aren't going to come into contact with the language enough.

However, if you don't use that as a stepping stone to communicative activities in which students have to create their own sentences using these building blocks you've stored in their memory, they will have a difficult time using the language in the real world.

That is the biggest issue I've seen from watching Korean teachers do mini-teaching a lot: They don't play for activities that free the students from (or push them beyond) memorized sentence patterns...

...They don't build to activities in which students have the freedom to dig up material from all they have learned before.

Which means they don't really wire the brain to handle real world communication.

[cj1976]

I'm actually writing an assignment on CLT, and I find it interesting that some people see the teaching of grammar as a barrier to communicative competence. Some people argue that without some grammatical instruction, communication will be hindered because students aren't aware of the correctness of their output. What do people think?

[iggyb]

There is some danger of errors becoming fossilized - especially in an EFL setting.

Which is why outside reading should be stressed heavily from high beginner up.

The idea seems to be that error self-correction grows with the more exposure the student has to the (whole language). As they struggle to engage with the language in meaningful contexts, they will consciously and subconsciously weed out errors as their overall language ability grows.

[Korean secondary school teachers do not agree - for the most part.]

I think it also depends on what you mean by grammar instruction....You can create communicative activities that allow students more freedom in using the language while keeping a focus on a context that highlights certain grammar points:

A basic example being something like: You meet a friend in the street and ask him "What did you do yesterday?" Find out at least 3 things your partner did.

That focuses on the simple past but requires the student to draw from his longer-term memory to say what he decides he wants to say.

In a more controlled activity, the student would have the dialog written out for him with blanks in which to substitute past tense words from a word bank of words the class has been memorizing.

[Fishead soup]

If your working in a school that has an English zone with smaller streamlined classes you should really try to avoid using too much listen and repeat in favor of things like pairwork/surveys/information gaps/ substitution activities/peer dictations/ games/
Choral repetition is usually part of the lesson plan known as controlled practice. Eventially use have to move on to freer practice or interaction
with the students.

If you are still stuck teaching the 45 students per class in the homeroom classes. Your situation still sucks and you have to do whatever works.

[ESL Milk "Everyday]

[whiteshoes]

[iggyb]

[iggyb]

Just had another of these friendly conversations about ESL methods. And the co-teacher was as wrong as she could be. That isn't being overly judgemental. She was simply wrong. Everything she just said would go against pretty much any TESOL journal or methodology book you might pick up...

..and this is her first year teaching ESL though she has taught for about 8 years total.

But, she has control of the class, and the point of the conversation was to explain why she had told me earlier in the week to drop my lesson plan for that week.

It was a friendly conversation, and I don't mind stepping aside. This is Korea. She will be at the school longer than me. It's her class.

[Fishead soup]

I'm a big believer in autonomous learning. To stand in front of 45-40 students are try to teach them something like giving and taking directions or comparitives is really difficult. I use a lot of materials from Andrew Finch's "Tell Me More". The idea is that the students quite literally teach themselves. It really hard at first because it's something no one is accustomed to particularly the Korean co-teachers and the students.
You start off with simple one way static tasks. These are things like brainstorming crossword puzzles or matching activities. You match English with hungul words. You generally work towards more dynamic two ways tasks like informations gaps and activities that are more demanding.

Students get into groups are answer questionairs about their likes and dislikes. They go from there to more demanding things like Have you ever______? or How often do you______?

[iggyb]

One key point I mean to say - the Korean teachers, like the ones I work with, are just doing what they think is best for the students. They aren't trying to be lazy or anything. They think how they want to teach is the right way and better than the way I suggest...

And this is Korea. This is their school (though switching teachers around every 5 years makes it much less "their school" than you would find in the US). So, it's their class....That is how they treat it.