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!

New Year's Teaching Resolutions

Here are my New Year's Resolutions with regards to teaching:

1. Plan lessons at least 2 weeks in advance. In the past, I have been very organized, planning stuff weeks ahead of time but for some reason last semester, I got into the bad habit of doing it only a day or two before, which really isn't my style.

2. Email my students back immediately. I also have been good at this in the past, but last semester I would check the email and then wait a day or two, for no really good reason.

3. Don't teach overtime classes that I hate just for the money. I stayed strong on this one last semester. It's always a temptation but I know how unhappy it will make me feel. Teaching basic conversation, or "free-talking" with students is the most terrible thing I could almost imagine and no amount of money will make me want to do it.

What are yours? It's the perfect time to make some decisions about how your next semester will look. And remember, keep 'em realistic and well-defined so you actually have a chance at meeting them.  Maybe your resolution is to learn a few new things about teaching ESL. To start, check out this book by Jeremy Harmer. It's simple, practical and an excellent book for beginners or more experienced teachers.  How To Teach English (with DVD)

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.

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 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.

2 of my favorite cards games for students

If you're looking for some card games to play in class with your students (kids or adults), check out Phase 10 or Skip Bo.  Phase 10 takes quite a while to play but it can be adapted into Phase 5 or something like that for a shorter game.  Skip-Bo is kind of like Uno but it has the novelty factor going for it.

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

Email Address

Avoiding giving more than you have to give

Today is boundaries, part 3.  I've previously talked about:

Your problem and my problem, admin style

Your problem and my problem, random students at my uni who are not actually my students style

Today is all about students who are actually my students, by which I mean the ones who are actually in my for-credit classes, like you know the ones that the students actually pay tuition for.  In previous years, I taught mostly freshman English and they will generally do almost anything they possibly can to avoid talking to the foreigner.  However, now that I've moved to the English department, students actually want to talk to me (all the time) and they would suck me dry if they could.  Like until I was literally a pile of bones on the floor, unable to speak or move or think.  I obviously want to avoid this.  Here are my tips:

1. You should give students some of your time and having office hours and meeting with students is actually part of the job of a "professor."  But, try to meet with students only during your set office hours, if at all possible.

2. NEVER make appointments with students in the rushed 3 or 4 minutes before or after class.  Ask them to email you with some possible times.  They usually won't because their urgent request is usually something that is due that evening or early the next morning.  This follows under the category of, "Your last minute problem and stress does not need to become my problem and stress."

3. Have strict due-date deadlines and then a severe penalty for missing it.  Mine is usually: -100%.  Harsh, yes but I plan out my grading times and feel really annoyed about stuff trickling in on student's schedules and not my own.  But, I do give students 2-3 weeks notice of due dates for each assignment so there is no possible last-minute excuse that could work.  And, if submitting stuff via email, I'll usually give students a grace period of 12 hours or so.  Like due at midnight, but I won't enforce a penalty if they submit it to me by the next day when I actually get around to grading it.

4. Grading.  Do NOT get into the habit of re-grading stuff.  I have to grade essays this semester, which can seem quite subjective.  So, when I hand them back, I make a big show of how students can re-submit their essay for grading again, but they could the same score, or higher, or LOWER.  And, I tell them that I won't overlook anything, but will go over it with my red pen looking for every single grammar, vocab and punctuation error that I kindly overlooked the first time.  Number of essays re-submitted for grading this semester:  0/400.

5. Grading: do it quickly.  Like in 2-3 days if at all possible.  Students appreciate it and you won't have it hanging over you causing stress and worried students contacting you all the time.

6. Phone number.  I have given it out in the past, but I haven't this semester.  Students can contact me via email or twitter and I promise to respond within 12 hours.  Phone numbers mean text messages, phone calls and Kakao messages which students expect an instant response to.  There is NEVER an English teaching emergency, hence the lack of need to respond to anything immediately.

