Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jajdude]

What can ya do? It's clearly too hard for them. But it looks impressive when the elm/middle schoolers are reading high level stuff. You have to teach it. You pretend along, we all understand? You know they don't but time is tight and there's more to come next week. Hopefully the Korean teacher will help. There's 10-20 words per page, numerous expressions beyond your capacity to explain to kids who can barely properly ask or understand the statement, "Teacher, bathroom, please."

Well, maybe an exaggeration.

Frustrated I is.

Teaching (?) stuff out of reach.

[some waygug-in]

Sadly, it is not an exaggeration. It's all too common in Korean hagwans. The director thinks he/she can impress parents by having kids work on stuff that WAY ABOVE THEIR appropriate level.

What can you do about it? It depends on where you work and what they will allow you to do.

What I usually did was fudge through the lesson as best as I could, then spend the last half of class with a game or something that would help them work on basic things.

One game I like is called "Sorry". The kids have to practice asking

"Do you have ......?" If their English is not quite up to the level of asking full questions, I let them ask "lion?" etc. But I always model the full question when it's my turn so that if they get brave enough they can try it too.

I bought a set of "Sorry" cards that have pictures on one card and the word on another. The kids have to match the 2 cards. If they need the matching card for "elephant" for example, they ask one other person "Do you have an elephant?" If that person has it, they have to give it, if not they say "sorry, I don't have it."
Then the first person has to draw a card from the deck.



If you want to be more creative, you can make up your own cards with things like "a big nose" "three eyes" "stinky socks" "a big, black, bug on your head" etc. The kids get a kick out of asking each other questions like this.

Anyway, I don't know if you are allowed to use games. It depends on your class size. If you have 10 students or more, then you probably need a group type game.

I hope this helps.

cheers