Korean Job Discussion Forums

[ajuma]

I've noticed that Koreans are very poor at prioritizing. They tend to do the thing they were just asked to do, putting the thing they were doing a minute before off for who knows how long. I don't know if it's a cultural thing or not, but they seem reluctant to say "Let me take the information and get back to you."

I'd like to teach my high-level class a lesson or two about prioritizing. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[BS.Dos.]

Far be it for me to advise an experienced head like yourself how to teach, I did do some vocab work recently on important, unimportant, neccessary and unneccessary.

As a starting point using say, a theme based on getting ready to go on holiday, you could illicit from the students the need to choose which things to prioritise and which things to put off for the time being such as:

Book flights
Book a hotel
Pack your suitcase
Change your currency
Book hire car
Book time off from work
Arrange for pets to go in to kennels
Choose holiday destination
Buy camera/suntan lotion
etc, etc, etc

You could then highlight the need to prioritise which things need to be done first (important) and which things can wait till later (unimportant) in order for you to have a good holiday.

You could then give them a similar scenario whereby you give them a list of tasks which they have to put into some kind of order of priority.

[ajuma]

Thanks! This would be a great place to start. Now, I need to come up with some ideas to make it relevant to office work.

[Pak Yu Man]

As in the office workers at your uni? lol. Like they would learn

[ajuma]

I think they would. I'm thinking about doing a little 1 on 1 with a couple of the most stressed-out ones. Worth a shot!

[thegadfly]

Well, I am not sure about teaching prioritizing relating to office work, but I usually use a mini-lesson relating to an emergency room or a battlefield -- doing triage. Small group work with a list of injuries. The groups have to put them in order for treatment, and come up with reasons why each is in its position -- "the guy with his arm lopped off gets treated first so that he doesn't bleed to death! The fellow with the sniffles can wait until everyone else has been treated." Then I make a class-consensus list on the board and discuss the reasons for the order.

From there, I try to make more generalized rules based on the consensus -- something with serious repercussions or with a dire time constraint gets higher priority, something with very little effect or with no time constraint gets lower priority.

I suppose that one could make a list of common office tasks after this exercise, and try applying the rules generated from the first exercise, then discuss the results....