ELT career

I came to Korea 10 years ago as a young, naive person looking to conquer the world. That didn't quite happen, but I did grow up in Korea, that's for sure. I was a huge decision for me to come here to teach and I pretty much learnt how to teach on my feet. I had no professional training whatsoever and i just "winged it". Slowly I became a better teacher throughout the years. One of the biggest decisions i have made since being here as a teacher is moving to teach at the university. I saw this as an opportunity to develop myself professionally. I had taught other younger age groups before hand and saw this change as a challenge. What this change did was to open my eyes about how young Koreans become adults and enter the working world. I have seen freshman turn into great young adults full of determination to greet the world. Seeing these changes in students makes me think about my own path chosen in life. I often give students advice to travel overseas, and even encourage it. By comparing my own life and the positive events that have come from my decision to come to Korea i can encourage other young adults at the University to try new things in life, and most of all that it is not too late to just accept that they will just get a job in their major and that there is no other choice for them. I guess I come into conflict with the values that the students have had drum into them from their parents, former teachers, and the education system. Most of my advice to get out and try new things has fallen on deaf ears and i understand that it could be because of lack of funds, but for the most part it seems that students feel it is more beneficial for them to just keep plodding along with what they are doing, and fair enough, who's to say what is right?

I feel that I am marginalized at work mainly in two areas. One is office space, and the second is curriculum and grading requirements. I do not see these as negative aspects of my job however, but see it as a challenge to overcome. I know how big the office spaces are upstairs, and I know what is required of me to get there (qualifications and dedication). So this can be achieved and also by working hard at making better curriculum and fairer grading I, as the coordinator, may have opportunities to convince the staff in charge to change their views. This is something that I have been working on this semester and will continue to do so as long as it takes.

What have my students taught me about myself...?

After thinking about this question over the last week, I have found that my students have taught me that I should have more confidence in them. I had been spoon feeding them over the past years, giving them information that they could have been discovering themselves. So I have now discovered that I should be more of a facilitator, not a preacher. Having the confidence that they can work it out themselves has been good for both me and my students. I can see how they feel after working it out for themselves, and it makes me feel good knowing that they can do this also.
A language class only works when students feel comfortable, and safe in the environment. There had been times in the past where i thought a strong approach would seem better, but after an understanding approach these days, it seems as though a mutual respect between us has been found. Students are approaching me with problems and my office hours actually are a lot busier than they once were. I see this as a positive sign that my students feel comfortable when approaching me more than before.
In saying that there were times when i was also a push over and corrected every little mistake in a students writing for them, these days, using my figure it out yourself approach, I merely point out the error and get them to figure out what is wrong by themselves.
I guess my students have taught me that there are times when understanding is needed and when a forceful approach is needed. In terms of the classroom atmosphere, getting the students to figure it out themselves installs a sense of belief that they can do it, and increase their confidence.

Giving students time

My class today was the focus of my module 3 paper. As a result I paid a lot of attention to new vocabulary and grammar and tried to get the students to make sense of the new information themselves.
The grammar focus was the present perfect continuous and the students all had a working knowledge of this. So the idea of the class was to give students practice using this grammar and to see how it worked in real situations, like in a film clip I showed them. There was no vocabulary that popped up in the text and I dealt with them as they arose, but did not give them any hint as to what it meant. I put them in pairs and gave them a few minutes to think about the word themselves. Most times they managed to figure it out. I had no reason to explain the grammar as such as the already knew that.
I used the video in the isolation part of the lesson and used a gap filling exercise and the students filled in the gaps of the utterances in the clip. We then verified their answers as a class later. I then prepared a questionnaire  and the students asked one another  modeled questions such as , have you been enjoying the festival lately? They were made to answer with full sentences. They then had to choose a follow up question, since when? or for how long?
 Both of these had been touched upon earlier in the lesson so the students knew when to use for and since and in what situation. After tis practice of the grammar the students were given about 5 minutes to make their own questions aimed at a particular person in the class. they then asked this question, with the follow up and any other questions that anyone felt like asking. This was the production phase of the lesson.
I felt it went quite well. i made a concerted effort to reduce teacher talk in the class, and I believe I collected good material to focus on my module 3 assignment.

Pronunciate!

