Teacher Resource Pack

I've run across this helpful resource from Rob Whyte over at ESL Writing and perhaps most famous from his work on Lonely Planet Korea. As a cool aside, we hung out yesterday doing some "research" for the upcoming edition. Anyway, onto the helpful thing.

It's a teacher's resource pack which contains the following:

160 logic puzzles and word games
ESL Trivia Challenge volume 1
ESL Trivia Challenge volume 2

I always do a bit of trivia or a puzzle of some sort to start my classes off in an interesting way, but it's kind of hard to find things appropriate for students who don't speak English as their first language, so this could be quite useful for sure. You can buy it at: ESL Publications  for $9.99 and it comes with a money-back guarantee if you're not happy. You can buy each book individually, but click through to the second page for the resource pack which contains all three-it's a much better deal!

Our Students and the Job Market in Korea

In my job, I teach many first year English major students and I often run into students who have grown up in a foreign country for at least a period of time and are fluent (ish) in English and are far better than almost anyone else in their major, even the third or fourth year students.

Then, I also encounter third or fourth year English major students who are pretty terrible at English. Now, I have no idea what their TOIEC score is, but what I do know is that they cannot communicate in written or spoken English, in even a basic way. And I feel kind of scared for them because when they graduate from university, who will give them a job? They are going to be in the 20-30% of young Korean university graduates who are unemployed. Their only skill is English and they are not at all proficient in that.

So, I try to catch students in their first year, especially in the first semester and give them a bit of advice if they come to my office for a chat, or we have a friendly kind of relationship. 

For those who are fluent in English already, I tell them to switch majors. Study something like engineering, or business, or education, or another language like Japanese or Chinese because then they'll have that, plus English.  2 marketable skills instead of one.

For those who are unable to communicate, I suggest that perhaps English really isn't the major for them. I mean, they've studied English for 10 or 12 years already and if they haven't gotten a grasp on the simple past or body-part vocabulary, will they ever be proficient enough to use it to get a job?  I tell them to switch to another major, preferably business or engineering and then study English on the side.

I get a feeling that their Korean professors who are all in the English department aren't telling them this because it's like saying that the classes they are teaching are useless, kind of, in a way. And their parents probably have no idea how much better, or worse at English they are than their peers. So foreign teachers at Korean universities, does that perhaps leave us to tell it like it is?

Sound like the job for you? Check out this book on How to Get a University Job in Korea.

Serial Podcast for ESL Students

Free: 40 Tried and Tested ESL Games and Activities

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The Serial Podcast for ESL Students

My latest addiction is the Serial Podcast.  If you haven't heard of it, you are perhaps not really living on planet Earth and you should definitely check it out, but be ready to binge listen because it's crazy addictive.  I'm personally losing some sleep, waiting for episode 10 which was a week late due to American Thanksgiving and have had to start listening to podcasts about the podcast (Slate Serial Spoiler) in order to get my fix.

Anyway, when it came time to decide on something to study with my three, reasonably advanced and motivated students I decided to use this podcast.  I wasn't sure if it would be too difficult for them or not, but with a combination of the transcript (Episode 1 Serial Transcript) and the Podcast itself, they seemed to understand most of it.  They were pretty hooked on it right from the start, with all their papers filled with various colors of highlighter and notes and translations of words into Korean.  I seriously think that they'd studied 10+ hours in only the few days since I'd seen them last.  Our discussion was really interesting and filled with insights about human nature and other good stuff like that.  It was work that didn't really seem like work and it made me feel happy to be a teacher.

If you have high-level students, definitely consider the Serial Podcast.  I'd actually like to do an entire class using just this podcast and hope I have the opportunity in the future.

In case you're looking for more Serial transcripts:

Serial Episode 2 transcript

Serial Episode 3 transcript

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.

A Fabulously Fun Relative Clause Speaking Activity

Relative Clause Speaking Activity

This week, my classes have been studying about using relative clauses.  The first class was heavy on the grammar with this quite serious self study relative clause worksheet and some writing practice based on these relative clause family and friend questions. For the second class, I wanted to lighten it up and bit and do some more kind of "fun" things, so I made this "Who or What is it?" game that the students really enjoyed. Here's how to do it:

Make a list of things or people and cut them up into little pieces and put them in an envelope.  Put the students in groups of 4 and the first person has to choose a paper at random and keep it secret. Then, they give hints about it, preferably using relative clauses.

For example, if they chose Barrack Obama, they could say things like, "This is a man who's from the USA." "I'm sure he's someone everyone knows." "He has a lot of power which he uses to influence the whole world."

The other 3 people on the team get to guess who it is and whoever guesses it correctly gets to keep the paper, gets 1 point and then is the next person who chooses a random paper and gives hints.

