Do you really want to teach English in Korea? (Part II: Public vs Private schools)

Apologies, readers. Again, I'm posting a referral link to my article on GRRRL TRAVELER site where the initial questions about my teaching arose.

Continued from Do you really want to teach English in Korea? (Part I: Q & A)


(Please click HERE  to go to GRRRL TRAVELER to read the article.)

The Power of a Question: 4 Tricks to Creating Questions your ESL students can answer:

3rd grade textbook flashcards- "Look at your hands".

Anthony Robbins would say "There's Power in the Question"!
When faced with difficult life choices and what the universe brings you in solutions, the answer is always found in the question. Consider it like juggling Ali Baba's keys to find the password "Open Sesame"; in order for the universe provide you with the fitting solutions you seek, you must first ask the right question.

Undoubtedly, as an ESL elementary teacher in the Korean classroom, the same rule of theory applies. If you want students to answer you, they must first understand you; for them to do that, you must learn how to give easy to understand questions.

What's the right question?
This takes time and trial-and-error practice to figure out. I'm past my 2nd semester; I still have a bit of difficulty. Coming up with good questions are necessary for testing students' listening and
comprehension skills. When I first arrived, my questions were too conversational and open-ended. My students' response: silence and a sea of clueless gazes staring back at me. A dead-zone. As a teacher you feel like a mouse trapped in a corner when you get this response. You try to backtrack and end up confusing your students even more- by now you're just speaking garblish! When I got into enough of these uncomfortable corners, I knew I had to start changing the way I asked the question.

4 Tricks on Creating Questions your ESL students can answer:

• Keep it concise.

Easy tip, but hard to implement. So I like to treat it like a practice in creating bullet points.

I have a visual image of a sentence, which I carry in my head and it's something close to this sentence I'm typing. 

 When I go in front of my class I try to pare this visual image down to 1/2 its content and in bite-sized pieces.

•  I'm thinking of a picture.
•  It looks like this sentence.

• Avoid the open-ended question.

Asking What's happening in this scene?  can feel like asking an ESL student for the meaning of life. Try asking that to your 3rd graders.  Response? Clueless silence. Furthermore, "What's happening..." is more of a colloquial expression and not in the textbooks. While this type of questioning might generate many answers and brainstorming, your students may not have enough vocabulary at their grasp.

Also in the end, the students don't know what you want them to answer. Unless you have advanced students, this type of questioning might stump your kids. The younger you go, their vocabulary and comprehension skills are still forming so you'll have to state what you want in a more specific manner.

• Ask directional questions and ones which seek specific answers that the students have just heard or learned in the story.

The trick is to have your questions lead the answer and reinforce the vocabulary they know. Avoid the open-ended question. Say you show this video of an interaction... I'll use grade 3 as my example:

Grade 6; Lesson 6: How Many Cows.

My Questions:

• Who is this?
• Where are Nami & Tony?
• What did Nami ask Tony?
• How many dogs does Tony have?

• Omit unnecessary transitions.

To not revert to your own unconscious speech habits words, it can feel like you're giving up smoking.
Compared to Korean and Asian lanuages, the English language as too many words-- the, a, an, so, like, etc.. To make it worse, as westerners, we have the habit of littering our sentences it with unconscious pause/filler words and excess mutterings (i.e. ...like..., yeah, okay..).  I have an unconscious habit of using my own nicotine space fillers and transitions. These days I've gotten to catching myself and omitting it can feel hard. Can you guess what my habits are?

"So class, now we're going to play a game, okay? Okay, so this is what you will do. Okay, you will separate into 3 teams..." 

This is really bad grammar, right? How many unnecessary pause fillers did I use? But taking the example I mentioned above, this is my new version-

"We're going to play a game now! First- Team A, Team B, Team C... Second- You will..." 

Let the students drive the lesson.

Rather than being a lecturer (which I enjoy), I need to have my students  drive the lesson. This lets me know if they understand the material. If no one can answer my question, that means no one understands what I'm saying and the lesson can't progress.  Consequences? I won't I complete my lesson within the 40 min time mark and we'll have a double load in the next class session.

As a native English teacher/N.E.T., having my students listen and comprehend my questions is just as important as what they learn in the textbook/CD-Rom lessons. While they may have a Korean co-teacher to explain should we hit a wall, the fact I'm asking questions makes the class a bit more of an immersive experience. I have to ask my students to process the story and what they just saw or heard in the dialogue. This is practicing conversation with me. So, I have to prepare a bit as to how I will ask them these questions.

Do you have any tricks to forming questions for your ESL  classroom?

The Special Ed kids in my class will surprise you.

The Special Ed kids in my classes will surprise you. Honestly. They surprise me!  Korean schools don't separate special needs students from normal students. They're mixed into the class along with the handicapped, but the only teacher that really pays attention to them is their Special Ed teacher. Me? My favorite students are the special ed and slow students. Why? They're the most challenging yet, they're the ones I've seen the most marked improvement in if I show them a little extra attention. And I find, I can sometimes speak to them on a more normal level than my normal students. Unfortunately, my special students' grades won't reflect it and their performance is based on their moods and
tempraments, but on a speaking level, they're beginning to surprise me. Many have been coming out of their shell.

"Shona"- Special Ed, 3rd grade,
aka My Wild Child
That's the closest I can come to her name, because that's how it always sounds when my co-teacher calls her. She's one of my special students who is dramatically shy and many times, verbally incomprehensible. She might be a bit autistic; her nose is always running. She screams and hides from you in a violently playful way when you say Hi, and she's highly sensitive... but she likes receiving attention. She attends an English after school program in our school, though she can't apply any of her knowledge to class, so her classmates think she's stupid. That doesn't mean English words aren't in that little 3rd grade brain of hers. She often raises her hand to answer a question and when I pick on her, I can see the vague impression of words still reeling, trying to form in her head. 

