teaching English

I want to write about some of the challenges I have found in teaching. But keep in mind that I've only been here a month, so these are still first impressions subject to change.

One of the worst things, and also one of the easiest things for the school to improve, is that the classes are not differentiated by proficiency. So in each grade there are 6 or 7 classes (I teach two different years, equivalent of HS sophmores and juniors), but each class has students who don't care at all mixed with some students who try, but aren't very strong, and the handful of students who are good enough to carry a conversation (given a little patience). Some of the teachers agree with me that it would be better for every student if they break up the classes, but they tried to do this (all over the country) about a decade ago. The result was that the teachers complained about tripling the amount of preparation they had to do, and the parents complained if their kid was not in the top class, so they scrapped the system. Too bad because now my class is over the heads of some students and too slow for others at any given time.

This was not explained to me until after my first couple classes. When I was asked what I thought of the students I mentioned that some were quite good and many seemed like they had never studied English! Lack of preparation before starting the job is definately a bit of a set back for me. I thought I was supposed to get a 1 week training course when I arrived, but did not because I came after the start of the semester. I thought my Korean co-teachers would give me more input on how to design my classes, but they all said I am the expert and immediately approve any idea I suggest without question or improvement. I feel bad for the kids I teach on Monday because I tweak the content and presentation of every lesson and get so much better by the later classes. By now I am starting to get a better idea of what kind of things will work, and what the students need to learn, but it seems kind of weird to have been learning on the job, experimenting with some kids educations.

Another problem with the system these kids have learned in is that the focus is almost exclusively reading comprehension because that is what is tested on the national college exams - in the Korean system they take exams like SATs every year of highschool, and the exams cover every subject. It is good in that it is standardized across the nation and gives each child, in principle, an equal chance at any college, but it is all multiple choice questions so in all subjects the students focus on memorization and test taking skill rather than creativity and deep understanding. The English questions are usually something like reading a paragraph and fill in the blanks of a few missing words. The students have almost no practice with writing or speaking, and limited listening comprehension.

The level of text in the students books is far more advanced than what they are capable of creating.

"With Christmas just a few days away the tree that jsut yesterday demanded full attention from the room with its sparkles and twinkles now cowered in the corner like a dark shadow."

Compare this to one of the better writing samples I have collected from my students -

"Sir former teacher thinks, sleep is not so much. because the that hobby was uncertain, I answered so. Well, morning nap will try a lot of things to I do not doze class although it is true."

They know enough words to piece together enough meaning from their exam questions, but don't have a feel for what a conversation sounds like. I am supposed to focus on exactly that - conversational English.

The biggest challenge for me in this regard is the students reluctance to speak in class. There are a variety of reasons for this reluctance: a traditional view of the classroom as a place where the teacher lectures and the students listen, simple shyness (especially with the girls), and a deep fear of making a mistake (however small) and losing face with their classmates - they take the advice of "be silent and assumed a fool rather than speak and remove all doubt" to a whole other level.

Well, I am trying to break them down so that I can build them up again in my own image. A little later I'll post again about work and let you know how my actual classes have gone.

flickr link

it comes to my attention that the link to the photo album I made a few posts ago is broken.

just copy / paste the website as written instead of clicking. It should work.

Sports and exercise

Plenty of opportunities on this front. Both schools have a weekly staff volleyball game which they take pretty seriously, they even have one teacher act as referee. Actually there is a tournament amongst the local school, which the boys highschool team won last year. They are indeed quite a bit better than the team of teachers at the girl's highschool. On the latter I am probably on of the top 3 players, but there are a handful of experts at the boy's school. Anyway it is fun to play even though I prefer sand to indoor court.

Also, there are several tennis players that I can hit around with. I don't know if it will be too cold in the winter, but for now it is fun to try to adjust my play to the clay courts they have here. I try to slide but my feet just stick, maybe I need flatter soled shoes. If it is impossible to play tennis in the winter I can always take up the slack with badminton. It is very popular here; I have played once so far. It is a lot of fun to lay-out for a drop shot on the smooth hardwood floors.

Speaking of laying out, it looks like I will even get a chance to play some ultimate frisbee. There is a small sized, but fairly well organized community in the country that seems to include a lot of Americans. Unfortunately it doesn't look like I will get a chance for any kind of regular pick-up game; I would have to live in a big city for that. But in a couple weekends there is a tournament in a city about 3 hrs away which I think I will be able to join up with: hooray!

Around town there is also a very nice path along the river where I can go running, or I can just set off through the rice fields and keep my self amused with some strange looks from the farmers. Also, as I've mentioned there are some excellent places to take bike rides in all directions from town. Last weekend I went to the Southern tip, to Namhae bridge, and back, a nice ride of about 50km with a lot of elevation change. you can see some pics on the flickr.

Bugs!

Hi everyone,

I've finally uploaded some pictures which you can view at my flickr account www.flickr.com/photos/48705722@N00/ . More to come but I didn't want to overdo things right away.