In order to avoid endless incorrect guesses, I said that if you made an incorrect guess, you were "out" of that round unless all the other people also had incorrect guesses, in which case it starts over.

I gave the students about 15 minutes and at the end, the person in each group with the most points got a small prize.

Check out this Ebook if you want to  get a University Job in South Korea

Free: 40 Tried and Tested ESL Games and Activities

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Advanced level small classes of burnt-out students= Settlers of Catan

These past few weeks, I've had some classes of students who are preparing for internships in the USA who are burnt out.  They've been studying for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for the last 4 months or so and they've had enough.  The classes are getting smaller and smaller as students are going to the USA, having to prepare documents or going to the US embassy for interviews.

These days, it's only 3-5 students and all of them speak English extremely well so I decided it was time to teach them how to play Settlers of Catan.  I love playing board games and so anytime I can do it in class, I will!  Other teachers in this program are showing movies, chit-chatting about random stuff or going out for lunch so I don't exactly feel terrible about the lack of "serious-study."

Anyway, I gave a quick run-down of the rules in about 15 minutes, in English and they understood easily enough, despite the fact that none of them had played the game before.  We got set-up, with a bit of coaching from me about the initial placements and played a couple games.  The students seemed to really enjoy it and I did as well!  They even spoke English basically the entire time without any prompting from me, which I was impressed with.

Give it a try in your classes if you teach small groups of really high-level students.  They're usually so tired of the normal "conversation" classes that they'll probably be happy for a new challenge.

Making your test difficult, the easy way.

I teach the English majors at my university, which means that a lot of them are really good at English.  This is actually no problem, except when it comes to grading because I have to use a curve and there are a limited numbers of "A's" and "B's" available.  So, I have to make my tests quite difficult.  There are various ways to make a test hard, but the easiest way that I've found to do it is this:

Make each question all or nothing.  If my test is worth 15%, I'll have only 15 questions.  But, each question will have between 2 and 5 parts to it.  For example, 5 vocab matching things, or 3 fill in the blank with the correct verb form.  If the student gets even one part wrong, the entire question is wrong and they don't get the point.  I don't give 1/2 points and it truly is all or nothing.

The result is that student's scores are probably 20-30% lower than if I assigned 1/2 points because most students only get 1/4 blanks wrong, or 2/4 matching things incorrect and almost everybody would get at least 1/2 points for every question, instead of just nothing.

Is it fair?  I think so.  Nobody got 100% on my latest midterm exam, but quite a few students got 13/15 or 14/15.  But, they truly had to know their stuff and it was almost impossible to fake your way into this score.  Most students got around 10-11/15, which is what I wanted because that's a "D" or "C" grade, of which I can give an unlimited amount.  And those that are either terrible at English, or just didn't study got scores in the range of 3-5/15, which is actually what they should get.

Check out this book if you want to  get a University Job in South Korea

Lesson Plan: More Technology, Less Sleep

I based this lesson plan loosely on an article from Breaking News English, which is an extremely helpful site for any EFL/ESL teacher.  I used it for a 1.5 hour "News Club," which is a discussion group about current events.

More Technology, Less Sleep Lesson Plan.

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.

Cigarette Prices in Korea to Double: Lesson Plan

This lesson plan is for a 1.5 hour "News Club" discussion class.  I'm actually excited to talk about it; the topic should be pretty interesting to everyone.

Cigarette Prices Lesson Plan

Student Ridiculousness: a Small Rant

Yesterday, I taught an advanced level class where the students are preparing for internships in various locations around the world.  I'm covering the "general English" portion by doing discussion/listening/reading about various topics (that are interesting to me!) like Korea's aging society or workplace discrimination.

There were only 4 students in class yesterday and three of them were excellent, participating in class and trying to figure out new vocab and phrases and actually thinking about the issue and coming up with some constructive responses.

But, one of the students kept looking at her desk and not really participating, at all.  Her answers consisted almost exclusively of "yes," "no" and "I don't know."  When pressed for more details, she would just giggle.  I casually walked over to check out what she was reading and it was some kind of English grammar book, that was almost all in Korean.  And I thought to myself, how bizarre because it seems to me that her time, in a class of only 4 students, with a native English speaker would be far, far better spent actually interacting with that native speaker and the other students.  Like she's going to America in about 3 months, where she will have to actually interact with real, live English speakers on a daily basis.  I just don't get it.  Like really don't get it.

Check out this book about how to get a University Job in South Korea

Agrictultural Subsidies in Korea Lesson Plan

This one is for a 2-hour discussion and speaking based class.  The students are high-intermediate, low-advanced and I like to challenge them with authentic materials about topics that they don't necessarily know all the vocab for.  The article is from the English website of the Korea Herald.

