Class Journal: Week 4

This week one of my goal in addition to my regular ones, was to explicitly talk about the unspoken rules of classrooms here in Korea. So I started the lesson with a 25 minute lecture drawing from the Xie reading we did recently. So I drew 5 roughly allegorical class rules from the cultural obstacles Xie talks about.

1. Avoid mistakes.
2. Do not disagree with the teacher.
3. Don't interrupt the class with your question.
4. Be modest.
5. Ignore the mistakes of seniors

I talked about how these rules while useful in some contexts is problematic for a language practice class. And then I presented what I called “anti-rules” to show what I would consider useful rules of conduct for our classroom and why.

1. Do not avoid mistakes.
2. You can express a different opinion.
3. You should ask questions in class.
4. Express yourself.
5. Help seniors with mistakes. (Including the teacher)

I realize that speaking about this takes time away from class language practice but today I thought it would be worth the investment of time if students are consciously aware of cultural differences between Western and Eastern classrooms. I was also thinking about the culture shock issues we all discussed in ICC.

So did it make a difference? It's hard to say. But looking at faces I'm sure a few of them took what I said to heart. I think that can make all the difference in classes where the balance of proactive and passive students is close. I have found that once a class gains a critical mass students one way or the other it drags all the other students in that direction.

The other activities I did went OK but I our group work activity was too restrictive. I'm starting to think that our students may be able to handle more free flowing group discussions focused more on content rather than form. I plan to make sure our next group work discussion more like that.

This week I also tried out much more pair activities following the logic that the more people speaking simultaneously the better for students. However in my classroom group work seems to work better for me. Here are the advantages of group discussion vs pair discussion.

1. There is more context with more participants. (More interest)
2. There is a higher ability to deal with language problems. (There's a greater chance of peer error correction.)

The only disadvantages I could see is that each person would have less speaking time. And depending on the task the group may over rely on a single member to get the “work” done without processing things themselves. For my students having a social interest in each other seems to make a big difference to how they perform.

Class Journal: Week 3

Class 6 is an afternoon class so usually students are awake which is good.  The only problem with afternoons is that usually after a busy morning teaching I could almost fall asleep mid lecture.  However I was able to hold off the sandman today so I was actually able to "teach" them something this time round.
My objectives in this weeks class was to get students acclimatized to being called on and giving students the tools needed to respond when called upon.  In terms of goals it seems a low bar but I unlike in the past when I've been frustrated with how passive students are, I have decided meet this years students where they are at. I've been planning to set regular modest goals to work them to a point where finally they can communicate as openly as students in the west.
In terms of implementation, I spent most of the first hour doing basic things like TSST, using the WB to give structure to their basic answers, and role playing the dialogs in front of the class to get them to see that there is nothing to be afraid of when it comes to speaking.  (My usual tactic is to choose someone who seems shy to go first and once they do it everyone else feels like the task is not as threatening as it first seems.  Can it backfire?  Sure, but you got to judge character to make the right call.  It is also very helpful if the teacher is very supportive, which I am.)   I also did some grammar work with students but that was more of a filler activity.  I had them read the answers out instead of listening to me.  I would only moderate turn taking and comment if I caught a mistake.  If students read too quietly I would ask the class if they heard it and I would let them decide if the student in question should repeat it because I certainly wasn't going to.  In this way I was hoping to encourage them to take more control of the classroom discourse.
In the final 30 minutes we did a group discussion activity.  One of the problems with dong T-fronted activities is that no matter how engaging you are you can only actively communicate with a few students at any given time.  In an EFL class this means that the opportunities for language practice is extremely sub-optimal.  So a group discussion activity is a great way to get multiple students speaking at the same time to smaller and more intimate audiences.  This actually went a lot better than I thought it would and even though the T-Fronted activities took up most of our time I think it gave students the tools and confidence to front up nicely.  I didn't just give them a set of questions either.  I laid out some guide lines for the discussion activity.  These were the 3 rules.  1)  Use English first.  2)  Only use Korean to clarify misunderstandings  3)  If a member is having problems expressing themselves, help them!  My general philosophy for this activity is that communication and feedback should be constant, and at no time should a student feel like they are helpless to contribute to the discussion.
Finally, I assigned the next weeks grammar as homework.  I was worried that student might find it difficult to get a handle on the grammar so I also uploaded a more detailed grammar explanation onto our university's website.  We'll see next week if they actually do it.  But I have feeling that most of them will.  When classes go well students tend to respond positively.
There was only one thing that was negative about this week's class.  That was just how long students took to reply to questions.  Waiting for answers was like waiting for Windows to boot up!  I believe that this is due to social pressure rather than stupidity so I think once they loosen up it'll quickly turn around.  I reckon it will happen sometime before midterms.  So we'll wait and see.