Somewhere in the middle of the year, she's shown a slight improvement. Is she really learning or just developing confidence? It's one or the other. She surprises her classmates by occasionally having the answer and when she does, I make a huge "astonished" show of it... so does her classmates; and this is enough to keep her trying for more.

I talk to Shona more than I do a normal student and I do so in a way which is almost like me, talking to my 3rd grade self... who understands English! As my unpredictable wild child, I don't expect her to respond. She talks to me in Korean, I talk to her in English. Neither of us really understand each other and that's okay. We act like we do. But sometimes, outside of class when we're alone (ie I'm leaving school and she's leaving school too) , the pressure's off,  I talk to her and if she has difficulty understanding the gist of what i'm saying, I might sprinkle in a word of pocketbook Korean.  She responds either in English or Korean.. but she responds correctly, like we're having a casual "conversation".  It's kind of eerie but also cool and I'm proud of her!

Me: Shona, are you going home now?...
Shona: Yes. (and then continues talking in Korean)


It may sound like a little but compared to my normal or shy students, sometimes, it's a lot!

Ba-ul,  Special Ed 5th grade,
aka My kite flyer, future astronaut and lunchroom interviewer.
As my student enigma, Ba-ul often loses focus and concentration in class. He's connected to two worlds-- ours and his own, out in space. My first introduction to him was during my 2nd week of school- he was talking loudly to his neighbor in class while I was reviewing lesson vocabulary and so I marched up and said-- "Seeing as you boys like talking, can you tell me what this is?..." (I was mimicking my mom, who's a retired teacher & this was one of her classroom management techniques)  My co-teacher quickly ran up to me and with embarassment, whispered-- "That's Ba-ul, he's "special"... just ignore him!" The class laughed-- I was now "in" on the joke... That was the first time, I realized we had Special Eds in our classes.

But I don't ignore Ba-ul. From time-to-time, when he's floating out in his own world, I occasionally reel his kite back into the textbook. I practice pronunciation with him or make him write. For Ba-ul, words are like pretty, day-dreamy kites, floating in the sky. So, I try my best to give them tangible meaning and connect those flying words through human interaction, speaking, writing, a friendly pat on the back when he connects and does good. When he concentrates, he actually writes nicely, enunciates better and more sweetly than some of my normal students. Also, he occasionally surprises me when I talk to him. If he doesn't understand, he says sweetly "Teacher, I don't understand"(and not the typical "Mollayo" that I get from the rest of my students).

*Note of interest-- Ba-ul's one of the students that comes up to me during lunch, but unlike many who just tell me Hi, he asks me

"Teacher, how is your lunch? ...Delicious?"

Me: Yes Ba-ul, very delicious.
Ba-ul: Good. Bye.


Today after doing this routine with me, he turned to my 4th grade co-teacher and without a stop in flow, addressed her with the same question... in Korean! Switching language channels like that is not easy-- maybe its one of those genius signs of autism, as well-- but it nearly dropped my jaw. Despite being Special Ed, he has the potential to be a better student than many average ones.

Okay, so these are just 2 of my wonder students, but the fun doesn't stop there. I'll write more later about my  favorite class-- the one that "used to be" my worst!

If looks could kill, you'd be his next victim. Welcome to 6th grade...

Notes from a Talking Recorder

I try to make it a point to talk to my students outside of class. Sometimes I can tell if it's working; sometimes, I can't. I hear Korean students were shy about talking and I know from experience that it takes a lot of courage to talk to your teachers- foreign teacher or not. Saying Hi to me in the hallways is one thing... it's automatic and an expression out of respect. But if they come up to me at lunch while I'm eating amongst the other teachers to say Hi, that's a different level entirely.


If they do initiate a greeting to me while I'm eating lunch, I do what's probably impolite to the teacher who's talking to me or the group at the moment; I turn around and tell the student Hi and answer their questions if they have any. I've not asked my co-teachers if this is rude or annoying to them, I probably should. But getting my kids familiar or confident with using English outside the classroom on a casual basis is one of my priorities.

... Even though it's been a little over 8 months, some of them are still shy.

What happens when the words run out?
Good question. Sometimes, I get tired of the monotonous Q & A routine-

Student: Hello Teacher.
Me: Hello,...Good Morning,... Morning,...

Student: How are you, teacher?
Me: I'm Fine, Great, Fantastic, So-So, Okay, Awesome, Tired, Not bad

...I've used them all. Now what? Anyone know of any more?...

I know my vocabulary is larger than that (I think,..) and I can't stand that I'm sounding like a broken record.

Solution: Why not ask them a question back?
Or maybe not... I've tried it. My students are great at initiating a question but responding to one is a different story.

Me: How are you?
Student: (deer caught in the headlights look, embarassed, shy... giggle and runs away)

Me: How's your lunch?
Student: (stunned, shy, looks around at other students, doesn't know what to do...)  Uh, mollayo. (aka: the Korean "I don't know")

I haven't found ways to deal with that yet, so I lead them with:

Me: Good? Delicious? Great?
Me again:... Chowayo? (Korean: You Like?) Mashisoyo? (Korean: Tasty?)

It's on the last two words, I get that  Ding! Idea is now registered. They laugh and nod, embarassed. But they still ...don't answer. We practice Hello, How are you today? (Lesson #1) at the beginning of each class, but outside of class they either don't know or are still too shy to apply it!  A bit frustrating and I'm not sure what to do to get them to feel more comfortable with using English outside the class in other situations.

Help! If anyone knows of any solutions or anymore responses I can give them, please let me know...

10 Surprising Facts about Korean Schools

Click on the title link and you will be re-directed to my main blog for this article. Some of these things will really surprise you as they did me!