Agricultural Subsidies ESL lesson plan

The best possible class you could ever imagine

Think about the ideal situation for a class that you could teach.  It's interesting to think about and the reality that most of us find ourselves in is perhaps quite different.  Thankfully, in my current job, most of the classes that I teach meet many of these "ideal class criteria."  And, there are plentiful overtime opportunities at my uni that allow me to choose extra work that I find interesting.

Anyway, here are my top 10 ideal class criteria.  What are yours?

1. Class size= 10-16.  Any less can get boring and become too small if a few people drop-out for whatever reason.  Any larger can be hard to manage sometimes in terms of admin/grading, etc.

2. Student Motivation=high.  This usually is because the class is a voluntary one of some sort.

3. Student age=adults.

4. Class content= not conversation.  Basically anything is more interesting to me than basic conversation, even TOIEC prep classes.

5. Class content=something I haven't taught before.  I like the challenge of it and it's always good to add new courses to the resume.

6. Admin= hands-off.  Ideally, I could teach whatever the students need, however will best help them.  Teaching a certain page on a certain day, or covering a certain amount of material for a test isn't ideal.

7. Class format=structured.  I like lesson plans.  Students like a teacher with a plan.  My worst nightmare is a class which consists of "free-talking."  It's not really a class-it's just a waste of time.

8. Class time=between 10am and 7pm.  Earlier is tough, as is later due to tiredness (students and me!).

9. Book=optional.  It's best if I can choose it myself or design my own.

10. Multimedia.  I teach using various things including: PPT, podcasts, videos, Internet, smartphones, etc.  I would struggle a bit to teach in a classroom not set up for this.

Ideal classes can be found in Korean Universities.  Check out this book about how to get a University Job in South Korea

The 4-hour killer class

This summer and going on into the fall, I'm teaching in this Internship preparation program where there are 4 hour classes, with the same teacher and same students.  It's a bit killer on the teacher, as well as the students but I try to make it as painless as possible.  The temptation is to just do 2 or 3 different, random things but I try to avoid that if possible and have some sort of coherent theme holding everything together.  Here's the rough sketch of my lesson for today:

Topic: Youth Unemployment.

1. Warm-up riddles.  Lots of students come late so I do some riddles for 5-10 minutes while people stream in.  This was the only unrelated thing.

2. Warm-up discussion questions about youth unemployment.  Talking with a partner and then the whole class together.

3. Reading-first time.  Quickly and some true/false questions. Compare with partner and then whole class.

4. Reading-second time.  Slowly and some difficult comprehension questions.  Talk with partner

5. Youth Unemployment Video-first time.  What is the program?  Talk with partner and then whole class.

6. Video-second time.  Would this program work in Korea?  Talk with partner and then with whole class.

7. Kiva Micofinance Organization.  Show the website and talk about what they do, watch their short video, etc.  Choose someone to "lend" money to.

8. Speech time.  Brainstorm ways to reduce youth unemployment in Korea.  Groups of 4. Each person choose their favorite and prepare a 2 minute speech about why it's the best solution.  Give speech to group and other 3 members must ask a difficult question.

Finish!  It was quite painless overall :)

Free: 40 Tried and Tested ESL Games and Activities

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2 Icebreaker Activities

Tomorrow I start the classes that I'll be teaching for the rest of the summer and into the fall semester.  They're students who are preparing for international internships, so they are reasonably high-level.  I want to spend the first couple hours in a relaxed kind of way, getting to know the students and letting them get to know me and each other.  Here's what I decided to do:

1. 2 truths and a lie.  We've all played this game before I'm sure.  The adaptation that I add to it is the question period time.  Depending on class size, you can give the students 2-5 minutes to "interrogate" each person about their statements to help determine which one is false.  It adds a fun element to it.  I get the students to vote on which one is false, and if they're correct, they get a point.  They keep track and we determine who in the best detective in the class.

2. The expert speed-dating.  Have the students think of 5 things that they know a lot about.  Then, choose 3 that they think will be most interesting to the other students in the class.  Then, they have to talk with a partner for 3-4 minutes about those topics in a speed-dating kind of way.  The timer goes off and they have to switch partners again.  It's a fun way for the students to get to know each other and they can actually talk about things that are more interesting than where they're from or what their major is.

Check out ESL Icebreaker Activities for some more ideas.