Should I explain the title of this post? I've been fighting a war with several bugs recently, let me explain. As I've said my apartment is quite nice in a number of regards: but shortly after I moved in I was beset by insects. First the mosquitos - the cultivation of rice fields requires kilometers of standing water irrigation and the Koreans don't use pesticide therefore mosquito breeding heaven. The problem is that my house is not well sealed, cracks at the windows and doors allow them to flock in at night. So I got a candle which was supposed to repell them, but woke up the next morning with an itchy bump on my eyelid. Enough is enough, time to nip the problem in the root so I bought tape and other sealing products and went to work. So far so good.

Hopefully this will take care of my other problem as well - cockroaches. They say for every one you see there are 100 you don't, which means at least 2000 live in the building. Some are tiny and cute, but some are big and fat: maybe 3/4 of the size of my thumb. I hope they are climbing in under my door and don't actually live in my apartment. I have reason to believe this because I have seen so many in the entranceway. So I have sealed the entrance doorway as best I could with foam - I would have to do this to keep winter heating costs down anyway eventually - and put out some raid poison traps in case they have set up nests in my home. I've been seeing less each day since then, hopefully these trends continue.

But some entrances in my apartment are not too obvious. For example, one morning I saw a drop of bird poo on a book I was reading, and wondered how it got there. Then I heard a rustle in the kitchen, and went to find a little sparrow flying around my house, bouncing off the walls. Eventually he found his way out a window I opened for him, but how did he get in? Turns out there was a sizeable gap around the hole in the wall for the vent for the stovetop fan.

Also a family of wasps decided to live on the light above my front door. Dozens of them clustered toghter. I noticed them the first time when I opened the door to check the weather and got divebombed by a few - they are much bigger than American wasps. I told my co-teacher about them and she said, "Oh, we call them horse bees. They can kill a person." So I used an insect spray and they flew away. A few days later they came back. The cycle has repeated about three times now. They have build no structure, so I don't know how strong their bond is to my home, but hopefully they will learn to find a new meeting ground soon. If this is my last post .. now you know why.

I saw the mantis on a country road. He looks at me like that because I almost ran him over on my bike.

Food and Drink

A typical (by typical I mean absolutely every one I've had) Korean meal is family style. It will consist of several vegetable dishes, each of which is seasoned with lots of red pepper and usually garlic too, or is pickled vinegary, sometimes both as is the case for the ubiquitous kimchee (basically fermented spicy cabbage for those of you who have never tried it. I find it quite tasty but could easily understand someone who doesn't). The exceptions to this rule of seasoning include some types of seaweed, and the rare sweet potato I've seen served in a light syrup.
Along with the vegetables there is a bowl of rice (always white and sticky, sometimes with a few beans thrown in "rice and friends"), and almost always a bowl of thin spicy soup.

The variety from meal to meal is the protein element, which is sometimes incorporated into the soup to make it hearty. For example I've had a spicy crab soup, quite tasty, with locally caught mudcrabs, extrememly spicy, and a little difficult to eat because the crabs are still in the shells and without many tools at your disposal you must resort to a crunch and suck technique to get any crab meat. The famous Korean meal is probably bulgogi, Korean bbq where you are served raw meat and get to cook your own on a grill in the middle of the table. The meat is sliced thin and tender, and since it is served raw you can inspect the marbling before you order and cook, a nice touch i think. I've had one or two sushi meals here as well, but unfortunately I have to say the fish has not been up to the standards I've grown accustomed to in LA - little variety and flavor and a chewier texture. They make up for this by wrapping the sashimi in a lettuce leaf with hot sauce garlic and veggies to make a tasty mouthful.

I have also eaten some unusual things including: a fermented fish head - a full bite of crunchy skull and brains, very salty and a little bitter, I would eat one again, but just to be polite. live octopus - ok, not really alive, it was cut into pieces but so freshly cut that like a headless chicken the pieces still wriggled and the suckers stuck on the inside of your mouth, fun to eat and tasty if you like octopus, which I do. I have also finally for the first time intentionally eaten a big fat insect - when it was offered I pretended it was a plump raisin and didn't confirm my suspision until after it was swallowed; it was roasted and warm, it tasted gross.

The second biggest culinary disappointment is lack of variety - most of the dishes are similarly seasoned and it is quite difficult to find non-Korean style food, especially in my small hometown. The biggest is drink: certainly there is a normal selection of beverages including juices, milk, and Coke. Also some things that are tasty are harder to find in the states such a rice drink which is basically horchata without the cinnamon, and a pulpy aloe based drink that is quite nice. But the state of alcoholic beverages is backwards in the godforsaken country. You options are soju - it would be hard to distinguish between this drink and watered down vodka, a cloudy rice wine - this isn't so bad, it is a little sweet though and I can't really see myself drinking more than a small glass, and beer - I use the word in its loosest sense. There are three big breweries in the country and almost no microbrews (maybe a couple in Seoul, but I would never see their products down here). But there may as well be just one as they each produce a brew I would have a hard time distinguishing from Bud in a blind taste test. I saw some imported beers in a convienence store the other day - Bud, Corona and Heineken, due to tariffs about twice as expensive as the native beer. On the other hand, you can buy malted grains, hops and yeast; so I have determined my new hobby - homebrewing!