7. Take a deep breath.  Your job is actually pretty chill.  So chill out.  

Authentic Materials for Intermediate-Low Level Students

Yesterday, I talked about using authentic materials instead of ESL textbooks for very high-level students.  But, is it possible to use authentic materials for intermediate or low level students?  My quick answer: yes, kind of.  Let me explain.

Authentic materials can be very valuable because they give students confidence that they can actually function in English in an authentic kind of way and I also like them because it's "real" language as opposed the artificial stuff that you'll often find in textbooks (especially the bad ones).

But, careful selection of the materials if a requirement so that the students don't become frustrated.  Nothing is worse than choosing some reading or listening or speaking or writing activity that is higher-level than your students actually are.  If you choose something easier, it's possible to adapt it on the fly, but it's very hard to do this with something that is too high of a level.

So, for low-level students something like a restaurant menu, greeting card, or "kids" newspaper from an English-speaking country is possible.  The language is usually very simple.  And for intermediate-level students, you have a wider range of choices including short newspaper articles that deal with "fact," as opposed to "opinion," teen fiction, or simple TED talks (non-native English speakers are a good choice usually). 

And, if your students are not at a high enough level to use authentic materials, you could venture into the realm of semi-authentic materials (very suitable for low-intermediate levels).  My favorite site is Breaking News English.  It's amazing because the articles are categorized into easier/harder and they 2-page mini lessons are extremely teacher (and student) friendly.  It's almost hard to believe that all this stuff is free!

Check out: How to  get a University Job in South Korea

Boundaries and Teaching and Life

This is kind of a new experience for me since I've started teaching English majors: students who actually want to talk to me outside of class, and come to my office, and go for coffee and be my Facebook friend and work as my TA.  Not that my other students didn't like to talk to me or interact with me, but they were quite often 1st year students who are usually quite shy, and they were also a lot of engineers who often just didn't speak English well enough to have more than a 1-2 minute conversation and the thought of actually coming to my office filled them with horror.

But now.  How to deal with it?  I know that I want to have a life outside of work and actually require it in order to have any semblance of joy and happiness in my life.  But, if I said yes to all requests, I wouldn't and I would quite literally be at work from sun-up to sun-down every single day.  And then that leaves the dilemma.  I actually do want to meet with some students, but how could I say yes to one and not the others without seeming unfair? And if I answered my office door every time someone knocked, I'd truly never be able to get any prep/ grading/ academic publishing (trying to get my Delta paper published in a journal!)/ professional development done.  People knock every 10 minutes or so.  Literally.   And, I actually do teach a significant numbers of hours/week (around 20), with 5 different classes to prepare for each week so my time is not so abundant.

So my solution so far has to be in the Global Zone at my university for 4 hours/week, where the students have to make appointments online to meet with me for a 30 minute slot.  This takes the responsibility for who gets an appointment and who doesn't entirely out of my hands.  And it's very well-defined in terms of time so it's very easy to finish and leave at the end of it.  I like the idea of office hours, but I REALLY don't like the idea of being in my office 1-1 with students.  Stuff like that is dangerous.  Even when leaving the door open.  And, I tell the students that the best way to contact me with any problems or questions is via Twitter or email and that I'll respond within 24 hours. 

Are the students happy?  Not exactly, but I'm kind of okay with not letting my students suck all life out of me.

Check out one of my favorite books about this topic:

Enthusiasm....it might be worth a try?

In most of my classes, I'm pretty "enthusiastic."  When you're talking to students who don't really understand English that well necessarily, things like gestures and voice inflection are really important, so I try to do a fabulous job of that.  And, I also try to make funny, simple jokes.  And, it's a good thing I do, according to this article!

Introducing can/should

There's always that unit in the book with "Can/ Can't" for possibility/impossibility and "should/shouldn't" for advice.  Here is my fabulously fun way to introduce it, such that even the lowest of the low classes, quietest of the quietest classes will participate.

Tell them you want to go on vacation somewhere in Korea and need their advice.

"Where should I go?"

Collect some answers.  I usually choose Jeju Island, for reasons you'll see later.

"Should I go in summer?"  Yes, no, etc.

