Korean Job Discussion Forums

[peppermint]

I teach adults and so many times I've noticed the biggest challenge is not the language itself, it's a total lack of confidence. As far as I can tell, this only applies to English. Students who study Chinese or Japanese don't seem to have these issues.

Today I had a student in a freetalking level class who blushed and fanned himself with a piece of paper every time I asked him a question. He answered eventually and he speaks fairly well- about the same as the other students. I made a joke of it, claimed he was just dazzled by my stunning good looks. I think that set him at ease a little.

I really want to know if anyone else has had this problem, how they handled it, or even any insight into why English turns normally confident people into nervous wrecks.

[mokpochica]

I used to have confidence problems speaking Spanish--well, that is in stringing together an original sentence. Just spitting out words was never a problem. I have a feeling that probably many of your students learned with drill and kill exercises and never had to actually speak in English. If you only ever had to memorize pattern drills and spit them back out, chance were you didn't make many mistakes. Now, when they're expected to put things in complete sentences and express their own ideas they are probably terrified of making mistakes--not to mention that your class may be one of the first times they've had to speak English on their own (not as a chorus). English is no easy language for Koreans to learn either. (Is it easy to learn to speak any language well?) Their confidence problems may also be because they realize how challenging their task is.

1. I think it's important that students know that they will make mistakes and it's OK. We learn from mistakes. I'm guessing that right now they need to just talk and not be corrected a lot. Then later you can correct/inform the entire class of the common errors you took note of.

2. Maybe students are worried about pronunciation and feel like they can't say much in English. I think learning songs is a lot of fun and it's a great way for stduents to spit out a lot of English all at once. Choose a song that is age-appropriate and sing it as a class.

3. Sometimes with older learners it helps if they can write down and think about their ideas first and then present them. When they are in the building confidence stage, this might be something you want to do with them.

4. Getting students to think and speak on the spot is important an important skill to build up too though. I knew a great teacher (she actually won foreign language teacher of the year) who had her students sit in a circle and talk about their weekends/activities/hobbies, or a chosen topic. for the first 5-10 minutes of every class, taking participation marks from them. She would throw out questions and wait for kids to volunteer to say something (the kids knowing that speaking participation counted for 30% of their grade). The questions were usually pretty general and pretty easy and were also similar from day to day, so it wasn't hard for the kids to respond to them on the spot.

Hope these ideas help!

[rapier]

The kids have too much confidence, the adults, not enough. Maybe you could try them on a diet of candy shoelaces and sodapops.

[Morning Calm]

[rapier]

Or maybe offer them a few peppermint knobs.

[Morning Calm]

[peppermint]

Okay, I already do some of the things suggested. I always spend the first few minutes of class asking the students how their weekend was, what they did last night etc. Today was this student's first day, so I guess the repetition didn't help.

I did learn French for several years and I was around the same level as this guy. In fact I went through some of the same things and have forgotten most of what I learned

I think if you can laugh at the teacher, then making mistakes doesn't seem so bad. Hence the joke.