Kotesol's Teaching in Korea Job Board

If you're looking for an English teaching job in Korea, check out Kotesol's new Job Board.  My guess is that they'll end up having mostly university jobs, which are perhaps not listed on ESL Cafe (because employers won't have to pay) so it could be well worth it to get access.  It's free for now, but come 2015, you'll need to be a current Kotesol member.  And, if you need some more suggestions for getting a job in Korea, especially a university one, check out: How To Get a University Job in South Korea on Amazon.

Life on the inside: what working at a Korean University is really like. Part 1: schedules

Korean University Schedules

Thanks to my friend "E" for the suggestion of this series about what working at a Korean University is really like with the students, classes, administration and other various things.  I'm going to kick it off with schedules, or what my days basically consist of.

If you work at a fabulous university, your schedule will consist of only 3-4 days/week of teaching.  You may even get a long weekend like me, this semester since I get Friday off (however that was due to my own scheming and the kindness of one of my coworkers).

A lot of people end up having classes 5 days/week, but even this isn't really terrible since it will usually only consist of either mornings (9-1 for example), or afternoons (1-5 for example) and not both.  Your actual teaching hours will be around 12-15/week, so you'll have plenty of time for grading and admin and other general duties related to the job.  The best places try to give you a block schedule which means that you'll teach for 3-4 hours back-back instead of a split shift kind of thing where you have large breaks within your day (4 or 5 hours).

Generally, you don't have a lot of say over your schedule, although both my previous and current unis have been amenable to requests, like when I needed Tuesday and Thursday morning off to do the Celta course, or switching a class with my coworker to not work 5 days/week.  Some places do the seniority thing, where the longest serving teachers get first pick of schedules, but that seems like a lot of hassle and it's not that common I think.

I personally don't really care about my schedule that much since I have a nice, semi-private office (with 2 other people) and my own computer.  As a bonus, it even has a phone, heating and air-con as well as wicked fast Internet which is definitely a better set-up than I have at my own house.  If I have a 4 or 5 hour break, I'll just do lesson planning or grading and work on my online ventures, such as this blog or my recent book about University Jobs in Korea.

The worst possible scenario related to schedules is 5 days/week but with only something like 9 or 10 teaching hours, which means that you'll end up coming into work and teaching only 1-2 hours a day.  If you have a 5 minutes commute like I do, it's not terrible but many of my coworkers come from the other end of the city (1-1.5 hours) so for them it's not ideal.  You can sometimes salvage this by trying to pick up some overtime during the days, which is readily available at my uni, but that's a bit of an anomaly.

Reader Questions: Getting a University Job in South Korea

Some reader questions from Kyle:

"Would you be willing to give some advice?  I'd like to teach at a Korean University with my Masters in Ed. , a K-12 ESL Certificate (State of Michigan and North Carolina), 4 years of K-8 licensed US teaching experience, and 15 years of K-12 ESL teaching experience in Taiwan.

Questions:

1. Would being 47 years old make it difficult for me to be hired by hagwons, public schools, and universities?

2. What's the best path to getting a Korean University job that pays at least US$30,000 per year?

3. Is it best to travel to Korea first and job hunt or secure a job before leaving?  (I'm thinking Visas and paperwork here, in addition to the benefits being there before signing contracts).

4. Do you recommend any websites/blogs about working in Korea?

5. Can a qualified teacher like me just show up and find a job or is it always seasonal on schedule like hiring in August and in February?"

My answers:

If you're looking for advice about getting a university job in South Korea, check out my book:

How to Get a University Job in South Korea

It'll have all the information you need, and if not, send me another message and I'd be happy to help.

But, more specific answers:

1. Yes, 47 is a bit old but it's not impossible, especially if you look "young" for your age.  The prime age for most places is between about 25 and 40.

2. See the book!

3. It can go either way, depending on how adventurous you are.  It's often possible to find a better job when your boots are on the ground, but the job market is pretty tight for job-seekers these days and you can burn through a lot of money while waiting for the right one to come along.

4. Check my sidebar for a few blogs that I like.  As far as I know, nobody else is writing exclusively about teaching in Korean universities besides myself.

5. Universities hire seasonally, as well as public schools but hagwons hire year-round and you can literally start almost any week of the year.

