Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sarahsarah]

On Monday and Wednesday afternoons I teach extra after-school English classes at my school, which is an art high school.

The problem is I'm not really sure what to teach to keep them entertained and wanting to come to class. The numbers have dwindled since the beginning of the term from about 20 to 5. I've tried teaching lessons out of books and I've tried watching videos and playing games with them but I just can't seem to keep the occupied or teach at the level they're at.

The students are 10th - 12th grade and for the most part have incredibly low levels of English, equally as low motivation and are quite moody. Being artists they're incredibly creative though and I genuinely like these kids, but I'm convinced that the only reason they come to class is because I'll occasionally bring food. They're extremely motivated by food.

Any suggestions as to what to teach? Advice? I'm really at a loss here because the principal and vice principal are expecting the world and I'm delivering nothing.

[Derrek]

I teach an evening writing course, and had over 70 students -- of all levels -- sign up. The classes were split into 2 groups, but now I'm down to about 40 students or so between the two classes.

I have a feeling that a lot of these girls get pushed into it, or think it's a good idea, but soon find they hate losing more evening time to class. Their schedule is really long already.

Try a an anonymous feedback form. Find out what they want to be learning. My class was originally sold by our boss as a TEFL class. Few of the students wanted to learn TEFL, so I adjusted the class. I had them all write a paragraph about what they wanted to do, and I learned a lot.

[crazylemongirl]

why don't you bring in some art supplies and do some units on creating advertisements for some products? Get some cool stuff from crayola, you'll have fun doing it. Making english relevant to their talents might be a way to engage them.

[FUBAR]

Learning English thru comic books and then later have them design their own comic book and characters. You could work on the story with them and they could produce the artwork.

[dulouz]

I teach at a language school and they are wickedly unmotivated. Its painful, very painful. It bothers them to take the earphones out when I speak to them. They give me very ugly looks. I pretty much quit leaning on them. I have a few that show interest so I spen time with them. The rest just watch DVD's.

[fidel]

Just wondering out of interest, for those of you that do supplementary after school classes at high schools how much do you get paid extra? I get 70,000 won for each 80 minute lesson which is not bad I thought.

[sarahsarah]

Thanks for the ideas!! I'll probably use some of the art related ones. Don't really know why that kind of stuff never occured to me.

[changmee]

I teach one 50 minute "extra" class once a week at my High School. It's for the kids that stay in the dormitory on campus. They pay me 30,000 per class. I've been using lessons from the following link. They've really worked well! My students have been talking more in class since I started using them.

http://iteslj.org/t/tmm/

[steroidmaximus]

Changmee wrote: