What Working at a University in Korea is Really Like. Part 4: Classes (or, what I do for 4 hours)

What Working at a Korean Uni is Really Like

If you missed the first 3 parts of this series, check out:

Korean Universities: Schedules

Korean Universities: Classes

Korean Universities: Office Politics

One of the common questions that I get from Hagwon and public school teachers is what I actually do in my classes.  In hagwons, it's extremely rare to have the same students for more than an hour at a time and 40-45 minutes is more common.  In public schools, the class lengths are about the same and the Korean co-teacher usually does the bulk of the heavy lifting.

My classes range from 1.5 hours-4 hours with the same group of students.  4 hour classes can be quite hard to teach so I'll use that as my example.  Here's how I would I use the time (if I was given no materials that I had to teach):

I'd pick a topic such as "Youth unemployment in Korea," "Microfinance" or "Renewable Energy."  I choose stuff that I'm actually interested in and you'd be surprised-even seemingly difficult topics such as these can be adapted and made easier for as low level as high-beginners.  Things like movies, hobbies, food and pets are TOTALLY overdone and I refuse to use topics like these unless forced to (if I'm given a textbook with them in it, or have extremely low-level students-but I generally try to avoid total beginners!).

Hour 1: an introduction to the topic.  This usually involves some very general warm-up questions, key vocabulary, a sample conversation, or something like "describe the picture" for lower levels.

Hour 2: we get into the reading or listening (quite often both).  If you find articles from Breaking News English, you can do the listening first with some sort of "big-picture" questions.  I'd usually listen twice, with the first time just being simple true/false or matching or something and then the second time, I'd increase the level of difficulty and use some short answer or fill in the blank stuff.

Then, I'd get the students to read the same thing that they just listened to but they'd have to answer some serious "critical thinking" or advanced level "reading comprehension" questions where the answers require processing the information in a deep way, or the answers are very subtle and require some "reading between the lines."

Hour 3: Discussion questions based on what they just listened to and read.  The students would have to discuss in small groups of 3-4 people and then we'd talk together as a class.

Hour 4: Some sort of activity.  For example, when I talked about microfinance, I showed a couple videos from Kiva and showed the students my own portfolio of who I lent money to.

Or, it might involve a debate of some kind.  For example, on the topic of Youth Unemployment, it might be something like, "Who has the final responsibility for solving this problem: youth, the government, parents, industry or universities?"

Or, it could be a survey activity.  For advanced levels, they'd have to make their own survey question or two, ask their classmates, process the information and then report back to the class their results.  For lower levels, I'd probably give them the questions already prepared.

Or, I might do some writing activity of some kind where the students have to share their opinion on the topic.  But, I will quite rarely do this and my activities are generally slanted towards speaking.

Kotesol International Conference 2014 Schedule

According to this tentative schedule for the 2014 Kotesol International Conference, it looks like I'll be presenting in the prime-time: Saturday at 1:00.  I'll be talking about the use of portfolios in evaluating EFL writing, with a focus on university students, but it could be adapted to other age groups as well.

I REALLY LOVE meeting readers of my blog, so please come.  Don't be shy and be sure to introduce yourself.

If you're going to miss the conference in Seoul, it's possible to (most likely) see me again, speaking on this same topic on Oct. 18th in Busan at the local Kotesol Busan-Gyeongnam Chapter meeting.

A Survey Activity to practice Present Perfect and Simple Past

Present Perfect and Simple Past Survey Activity.

It basically works by students having to ask their classmates the "Have you ever" questions, changing the verb in brackets into PP form.  If the answer is yes,  they then switch to simple past (like normal conversational style) and ask 2 more additional questions, with the partner making sure to answer using the correct verb form for the simple past.  

It corresponds to unit 2 in Touchstone Level 3.

Fossilized conversation partners

In Korea (and in most other places too), a thing that happens is that partners in language courses tend to get fossilized, which means that the same people tend to sit together for all classes during the course.  I hate this for a lot of reasons including:

1. That poor person who gets stuck with the worst student in the class.  The burden should be spread among everyone.

2. It gets boring to talk to the same person everyday.

3. It doesn't train students for life.  I want my students to be able to converse with almost anyone, in English.

4. Mistakes get fossilized among partners.  Maybe someone makes a mistake that impedes meaning.  Their partner asks for clarification once and the person gives it and then continues to make that same mistake over and over and never gets any more feedback that that mistake is impeding meaning.

5. There's no chance for many students to encounter a partner at a slightly higher level of language development (the zone of proximal development), which can be extremely helpful.

It's really easy to mix it up and make the students change partners.  I usually do it randomly by just assigning numbers or letters or whatever, but there are plenty more scientific ways to do it too.  I teach the same class twice a week, so I'll generally let them sit with their friend for one class and then assign a random partner for the next one.

How to Teach English

I remember back to my first year or two of teaching in Korea and how clueless I basically was.  Like I almost literally had no idea what I was doing and what was effective, or not in the classroom.  It didn't help that my school owners were business people and not teachers and so could offer no really helpful guidance except don't sit down and make sure you smile.

If I would recommend one book for a newbie teacher to read, it would be this one: How to Teach English by Jeremy Harmer.  It contains some theory that is very accessible and not really academic and then has a multitude of practical and helpful tips for things like lesson planning, classroom management and activities and games.  Even experienced teachers would find it useful I think.

If you want to get a University Job in South Korea, check out this Ebook.

Book Review: Speaking Activities that Don't Suck

If you're looking for some new ideas for English as a second of foreign language speaking, check out this site that I've made: Speaking Activities for ESL Students. 

However, if you're looking for bigger (and quite possibly better!), here is my top recommendation: Speaking Activities that Don't Suck.  It's quite genius and I regularly refer to it for my own classes. 


And of course, sign-up for the 40 free ESL speaking games and activities that I use in my own classes.