Class Journal: Week 2

I chose class 6 as the one I would do my regular write up about.  What I set out to teach this week was basic introductions from the first unit of our textbook.  But I also had another objective.  I was hoping to teach students some new rules of class interaction.  For example, I had always taken for granted things that westerners commonly do in a classroom.  Such as asking questions unsolicited or contributing to a discussion on the fly.  Today, I thought I would start creating that culture by doing something that Tom has shown us in class.  That is to encourage students to call on each other if they didn't know the answer to a question posed to them.  So I wanted to defuse the stress associated with T-S interaction right from the get go.
In terms of achieving these goals I will say that I did get students to ask for help but I usually had to remind them that they had that option so we will have to wait a couple of weeks before knowing if students create this habit or not.  In terms of introductions, I got them to introduce a friend to the class so that was positive but they were still very nervous about it which is understandable considering the classroom culture in Korea.  But I thought it was great that students could see how I operate.  I took an interest in what they were saying.  I used prompting and cuing when they got stuck.  And when I heard mistakes I took note of them but I did not interrupt their speech.  I went over the common mistakes once everyone was done as not to single anyone out.
So these were the positive things that happened in my class.  But of course not everything went the way I was hoping it to.  With my new focus on trying to get students to communicate as much as possible I found that I couldn't cover as much material as I usually do.  So this week all my classes are slightly behind schedule.  Also I found that the text book we use is very ill suited to group work activities.  Frankly, the activities in the book are not appropriate to EFL classrooms they were designed with ESL classes in mind.  For example, There was one group work activity where students where supposed to discuss people names together which is interesting in a truly international class but rather limp in a classroom where 30% of student are named Kim!
I ended up skipping that kind of material.  If I were to teach this lesson again I might well assign grammar as homework to create more time in class and so students can prepare for class practice.  I addition I would work on my own group work activities instead of relying on the book.  I will have to assign that homework from next week so I won't see extra class time until week 4.  But its good to look ahead.

Class Journal: Week 1


This semester I asked the dean to give me classes all of the same subject to help maximize the time I could spend studying TESOL.  So I'm teaching 8 classes of introductory English.  This is a mandatory class that every freshmen in Hyupsung University has to take.  So the sample of students is very well distributed.  The interested and the disinterested, the good the bad and the ugly are all in it together.  As a secondary benefit of having multiple iterations of the same class is that I can trial different techniques with the same content concurrently. So I plan to focus the journal on one of these classes while occasionally comparing to other classes I use as control or with a class I try using a variation on.  I will also take a look at some of my private tutoring, not systematically but for the sake of contrast because what I can do in tutoring is a lot more varied than what I can do in a university class.  For example, at the moment my oldest son Scott joins me on one of my private lessons as a kind of TA/trouble maker.  My relationship with my son changes the tone of my lessons so drastically it's truly fascinating to me.  It's kind of an experiment that I sometimes try just to see what happens, the kind of experiment that would land me in hot water at Hyupsung!
Ok, well lets get down to brass tacks.  This week all my classes are basically introducing the course so its a 45 minute lecture not a class per se.  But I find that the first class is very important in setting the tone for the semester.  What I focus on when I'm speaking to my students is channeling an identity that is antithetical to the common stereotype of what a Korean High school teacher is.  In my view most freshmen are emotionally scared by their secondary school education and they usually project a negative image of what a teacher is upon their teacher and fall into a predefined relationship with that teacher based on that image.  And I find the default T/S relationship in Korea to be highly counterproductive to creating free flowing student participation.  So I consciously try counteract their preconceived notion of who I am and by extension who they are in relationship with me.  So does it work?  Well, to be frank I'm not sure but I enjoy teaching much more when I'm being myself!  Hopefully this journal will help me assess the actual value of expressing one's identity in the classroom as opposed to expressing an identity that is censored by social or institutional expectations.
I don't really have any specific comments on my classes this week but I will say they all went as expected.  I perked the interest of some of my morning zombies and got a lot of active listeners when discussing my educational philosophy  and reasoning behind it.  Next week is going to be more of a challenge as I attempt to lift the level of my implementation from previous years.

This is my first ever blog.  It's a little weird getting accustomed to everything but I'm excited about trying something new.  Moving out of one's comfort zone and tackling new challenges is one of the reasons I'm studying TESOL.  And I think that is what that what life is about.  Getting out there, getting involved and being who you are.  I believe that life itself is the ultimate classroom, hence the name of this blog.  So welcome everyone, let's take the journey together.