Long Overdue update

I let a few days slip by waiting to get internet at home, but still do not. Hopefully by the end of the week, or at worst early next week it will be convenient for me to upload some photos. I've had two weekends and my first week of work since arriving, so I will write about some of my impressions.

First about the teaching. They have me teaching quite a light load. Although my contract calls for up to 22 hours in the classroom, I am only slated for 13 each week, and am being paid overtime for an evening class with some of the schools top students - probably the most enjoyable of all the classes. The regular classes may be a bit of struggle as the level of English is a bit lower than I expected. At least, their skills are skewed towards reading comprehension. I think many students have a decent vocabulary, but their pronounciation is so bad that it takes several tries, and sometimes they have to spell for me before I can understand what they are trying to say. Well, I guess that is why Korea is hiring so many native speakers to come over and teach English. I hope I can help, but I must note that many of my highschool freshman students were taught by a native speaker in middle school. The man's name is Nick, a nice guy in his 30's from South Africa (I wonder if the students are affected by, or even noticed, the change of accent).

Nick is at the beginning of his 2nd year, so although I haven't had a chance to speak with him at length it is at least nice to know that someone liked it here enough to sign up for a 2nd year. Last weekend he set me up to meet two other English teaching in the area. Middle aged guys teaching at elementary schools, one is Kerry from Wisconsin. He has been teaching in Korea for 9 years, the last 3 in the Hadong area. So he must like it quite a bit. He seems like a nice enough guy; I'm not sure what his life goals are yet, but then again I could say that about myself just as well. I asked him how hard he found it to learn the Korean language, and to my surprise his answer was that he has not even tried. He has picked up a hunderd or so words, but only a basic tourists and teacher's phrasebook, no real ability to carry out a conversation.

The other is a Brit named David, who just arrived in Korea a few months ago. Before that he was teaching in Thailand for 3 years which means he must have moved very quickly with his Thai wife and 27 month old son. His first impressions of Korea is that the pay is much better, but the social life much worse than Thailand, but maybe it is hard for him to tell with a toddler to take care of. We went to Jinju, an hour by train to a good size city, and he showed me a few good places to shop - some large department stores, places I can get some Western goods if I need to, and also a bustling market area, very crowded with people and boutiques. Then we met up with Mr. Kim, a friend from school, an electronics teacher, to check out a festival that was going on in the city that holiday weekend - it was Korean National Day on Friday. I guess it is best to save a description of that event for when I can upload some pictures - a common refrain no doubt

A bit to my chagrin, it seems that I will have ample opportunity to play golf in Korea afterall; wish I had brought my clubs. My co-teacher at the girl's school is a family of golfers. Her husband, son, and I went to a local small course. It was 9 holes, one true par 5, and couple holes played as par 4's by virtue of a club rule that men can tee-off with no more than a 7-iron. Again pictures coming .. but I should tell the story of the beginning of this round. Joing the family was another boy of the same age as the son, about 11. He was introduced as the best junior golfer in the neighboring province. His mother joined to walk the round with us. On the 2nd hole the kid sliced his tee-shot, and his mulligan too, to a lesser extent, then took 2 chips and 3 putts to get up and down. His next tee-shot was short and right as well. For his mother, I suppose she felt she had lost face and enough was enough. An angrily barked correction to her son punctuated his followthrough. As we were walking down the fairway my co-teacher, Mrs. Lee, explained that the boy was unhappy and would be quitting the rest of the round. He may well have been unhappy, but the fact that his mother had to wrestle the club from his hands with a foot to the stomach leverage and a little verbal abuse for good measure indicated that he would have preferred to keep playing. I'm not sure if I should have done anything with respect to the scene, but uncomfortably followed Mrs. Lee's example of leaving the mother alone to deal with the son who will be a huge disappointment to the family when he fails to become a professional golfer. Not to overgeneralize, but I do think the Korean families do seem to put extra pressure on their children to perform.

What else? I got a bicycle recently. It was a little difficult. There are three tiny bike shops in town, but they all only carry mountain bike and cruisers, so I did some internet shopping for a bike. They say that if you buy cheap you will end up buying twice - I think that will be the case. I got a Korean brand road bike I chose to avoid the high tariff, but it is not of good quality. The bearings in the crank are already clicking right out of the box. At least I can see that there are many scenic trips to be taken around this town with its hills and valleys, and I can bike up to the foot of some mountains that are good for hiking. Again this will be better illustrated with photos.

Go in Korea? I have to remember to call it baduk over here. But it is nice to have a wide variety of people to play with, most of whom will whup my butt. At least I can hold my own to earn some respect - most of them are surprised to know that an American even knows the rules.

I've got to go now and teach these Koreans about American volleyball skills. More stories, and finally pictures, next time.