Korean Job Discussion Forums

[rawfooddan]

Hello everybody.

I'm working at a GnB school on jeju island. Is it just me or are the GnB books really really lame ? I was curious about other gnb teachers out there and what you do in class. Do you use the daily talk books? Does you boss let you do other things in class? does your boss give you freedom to do what you want in class?


My boss doesn't have a clue. i have to listen to these kids here speaking this god awful english rife with mispronunciations that were taught to them by my boss and other koren teachers here. then My boss told me that she doesn't want me to worry about pronunciation. meanwhile i can't understand most of what she says because her pronunciation is so bad.

I thought i was the one who could speak english here, and now they're telling me how to teach english?

The classes are like chaos. The books are boring and unfair to me and the kids and most of the kids blatantly disobey what i say, even when they can understand what i'm saying. my boss isn't any help for class control. she says i need to follow the gnb guidebook more closely and speak more cheerfully. this place sucks.

A while back I had started integrating my own materials that i made myself and following the flow of the kids more and playing more games in class and the kids seemed to be enjoying the class more and were more willing to follow my directions and were more involved in the class (and hating me less ..lol). but the other day my boss told me i can't play games and do my own materials. She says the solution to the class boredom is to follow the GnB guidebook more intently and speak more cheerfully. That really bummed me out. These people have no clue.

On top of that she doesn't talk to me on any regular basis. She can't speak english worth a shit, and then just comes down and gives me orders without asking for my input. furthermore, this school has a lovely video projector i could be using to make the class much more informative and enjoyable for the kids-- first they said i could use it. then they said once a month, and then they forgot about it and haven't followed through. these people have no concept of what its like to have 10 bored kids who can't wait for the end of class and dish out their frustration on you and don't think they have to do anything you say.

And when i tried to enforce a few simple rules in class my boss was absolutely no help to me whatsoever. that backfired bigtime. So i've discovered that the best approach for me is a can't beat-em join-em approach. But evidenctly my boss doesn't like that.

God i hate this place. oh well... 4 months down... 8 to go...

[queenbee]

I know EXACTLY where you're coming from. I've been at a GnB for just under a year and struggled with those god-awful books for about 8 months. The kids hated them, they didn't understand a thing and weren't learning anything. And the thing is that there's no way to teaching those books in a 'fun, cheerful way' - they seemed to be designed to suck the life out of any class. I had a few more students than you per class (from 14-17) and that made it even worse. It got to the point where students started leaving in droves because the class was too hard or too boring. All I can say is that I did my best.
I was lucky that my boss is actually halfway decent. I told him that we needed new books and so he sent one of the Korean teachers to go shopping with me. We picked out the English Land books and since then things have been so much better.
My advice is to ignore what your boss tells you about how to teach your lessons: like you said, she has no idea. She won't know if you teach the way you want to teach, and if the students start leaving, you can bet she won't be accepting responsibility for telling you how to do your job. Play games, do fun stuff, make the kids happy. It'll make your life so much more enjoyable.
I got to the point where I stopped using the Daily Talk books altogether (before we got new ones) and was making my own worksheets based on a sentence or two from the DT stories. It meant the kids could go away from class actually feeling like they'd learnt something.
Try and think of a way you can make your boss see that they will LOSE BUSINESS AND THEREFORE MONEY if you carry on using those books....that's definitely the most important thing to her. You could say that you have talked to other GnB teachers (me) who have had huge problems with the books and have been much happier when they've changed. Tell her the roll's increased, too, if you like!
So I don't know how much of that will work for you, as I know it must be tough having a boss like that....if worst comes to worst, you could just do what I did and try and make games or activities based on maybe one sentence of each story in the book, base the lesson around that, and not really use the book at all.
By the way, what level books are you using for what ages?
Anyway, feel free to PM me anytime, like I said, I totally understand!!!

[sheba]

I studied with How Fun! books for a year..... they were horrible and believe it or not, the Daily Talk books are a welcome relief!! I recently went to the bookstore with the Korean teachers and picked out English Land too.... the kids seem to like them.