Using Timelines-Present Perfect Continuous-Present Perfect

In my advanced conversation class, a chapter in Touchstone Level 3 has a section about the present perfect continuous and the present perfect.  It's actually pretty complicated grammar and not something that students can understand that easily.

For example, what is the difference between these two sentences?

1. "I've been watching Survivor since I was in university." (present perfect continuous)

2. "I've watched survivor since university." (present perfect)

Both are talking about repeated activities that happen mostly in the past, but what is the difference?  It's subtle.  In the first case, it's an activity that began in the past, but is still happening now.  In the second case, it's an activity that began in the past, but it's a bit ambiguous whether or not the activity is happening in the present.

To explain this to students, timelines can be really helpful. 

 Present Perfect Continuous

Past-----Present-----Future

Yes-------Yes--------??

Present Perfect

Past----Present----Future

Yes------??---------??

How to Make Writing More Interactive

In one of my lower-intermediate conversation classes, we were studying about "evening routines" using Touchstone 2, Unit 8. 

I did the evening routine listening on page 83, and then followed it up with the writing exercise at the bottom of the page.  In order to make it more interactive, I did the following:

The students had to make 3 or 4 "test" questions based on what they wrote.  Then, they read what they wrote to their partner who had to listen carefully.  Finally, the student asked their partner the test questions.

It was quite useful in making "writing" more interesting than usual and also provided some additional listening, writing (questions) and speaking practice.  The test questions provided a reason to listen.  There were lots of laughs and smiles and good-natured joking when a student couldn't answer their partners questions, or got them wrong.

There's never enough time!

Yes! I agree completely with this article in the Huffington Post about how, as teachers, we know what is ideal and all the fabulous assignments we should be giving and all those teachable moments we should be taking advantage of but how most days, it's just kind of like triage because there's never really enough of us to go around. 

Having 125+ students who all want 1-1 extensive feedback on their writing, or that same number of students who envision hours of "free-talking" with me, their teacher just doesn't work out if I want to have some semblance of life outside of work.  Triage is the only solution most days.

Big News: Ebook is out- "How to Get a University Job in South Korea"

After lots of hard work, I'm happy to announce that my first book is hot off the presses (errr...I mean ready to download to a device of some sort).

How to Get a University Job in South Korea: The English Teaching Job of Your Dreams

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

Email Address

Quiet Time is Okay (or, I'm not an Edu-tainer)

A common thing that many English teachers in Korea fall into is feeling like they need to be an Edu-Tainer (Education Entertainer).  I think it's mostly because of how foreign English teachers are portrayed in the media: as clowns (Babos in Korean) or dancing monkeys.  This means that some teachers always feel the need to "perform" and keep the students entertained, excited and happy no matter what. 

I resist this at all costs for the following reasons:

1. I'm not naturally an "entertainer." I'm a bit shy and so being on stage isn't really something I crave or want. 

2. Learning can't always be "fun." Sometimes, you need to memorize vocab, or explore a difficult grammar concept in depth.

3. Students are different.  Some like being entertained, some like working quietly by themselves.

4. I'm all about student-centered classrooms.  An Edutainer is all about a teacher-centered classroom, which is something that I think is really bad for students.

5. I consider myself a "real" teacher.  I actually want my students to take my classes seriously and learn something.  I think this is probably best achieved by taking myself seriously as an educator and not falling into the Edutainer trap.

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

Touchstone Series: a Short Book Review

I used the Touchstone Seriesyears ago at my previous uni and remember hating it.  Like the pages were filled with all these "speak like a native speaker" sections which were just bizarre, and each page had so much stuff crammed into it that it usually stressed me out.  Maybe part of the problem was the program I was teaching in; I "shared" the book with other teachers and was assigned 1 or 2 pages/class so had to teach the pages I hated instead of just skipping over them like I normally would.

Anyway, it seems like a new edition has come out and Touchstone is not as terrible as it once was.  Plus, I usually just choose 1 or 2 pages out of each chapter and then add in my own material so the I just don't use the pages that I don't like.  I still much prefer a series like 4 Corners or World Link but I don't have any major complaints about Touchstone for a general, 4-skills kind of textbook.