"So what can I do there?"  Blah, blah.

"How can I get there?"  Airplane?  "Can I swim?"  Hahaha!  Crazy teacher.  No, you can't.

Elicit some answers and have a bit of fun with it.  Write up on the board/PPT:

Where should I go?/ Should I.....?
What can I do there?  Can I....?

and you're good to go!

Personality Game Powerpoint

Personality Game 

Most books have a unit of some sort on "personality."  Here is a game that I made which is the perfect way to finish your class.

1. Put the teams in groups of 4-7 and have them choose a "captain"

2. The captain sits at the front with a pen and a paper and their teammates also have a pen and paper.

3.  Put up the questions 1 by 1 and have the captain write down their answer and their team has to guess what the captain's answer is.

4. My 2 rules are that the captain must have eyes forward and hands together (ie: no signalling the answer to their team) and the teams must talk quietly.

5. Check answers at the end, and if matching, the team gets a point.  The winner gets a prize at the end!

The game takes around 20 minutes, but you could do more or less questions obviously to suit your time constraints.

Personality Game PPT

And for a little more information on personality types, which could be adapted to higher levels, check out this book:

Free: 40 Tried and Tested ESL Games and Activities

Email Address

My first Celta Lesson

So the first teaching practice out of the 8 is done and I got an "Above Standard."  I had to do a grammar lesson on the Simple Past, which is very similar to what I do for my actual job.  Present a grammar lesson in an organized kind of way, and plan some interactive, interesting kind of activities that get the students involved.  And keep things moving along at a good pace so the students are on-task and not bored.  And give clear instructions, which I can do in my sleep at this point, since the students at my uni are often extremely low-level.  It was actually a refreshing change to have the students for the Celta Course who are actually interested in learning English, and participate in class, and are generally higher-level than the people that I teach.

Anyway, the Celta is actually kind of ridiculously easy for someone who's been teaching for a few years, since the course is geared to the person who has never set foot in a classroom before.  If only I had taken this course years ago, it could have actually really helped me with my teaching skills!  But, expectations do get higher as the course goes on, so I'll have to keep on my toes and make sure I hit all the points expected for each type of lesson.

Some days, it just works

I'm currently working on my bi-annual chest cold of death, so I've been trying to minimize my "talk-time" in class in order to conserve my energy and my voice.  In my extra non-credit 45 minute classes today, there was basically nothing worthwhile to do in the book, so I improvised with my own conversation activity.  

First, I wrote on the board:

What are 5 things you're an expert in?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

I then filled in the blanks with my own answers: Cooking/ Canada/ Teaching English/ Scuba Diving/ Reality TV

I gave the students about 3 minutes to do the same.  Then, I narrowed my list down to the 3 that I thought were the most interesting to other people and wrote them on a folded over paper that can stand up on the desk.  Once the students had done the same, we all broke off into groups of 2 and had 5 minute conversations about the topics on the papers.  After 5 minutes, we all switched partners.

This is a beginner (ish) class but they were all asking and answering questions in a relevant, understandable kind of way *(in English!).  It made my heart feel happy.  

Robo-Teacher

On Tuesdays, in addition to the regular credit class that I teach, I also teach 5 OT classes.  These are smaller classes of about 10 students who sign-up for extra English.  The classes are 45-50 minutes long and I have to cover 2-3 pages of the "Smart Choice" Textbook.

My style of teaching is totally interactive.  I will NEVER stand up at the front of the class and lecture with the exceptions of the first day syllabus explanation and when I talk about the tests or homework assignments.  Even with the grammar lessons, I will always leave lots of gaps on the board and work together with their students to get them to help me fill it in. And I will ALWAYS do an example of what I expect for when I set up a conversation activity.  In this instance, the students usually have to ask me 3-4 who/what/when/why/where/how questions beyond the initial question (such as, "What's your favorite movie?")

