Starting Class

I know everyone has their own way to start class but here is the method that I usually use and that seems to work pretty well at capturing and getting attention.

1. I walk into the class, adjust the temperature, desks and podium to my liking. I'll turn on the computer and projector if using it for that class. A few random hellos as students walk in.

2. I take my stuff out of my bag and set out all the materials I'll need for that class. Nothing is worse than having attention and then losing it due to poor preparation and having to search in your bag for things.

3. I write up the days agenda on the board. I'll also write the first 1 or 2 things that we'll be doing, so I don't waste time doing this later. By this time, there is usually about 1 or 2 minutes until class starts, so I'll walk around doing attendance.

4. I'll start with a good afternoon/morning and then some general chit-chat for a couple minutes. I'll avoid this with the dead classes because the dead silence is never a good start to a class, but it's actually quite fun with the better ones.

5. Then a game of some sort. Even if it's secretly studying or introducing the topic for that period, call it a game and make it into some sort of competition with a winner and have a prize. For example, instead of just reading the little descriptions in the book of 4 people's plans for after graduation, I copied them out and we'll play running dictation to start the class off with.

That's my routine. What's yours? One final tip that really works for me is to tell the students to talk to me only after class. When I'm getting all set up, I don't like to be interrupted with small issues that can be dealt with after class.

Basic Teaching Tips

Some great stuff on teacher training from the Eflclassroom website. Under teaching tips, there is a presentation of the basics:

1. Write the target language on the board! (always a good idea, since not everyone can pick it up just by listening and it helps to reinforce things, if they can see it).

2. Always provide a simple agenda (this is something I'm incorporating this semester into my classes...so far, classes are going much more smoothly when the students can see the beginning, middle and end).

3. Always teach the big picture first and then the details (obvious to me...not to everyone maybe?)

4. Pause often (I had one Korean teacher who would never give me time to think. She would just butt in with the answer when I just about to say it. It was the most annoying thing and even after I told her to stop doing it, she still would. She was just too impatient to let me go at my own, slow pace in formulating Korean words and sentences. I vowed to never be that teacher. So now, I just wait patiently, very often for responses. I will never give a response after I've asked the students for one. I don't care how long it takes. Someone needs to say something, even if it's one word and it's wrong).

5. Review (I never used to do much review, assuming the students would do it on their own. This isn't the case. And learning a language is all about learning the same things, over and over and over again, until there is no way that you can't possibly not know it!)

Classroom Rules

...are very necessary in a conversational English class in a Korean university. If you think they aren't, get out of your North American/European mindset and take a small trip back to middle school mentality. It's actually pretty okay, as a teacher once you know what to expect and can prepare for it.

Here are my rules, in order to ensure a happy, stress-free year for me (and possibly not the students!)

1. Book! No book=no study. Goodbye, see you next week :) But of course, you can make a copy.

2.Listen. To me and the other students.

3. Cell-phone. I want a new cell-phone because mine is cheap and old. Yours is probably nice and new and expensive. So if I hear or see yours, I'll be very happy. Get it?

4. Time. For 10 minutes, I'm a very kind teacher. At 11 minutes, I'm a mean teacher and lock the door. It's too late. Run if you have to.

5. Nametag. You are young and your memory is good. I'm old and my memory is not so great, so please help me to remember your names.

Sites for lesson planning

The 2 that I use most often for my uni/adults students are:

Heads up English
Breaking News English

I do some volunteer teaching 1-1 with Skype and find these sites extremely helpful for that.

Modified Bingo

Here is a good blog entry from A Geek in Korea. I'm planning on trying it out.

Even Public Schools Can Go Bad

We all know that hagwons in Korea are corrupt. While there are a few good ones out there, the majority rip of the foreigners in some way. Money, vacation, taxes, health care, housing, bonus pay, flight money. Something. And there is almost no recourse except the toothless labor board which seems able to be bought off by the employers. Due to this, I would generally recommend people stick with public schools or unis.

However, there are more and more cases of people getting screwed over by the public schools as well. There is the latest scandal, this time with SMOE (Seoul Public Schools) about them canceling 100/600 teachers the night before they were due to come to Korea. And getting renewed at the public schools seems to be at the whim of your potentially quite good or potentially pure evil co-teachers. Certainly not a comforting thought at times. And I also hear increasing stories of public schools pulling the same crap that hagwons are notorious for with money and housing and stuff. They get paid a certain amount/foreign teacher at their school and so many of them look to make a buck off of it and don't actually spend that full amount on the teacher.

