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.

Kotesol International Conference 2014

Mark your calendars my faithful blog readers.  Oct. 3-5 2014 is the Kotesol International Conference 2014 in Seoul.

AND, I'll be presenting on the topic of, "Portfolios as a means of assessing EFL writing." 

Only positive....or flying under the radar

My theory about work-related stuff is one of two things:

1. Only positive interaction when necessary.

2. If it's not necessary, just fly under the radar.

What am I talking about?  Let me give you an example: last night was my end of the semester work dinner.  Now, my school TRULY does not have a lot of social activities/meetings.  Usually around 4 times/year, which is actually extremely minimal compared to all the other places I've worked in Korea.  And the thing is, there were some people who actually didn't come for various dubious excuses or another.  It's not like it was terrible: it was a delicious, free dinner with all the alcohol you could drink. 

It's all so bizarre to me.  Some dinner and some drinks go a long way to making life happier at a Korean university. And it's a 100% positive interaction with the admins.  And, it's not "mandatory" but it actually kind of is, so it's not one of those things you can just skip and try to fly under the radar.  Like people actually notice.   Whatever.  Each to their own I guess, but if you skip stuff like this, don't be surprised when your contract doesn't get renewed for some reason or another, or you get no lucrative OT offers, or you don't get classes beyond the freshman English.

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.  

Teaching in Saudi Arabia: What's your number?

A post over on my other blog about what it would take for me to be willing to teach in Saudi (and the Middle East in general).

Living in Saudi Arabia: what's your number?

English interview class-videos

One of my favorite homework activities for an "interview skills" class is to have the students make a video.  We practiced a few things in class like "self-introduction" and strengths/weaknesses and then for homework the students had to make a video of around 2-3 minutes answering these 3 questions.  I like it for the following reasons:

1. I have 40 students in my class.  Individual feedback is almost impossible in class.  I also have a chance to give them feedback before the final exam (a practice job interview).

2.  The students actually have to pull their stuff together instead of just bluffing their way through it like is possible in class.

3. It's kind of a high-pressure situation, like a job interview.

4. The students have a chance to see/hear themselves.  We've talked about things like body language, speaking with confidence, etc so my hope is that they can apply this to themselves.

5. It's kind of novel.  Korean students love using their cellphones!

Try it out!  But, one tip.  Don't have the students send you the actual file.  That's annoying and maybe bad for your computer.  Get them to put it on youtube or naver blog and send you the link.  It's reasonably easy and all students seem to be able to figure it out.  I tell the students that they can delete it as soon as I send them an email with their grade/comment.

Minimum Wage in Korea Lesson Plan

This is a speaking/reading lesson plan for advanced level students.  My class is 2 hours but you could adapt it for shorter or longer, especially if the students read the article before coming to class. 

Should the Minimum Wage be Increased lesson plan.  It's based on this article in the Korea Herald.

Preventing Plargiarism when teaching writing

There's a thread over on the foreign professors in Korea Facebook group about blatant plagiarism on writing assignments.  Some of the stuff is pretty shocking, but other attempts are definitely more subtle in nature. 

Anyway, here's how I deal with it.  I only have 2 "at-home" assignments, both worth 10% of the final grade, for a total of 20%.  I give extremely specific topics for a very specific type of essay, word-counts and requirements for things like thesis statements and topic sentences.  I guess some students could cheat on this, but it would be quite difficult.  And even if they could, it's only 20% of their final grade so I'm not really worried about it.  It would be impossible for a student to cheat their way to an A in my class.

The bulk of their grade (50%) consists of in-class exams that consist of actually writing an essay in 50 minutes.  I give the students a list of about 25 possible topics and then a topic is randomly assigned to them depending on what desk they happen to sit at.  I only allow paper or electronic dictionaries and not cell-phones, so it's impossible to upload sample essays or something like that.

It works for me, but I understand it's a pretty intense way to do exams in a writing class.  The students don't love it, but I think that the better students actually appreciate the fairness of it and that the students who can actually write will get the higher grades, while those who are terrible can't bluff their way through it by getting a native speaker to write an essay for them, or something like that.

Portfolio Update

This semester in my advanced writing classes, the students were required to do a "portfolio" which included all the writing that they did in class and outside of class as well and counted for 20% of their final grade.  They were supposed to do things like extra practice essays, keep a journal, or do a movie review.  They also had to keep track of how many times they received feedback on their writing in my office or in the school's "Global Zone."

I've been grading them the past couple days and some students have done exceedingly well.  It's quite obvious they have taken responsibility for improving their writing and have done A LOT of extra work each week.  And, it's also obvious that some students have done essentially nothing, even in class during things like the "free-writing" time I give them at the beginning of each class.

What I'm really loving about it is how easy grading is.  It only takes me around 5 minutes/ portfolio to flip through it and get a general idea of how the student has been doing in the class and how much extra writing they've done.  It's a VERY easy way to get students to do a lot of writing, without physically having to grade it all, which would be impossible for me to do with over 100 students.