The first 4 classes on Tuesday seem to love this style.  They are all participating, giving me some answers and feedback.  And the class just works, with everyone seeming to be happy and not sleeping and learning something.  However, the last class is a nightmare.  Dead silence.  It's a perfect storm of quiet, low-level, unmotivated students with not a single bright light mixed in.  I soldiered on with my normal style for a couple classes but yesterday, I switched it up.  I went into Robo-Teacher mode.  No interaction, just lecture, kind of like the standard Korean style.  I would ask my normal questions but then just answer them myself.  Leave the blanks on the board but just fill them in myself.  Then I handed out worksheets based on the lecture.  And they seemed to love it.  Like all smiles and thank-you's at the end of class.  Back into their comfort zone of what they've had their whole lives. 

Anyway, what I'm saying is this: do whatever it takes.  If you have a "dead-class" don't stress yourself out trying to force interaction.  It's just not worth it.  Just lecture, as per the standard Korean way.  I know it's not ideal for actually learning, but it's only the second time I've had to do it in over 4 years at my uni, so my track record for interactive is still intact.

Your students are not morons

I was having an interesting conversation with a couple of my coworkers the other day about how the teachers at our uni think about the students.   Obviously some of them (I hope me!) treat them with kindness, and respect.  Others think that the students are total idiots because their English ability is so low.  The thing is, we work at a science and engineering school so most of our students are in these fields and obviously languages are not their strong suit, science and math is.  Just because someone is bad at English doesn't mean that they're a moron.  My coworker mentioned that if people judged his intelligence based on his Korean ability he'd rank somewhere in the 3-year old toddler range. 

So what I'm saying is this: treat your students with respect, even if they don't know a word of English.  They are probably very good at something else.  Or, have just had a hard few years but life will get better for them later.  Or, they just want to be a taxi driver, so who really cares if they speak English or not.  As a teacher, you have a chance to show kindness and love, and have a positive influence in people's lives.  Starting with the basic premise that your students are stupid idiots is not a good way to do this. 

I know the feeling all too well.

A conversation class that alternates between periods of total silence and chit-chat in Korean, with a random English word thrown in here or there.  Sigh.

Here's A Geek In Korea's story.

Different level students

I've ended up teaching a 2 week intensive class for those students who failed their freshman English class the first time 'round and need it in order to graduate.  The desperate of the desperate essentially.  And most of them are truly terrible at English. 

In my regular class during the semester, I'll have one or two of these students in each class, mixed in with some average ones and then a few ringers who are little English geniuses.  This makes it very hard to teach at a level that makes everyone happy.  But this class I'm teaching now, they're all at the same level: very low.  And I'm actually finding it much more enjoyable.  Like I know what I'm dealing with so I can adapt my class and take everything really, really slow.  And nobody is bored I think and they actually appreciate how simple I'm making it. 

Anyway, my point is this.  If I had to choose between a mixed level class with a few stars in it, or a completely low-level class, I'd take the low-level one any day.  Of course, a class with all high-level students would be better!  Haha!

Reader Question...difference between English/ESL

This one from Sam:

"I have a B.A in English (Literature & Composition).  I also have a Masters in Science: Curriculum,Instruction, & Assessment. There is a job in Korea that is seeking an ESL Teacher.  Are my degrees sufficient or do I need more experience with ESL?  What are the major difference from teaching mainstream English as opposed to teaching ESL? Any suggestions would be helpful."

To answer the first part.  Your qualifications are more than sufficient.  All you need is a BA in basket weaving to teach here.  If you want to work at a uni, standards are a bit higher but you seem to have it covered with your masters degree.

Secondly, teaching ESL and teaching mainstream English are a world apart.  If you have extremely high level students, and are teaching an "English writing" or "English literature" class then it might be somewhat comparable to what you'd be doing back home.  Except these jobs are few and far between in Korea.  At my uni, only 2 or 3 out of the 25 of us actually teach these high level classes.  Anyway, the major difference is that you won't be teaching content, you'll be teaching very basic English vocab, grammar and conversation strategies.  If you have lower-level students, then think, "How are you today" and "What color is this?"  Mid-level students, then think, "What's your favorite movie?"  or "What did you eat for breakfast today?"