I used a section of my class today to focus on pronunciation. As there were not really any interesting aspects or rules to follow in the text I was teaching this week I focused on stressing certain words. I used the technique referred to in Harmer, example 4 page 259. I wrote a sentence on the board, "Where can I buy a cheap computer?". This sentence is found in the text book I was teaching on that day. I then prepared different situations and passed them around to pairs in the room. Some of the situations were:
1) I have found cheap phones, cheap TVs and cheap MP3 players everywhere, but no cheap computers!
2) Everywhere I look the computers are so expensive!
3) Everybody else has bought a computer, but I can't find one anywhere!
4) I have looked everywhere, but I can not find a place that sells cheap computers!
By discussing in pairs they worked out on which word they would place the stress to emphasize the situation they had. It was a difficult task and i had to model it a few times with another sentence before a few of them understood.
This was not so much a practical lesson on pronunciation that cam up in class, but a planned lesson on stressing certain words to convey different meanings. I do not think the students got the hang of it in the 15 minutes we focused on it but after a few reviews I hope they get it. It did make them realize that stress on words is very important in the English language, which was the point of this activity I believe.

Vocab!

So after reading Nation and Harmer I tried to incorporate vocabulary into my lesson plan today. I usually am pretty lazy when it comes to vocabulary so focusing on it was a little alien to me. The reading the vocabulary came from was quite long. Usually I would get the students to read the sentences out one line at a time as they go around, but after thinking about this approach in class a few weeks back I decided that having the students read themselves was a better idea. So we took it one paragraph at a time and told the students to underline a word if they did not understand it and thought it was important. I had already underlined ten words and pointed them out after each paragraph. The majority of students also picked the same words.
What I did next was to pre-make a question activity. I wrote 5 definitions with the correct answers relating to the vocabulary just covered on one piece of paper, and 5 on another. I then did PW where one student quizzed the other on the definitions and elicited answers from them without telling them the answer. By doing this the students began to get a feel for the new words themselves. As nation puts this, the "learning burden" of the word. They can give hints by using words that sound alike, by fitting it into a sentence, by spelling the first few letters, and I even had them use collocations as hints. They learnt about collocations in a previous class.
So I then asked the students if this exercise had been useful and they said yes...I think they would say yes anyway, but it's always good to hear.
I could have followed this up by a word activity, like a jumble or crossword in Harmer, or better still had the students use the new vocabulary in their own sentences. Time was not on my side however and I had to get through certain pages of the text to keep up with the syllabus. I guess this is when the students could do homework and show me their sentences in the next class. I am lazy like that also, it just adds to an already high marking workload for me. But if I had my students best interest at hand then that is what I should be doing I guess...no excuses.

TTQ

Today I recorded my entire class, which was 2 hours long, and it used up all of my phone battery life haha.
So there were a variety of different aspects to go through the text book with in this class. Ten students attended, (it was an academy class at the University) and it all went quite well i thought.
The focus of the first half of the lesson was phrasal verbs. These were in a reading, and phrasal verbs were highlighted throughout the text. I got the students to close their books and I prepared pictures describing the events as they happened in the text. The students then got into pairs and came up with their own stories based on the pictures on the screen. It worked really well to activate their schema, and it got them interested in the reading which we did next.
When moving into the practice stage of the lesson I gave the students a few verbs and particles and in the same pairs got them to make as many phrasal verbs as they could. They then volunteered their answers to the class. I did not get them to put them into their own sentences which was a mistake I believe, as just saying the phrasal verb does nothing to really enhance their language, other than maybe learning new vocabulary.
The text book then took us into a dialog focusing on softening, and thereby making it more polite. I modeled a few sentence examples on the board and nominated students to say the answers. This worked well and the students grasped this fairly quickly. The last point was the use of the word "though" in contrasting opinions. After going through the examples in the text the students had a chance to produce the language with me as I nominated students to contrast my opinions with the use of the word "though". For example:

T: Brad Pitt is so old now!
                                                       L1: Yeah but he is still handsome though.

