Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Kim Jong Jordan]

Hey guys and gals,

I teach at an all boys High School where I use no books and have the freedom to do whatever I want in my classes. The one exception to this is that I'm supposed to focus my lessons on speaking, no grammar or anything of the like, just pure conversation based lessons. The difficulty with this is that there are 40 students in my classes and I'm supposed to let each of them speak. This is very difficult as my time explaining/teaching the lesson at the start of class is quite constrained and also the fact that the students are of the low intermediate level with a splattering of beginner level speaking students. I'm quite stuck for ideas at the moment, like writers block. I need some fresh ideas, suggestions, recommendations, etc. Your assistance in this matter would be immensely appreciated! Many thanks in advance.

[I_Am_Wrong]

Take a look at their textbooks and weave your material in and around it. Pick up some activity books and such. Prepare dialogs, roleplaying activities, speaking games etc.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Just because they say 'no grammar' doesn't mean you can't work a lot in. If I could teach most of my students subject, verb, object and get them to put a complete sentence together it would be a huge victory.

Things that work well with large classes:

- phonics
- dialogues
- listening activities
- songs
- pairs work
- trivia games

Things that are like pulling teeth with a large class:

- anything that involves them coming up with their own writing, even if it's fill-in-the-blank
- anthing that involves them listening to me for too great a length of time