So, if you are a newbie, looking to work in Korea, I would sincerely recommend that you look elsewhere. Somewhere where you can own your own visa and aren't indebted to your employer like an indentured servant. Somewhere where you have freedom to change jobs, with minor paperwork if your employer starts to screw you over. Somewhere where there are government regulations that actually protect and look out for foreign employees. Sadly, it is not Korea.

Shootout at the ESL corral

I played this game with the kids at my last camp but think it could potentially be somewhat fun for uni students as well. Divide the class into groups of two. You can do this on 2 sides of the class, at their desks standing up or get the kids to make a line at the front of the class as well.

Then, there are are 2 variations. The first one is that the first 2 students play rock/scissor/paper. The loser has to answer a question about what you've been studying. I used it a lot of math when I was studying that for a couple days with the kids. I'd say what is 5x8 and give them 5 seconds to answer. If they got it, they went to the back of their line, or remain standing. If not, they sit down and the game is over for them. The second variation is to just ask a question to both students and the loser sits down.

It's a fun, high energy game with a lot of excitement to it. The kids seemed like they couldn't get enough of it. And you can use pretty much any topic you want. And it's definitely heavy on the listening and speaking skills.

Task Based Teaching

At my uni, the foreign teachers had a presentation on task-based teaching. While this is nothing new for most of us, I did pick up a few things. Of particular interest was the "task generator" that the presenter talked about. The basic idea is that there is a topic that the class is based upon and then various task based on that are created by the teacher.

This is the list of tasks, basically from easiest to hardest. I'll use the topic of weather.

1. Listing. Various types of weather conditions.

2. Ordering and sorting. What is the typical weather in spring/summer/fall/winter.

3. Comparing. Weather in Korea vs. weather in Canada

4. Matching. Pictures of weather conditions to the names.

5. Problem solving. Pick a destination you'd like to visit. When will you go and why? What special things do you need to bring?

6. Creative project. Research a major natural disaster and make a poster about it.

7. Sharing personal experiences or stories.

Making my life easier

I've talked about this before, in that there needs to be some sort of motivation in classes in order for the students to perform. While there are some highly motivated students around, I've found it to be the exception rather than the rule in Korea.

For the rest of them: rewards are key. In my uni classes, it's all about the final grade at the end of the semester.

Everyone else: candy and prizes. If I'm doing a single class with students that I won't see regularly, I'll buy a few cheap candies and such and hand them out liberally for games and activities. If I'm doing a camp with students over a week or two, I'll make a chart with their names and give them stickers for the winners of games or good behavior or whatever. I'll let them know at the beginning of our time that there will be small prizes for the top 4 or 5 students. I'm currently doing a camp and I picked up the following: a hula hoop, colored pencils, jump rope, pen and pencil. This system made my life considerably easier every day and it was all for under 10 000 Won. Well worth it, in my opinion.

The things I like about doing this:

1. It make a little excitement in the classroom, about things that are often not so exciting.

2. People like candy and prizes.

3. And most importantly of all, it rewards good behavior and I can ignore the bad after the first day or two. If someone is misbehaving I'll just generally give them no acknowledgment and it usually stops pretty quickly. Instead, I can focus on the well-behaved and give a lot more attention to them (as it should be!)

Grammar

So I meet a few English teachers here and there who have extremely bad spoken grammar. I guess that written grammar mistakes could possibly be forgiven, since most of our jobs are of the English "conversation" variety and pretty light on the grammar/writing kind of stuff.

But a few people that I know, in the space of a 5 minute conversation will make at least one or two grammar mistakes of the subject-verb agreement type, or a word used in an odd way, a cliche-ish saying, or grasp at a simple word that they can't quite recall at that moment. It is the exception, for a native speaker who teaches ESL to make mistakes with this high of frequency. I even think that more advanced ESL students could pick out these mistakes.

I wonder if they know what they sound like? And how did they ever get like that? Was it their parent's lack of education? Or just their part of the brain responsible for language doesn't quite work as well as other people. Too much TV and not enough real life interaction? Is there any way to improve it? Interesting to think about.