I was happy with the way the ideas were picked up in class and I hope that the students continue to use this new language point in future lessons.
My only gripe is that I feel I still over explain too much and maybe even offer too much feedback to student responses. Reducing TTT is important I know but how much should we reduce it. Harmer brings up the point about TTQ (teacher talking quality) and I guess I am still trying to work out this balance. TTT needs to be used wisely and I think i would like to focus more on this aspect. How much talk is too much and what constitutes quality?

reading activity and module 2

This week I was not able to teach any class material as it was revision week for the midterm exams next week. Next week I will be away as well, followed by the delayed midterm exam after that. So I will not be teaching any CREDIT classes for the next two to three weeks. So i will now switch my focus on to the hagwon classes that I have to teach three times a week. This week I forgot to record any class time, I have been running around like a headless chicken this week trying to get my trip and everything else organized. But I did manage to use one new method of reading in the hagwon class. The reading topic was different snacks around the world. It seemed a pretty uninteresting topic so I decided to take 8 words from each snack description in the text and give those 8 words to a pair of students. i then gave them the task of talking about the particular snack, how it is made, where it is from etc to the class using the 8 words as hints.
It worked really well. The students became interested in the text as the compared their answer to the original. It also proved to be a great idea for learning the new vocabulary in the text as I included the difficult words in the 8 I gave them. This activity took 30 mins of the class. Usually I would spend 5 minutes on the reading. A big improvement.
So tonight I am going to be teaching the hagwon class for the final time before I leave. So I am going to use this upcoming class to record and use for my module 2 assignment. The topic is "Managing Life" using the future tense of going to and will.
I was thinking about brainstorming ways in which people spend their weekends. I will then model a question on the board "What are you up to this weekend?" I will get students into pairs to ask each other before reporting back to the class.
I then intend to use visuals on the board for weekend activities. I will nominate students to practice saying the modeled sentence about the future and the pictured activity.
I will then ask if there are any different ways of asking about the future and write those up on the board.
From there I will work into the study phase of the lesson.
This is my rough plan. I will teach the class tonight and then write about what happened next week. i will not have time to write about it tonight, will be headed to the airport.

revised lesson

After watching my fellow peers model their engage phase of their classes last weekend I have altered my engage lesson previously taught last week, and tried it again with a different class. This time I focused more on developing the target language they will use later in the lesson while activating their schema. The last time I tried this class I did not introduce the language they will be using at this stage of the lesson.
I started the lesson off with a brainstorm on the board of different kinds of bad habits. Basically these were one or two word shout outs, which I let go at this stage of the lesson. I feel that getting the students involved at this stage rather than on full sentences was more important at the beginning. I then further progressed into the topic by showing pictures on the screen from the computer of different kinds of bad habits. I then asked questions such as "who has this habit?" "What is this habit". Again the responses were small and the dominant students answered. I asked 3 students and tried to personalize the feedback with them as much as possible by asking follow up questions, such as "how often do you eat hamburgers? and "what's your favorite hamburger?" ...
It was at this stage when I modeled the 3 sentences on the board that I wanted the students to focus on. They were:
1) I've picked up the habit of ___ing
2) I'm addicted to _____
3) I need to kick the habit of ____ing.
The students then did 3 minutes of pair work practicing these 3 sentences with each other before I nominated 3 students to say their examples to the class.  From this point we worked into the area of smoking and focused on that topic where students started to come up with reasons as to why certain groups of people start smoking while using the new modeled sentences.
The pair work worked really well at this stage of the lesson, even though it was short. The students all seemed to use this new language later on in the class also. My learners definitely feel more comfortable when speaking to other students as the conversations in pair work was great compared to when I utilized volunteering and nominating. I tend to have my students in one large horse shoe shape (U) for the start of the classes, so the pair work was just done with the person sitting next to them. In future lessons I need to think of a quick way to partner them up with other students, however I do not wish to spend too much time on this at the beginning of a lesson.
Overall my warm up, preview start to the lesson lasted 20 mins. Is this too long? Should there be a time limit on this phase before the study phase begins?

Engage 2!

As the last class went fairly well, I did much the same in this class (different students, same topic) for the engage part of the lesson.

However, after thinking about Daniel's comment, I was not too sure that the students in the class were being too honest with me about the initial question of whether smoking is cool, sexy, or romantic looking. Of course students do not want to "stand out" from the others, and this could be culturally based, so I was thinking about other ways to activate their schema on the topic of smoking without asking and answering based on themselves. So instead of just putting the pictures of celebrities on the board, I put pictures of people (including celebrities) smoking in all walks of life. I then asked the questions "How does this image make you feel? Why do you think that this particular person is smoking". The results were different and a lot more like what i expected as they were based on unknown people and not on themselves. There were pictures of students smoking, celebrities smoking, young children smoking, parents, and workers smoking. The words and opinions varied depending on the images which is what i expected and wanted. From there they could start thinking more in depth about the topic and discuss in GW and PW.