Free: 40 Tried and Tested ESL Games and Activities

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Sites I use to make my own "textbook"

This summer, I'm doing an internship preparation program for students who will be working in the USA.  I was given total freedom to teach whatever I wanted to teach, based on whatever book I wanted to use.  I chose not to use a textbook, for reasons I explained in my last post.  Instead, I compiled my own book, using the following sites:

1. ESL Writing.  I particularly like the listening stuff.

2. Breaking News English.  I mostly use the 2-page "mini-lessons."

3. Film English. Fabulous lesson plans based on short videos to be found here.

4. Business English Pod. This is my go-to site for everything job interviews.

5. My own lesson plans that I've used for various classes.  Examples:  Renewable Energy,  South Korea's Education System, and Problems with Studying Abroad.

Textbooks: it's a toss-up

I remember back in the olden days when I was just starting out as a teacher, I felt like I NEEDED a textbook, because without it, what could I possibly do in class to fill the time? It just seemed so complicated and stressful to have to figure out what the students needed and were interested in and then design my own materials.  But, as I've become a more experienced teacher, the less I've relied upon textbooks and if given a choice, there's probably a 50-50 chance of whether I'll use a textbook for a given class or not. 

I'll generally use a textbook in the following situations:

1. I'm inexperienced in teaching the subject matter.  This semester, I was given 3 sections of advanced academic writing.  Although I've taught writing before, I've never gone this in depth with it.

2. It is a content based class.  For example, if I were teaching an intro to psychology class in English, I for sure would use a textbook of some kind.  

3.  If forced to.  Most unis in Korea have some sort of mandatory textbook that they require you to at least pretend to use.

4. It's an exam preparation class, such as TOIEC speaking or something of that sort.  It's just too time consuming to come up with enough practice questions on my own without this.

If given a choice, I'll never use a textbook in the following situations:

1. A conversation class.  I find it much more interesting and useful to just design lessons around themes of some sort.  Structural based syllabi, upon which many textbooks are based are bad news in my opinion.

2. Advanced level students.  Authentic materials (real newspaper articles or youtube videos for example) are much better for these students than inauthentic stuff from a textbook.

3. A current events or contemporary issue in society kind of class.  How can you use a textbook for this?  It's far more interesting to talk about stuff that's actually in the news today.

For more details about this topic, check out Teaching Unplugged by Scott Thornbury, which is the first (and only?) book to deal comprehensively with Dogme ELT.

A fabulous board game to play with your students

Yesterday, I had my Internship preparation class with extremely high-level students (basically fluent) and these days, only 4-5 students are coming because a lot of them have already gone to America.  We've been studying for months now, quite seriously so I decided to play King of Tokyo with them.

King of Tokyo is one of my favorite games because it's fast, reasonably easy to explain but also contains lots of strategic play.  The only kind of difficult thing for ESL/ EFL students would be the cards, which can be quite wordy.  But, my students loved it.  Like really loved it and one of them actually beat me!  Some of the cards took a bit of an explanation from me but it was actually no problem.  And, my students were extremely cute, actually speaking in English things like, "My only mission is to kill you," or, "I don't want to die."  Haha!

Teaching Writing, minus the peer/teacher editing

I wrote last month about how my approach to teaching advanced level writing has veered away from the traditional endless cycles of peer and teacher editing and instead has focused on things like:

-self editing
-genre analysis
-awareness of common problems: verb choices, punctuation, etc.
-crafting quality thesis statements, hooks, topic sentences, etc.

A month ago, I thought things were going well and at this point, I've even more confident in it.  I've been informally asking students about how things are going in the class, whether it's really difficult, or not too bad.  The students have been telling me things like:

-at first it was so difficult, but now it's okay
-no one has ever taught me how to actually write an essay
-I've learned a lot
-the class in interesting
-I want more group projects (only from the weak students! What strong writer could possibly want this in a writing class?)
-I can analyze essays really easily now

Success?  Perhaps.  The majority of students (like 99%) can, at this point tell you about the basic structure of an essay in their sleep.  And the majority (maybe 95%) can produce a basic 5 paragraph essay with all the major elements.  If I had spent endless days focusing on sentence level grammar, vocab usage and peer editing, I don't think this would have been possible. 

The book I'm using for this Class is Great Essays 4 by Keith Folse:

Renewable Energy Lesson Plan

I made this Renewable Energy Lesson Plan based on a Breaking News English article and have used it quite successfully for 3 classes so far.   The first page (A-D) is perfect for about a 1.5 hour, reasonably high-level class.  You can use the second page (E-H) for a longer class of 2-4 hours. 

And here's the Renewable Energy PPT, which I used for a 3 hour class.  I used the MP3 file on Breaking News English that goes along with the article for a listening exercise and then we did some reading/discussion/speaking.

Korean students generally don't think that much about environmental issues such as green energy, but I think it's actually quite an important thing to be aware of.  And even though I'm "just" an English teacher, I think I still have the potential to change lives and thinking for the better.  Go green!