Engage!

In the engage phase of my lesson this week I was planning on activating the students schema in order to get them thinking about the topic that we would study for this weeks class. This week the class topic is "Drinking and Smoking in Korea", which I believe is a topic these students would already be quite familiar with.
To open the class I presented the students with the question, "is smoking cool? sexy? romantic? The resounding answers were no. Then to conflict with their first answers I put a picture on the projector screen of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie smoking a cigarette on the street. The same question was then posed with a variety of different answers this time. Suddenly smoking was kinda cool, sexy and romantic. By creating these contradictions by using their schema of smoking and celebrities I was hoping to engage the students into more interesting conversations that could be had later in the lesson.
The answers given from the engage phase of the lesson worked quite well for the rest of the lesson. I had to be careful not to be too negative on the smoking and drinking topics however as there were smokers and drinkers in the class, so even though the conversations in class were interesting, I will focus on the negative AND positive aspects of smoking and drinking in the next class to avoid bias. But over all the activation of the students schema worked well and I was satisfied, but with room for improvement on Thursday.

An Observation

While writing my report throughout the week I came across an interesting point in teacher student interaction.
I am not sure how relevant this is but I what became clear in my transcript was that if there is a dominant student in the class, teacher talk time increased. This became apparent when I opened the floor to the students for a chance to respond but the same student volunteered twice, so I ended up answering the question myself and talked through the answer in order to avoid this dominants student from controlling the classroom discourse.
I may really need to change turn taking techniques to avoid this type of situation, will make a concerted effort to try and clear this problem up. Any of you guys experience the same thing?

Ding ding ding, round 3

Last week, I discovered through talking with my partner and re reading my transcripts that I did ask a lot of referential questions. However they were ALL directed at individuals. At the time I thought that this had no negative aspects, but during this discussion time, I understood that maybe other students would have wanted to add their opinion, or maybe I was subconsciously neglecting some students and choosing other students to speak more often.
After this realization, I tried a few referential questions to the whole class. However my students were not used to that it seems, as no one answered. Maybe they did not want to look like a "smarty pants", what I am tempted to do is offer presentation points for students who are willing to offer their opinion. I am sure that this is also unfair to some students also...will see what happens.

Round 2

I taught two different kinds of classes this week, one was a regular speaking class which is graded. This consists of 24 students. The other is a "hagwon" style class consisting of 15 students.
I took 10 minute video clips of each of them to see if there were any differences.
What i noticed from my first viewing is that i tended to talk too much and not give the students enough time to answer questions. So I tried to work on this.
What i noticed from my transcripts was that i asked more open questions than closed questions. i will take this as a positive as it gives more opportunity for the students to say their opinions and use their English in a variety of different ways and scenarios.
In the first video (of general class) I was the one asking the questions and was making the choices of who speaks. This i thought was a negative thing as it restricts students who want to speak from speaking so i will take that into consideration for next weeks classes.
What i thought was good was that most of the questions were referential dialogic questions.
In the 2nd class (hagwon) I made it so the students asked the questions to other students, student initiated interaction. This proved successful, as it gave students a chance to practice the intonation with the questions they were asking, which was the purpose of the exercise. The only problem was the questions became so interesting I lost focus and did not keep up with correcting the intonation, but only kept discussion going. I still felt it was productive. I have to stay on task next time.
With regards to feedback i used reformation of students ideas most of the time. I did not want to disrupt the flow of the discussions so corrected the students when the discussion broke up.

I must also add that this was an introductory class. Next week I hope to record more "hands on" teaching. I do know, after watching for a second time,  that i need to get the students to answer and ask questions to each other and to me in full. I, over the years, have gotten into a bad habit of getting one word answers from students and this can be seen in the recording also.

my first view of myself teaching! Yikes!

Ok,
So I have just viewed myself teaching. How scary and weird is that!
First thing I noticed is that I am a shuffler. I tend to move around and sway while standing in front of the class. Now I do not know if that is necessarily a bad thing or not, but still was very surprising to see.
Also, I know that this was a class about explaining the course, but I talked too much. Maybe I could let the students do more talking. Will try to work on that.