Simple:
I get to say “Good morning/afternoon, ___, how are you today?” to every
student. I always greet classes with “Good ____, how are you?” but that doesn’t
give everyone a chance to respond because the loud voices drown out the quiet
ones. But asking the question one-on-one means I get to say hello to the
students I can’t always say hello to. It allows us a warm-up chat before the
speaking assessment begins. It’s been my experience that Korean students to get
visibly nervous before speaking tests, so perhaps my asking “How are you
today?” allows the students a gentle chance to focus their minds on speaking in
English as well. “How are you?” is a question they know well, so they can start
off knowing they’re off and running.
“How
are you today?” gets asked for another reason: I want to show the students I
care about them and am curious about what’s on their minds. People tend to perk
up when others are interested in them; taking an interest in students can help
their well-being. School can be a lonely place and I've endeavored to make it a
little better with every lesson I do. It’s easy for the students to get lost in
the crowd and get ignored—indeed, I struggle with names and faces at times, but
thankfully, with the student roster in front of me, I can use the student’s
name, smile, and begin the conversation. I've no way of proving it aside from
first-hand observation, but these quick conversations help set the students up
for success in their speaking assessments.
*See
Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win
Friends and Influence People for more on this subject. It’s a book I’d
recommend for anyone who’d like to better talk with and understand people.
#Onething comes from Anne Hendler's informative blog about teaching English. She wrote of how we should take time"to pay attention to what happens in a day, reflect on it, and share it." Here's something from today's classes:
I walked into the a class of 3rd grade middle school girls and amid the chorus of enthusiastic greetings, one girl called out, "It's nice to see you!" I smiled and said, "You too!"
It was indeed nice to see her and the rest of the class. Better still was how she remembered to say "Nice to see you!" instead of the usual "Nice to meet you!" She remembered that in English, we say "Nice to see you" to someone we've met previously. Many Korean learns of English have trouble with this distinction, so I was pleased at her remembering what to do.* I've been mentioning the difference between "See you" and "Meet you" for some time now, but it's still sinking in. The co-teachers have also been explaining this difference to the students, but as the saying goes, "Old habits die hard." English is full of quirks, so it's difficult to blame the students for not knowing the things native speakers or experts know.
Carry on, everyone.
*This is because the Korean equivalent expression doesn't change. (As far as I know.)
A quick way to boost class participation I had the good fortune
to meet the man behind the excellent ELT Rants, Reviews, and Reflections blog
at the recent national KOTESOL conference in Daegu. He gave an energetic workshop
called “You’re Doing It Wrong. Maybe.” In it, he brought up many of the
oft-repeated “Don’ts” of teaching English and asked us in the audience to consider why they were wrong--or perhaps not so wrong.
One such thing was “echoing.” That is, repeating back all or part of a student’s speech, either for confirmation or
to broadcasting to the class. It looks something like this:
“Hi Billy, what did
you do last weekend?”
“I went to Seoul and
went shopping.”
“You went to Seoul and
went shopping. How was it?”
I happen to echo my
students frequently, so this part of the workshop caught my ear. What is good and bad
about echoing?
On the one hand,
we noted that native English speakers tend to use echoing in
conversation. We’ll repeat part of the sentence as a question, we’ll repeat a
word or phrase, or we’ll take a word and something like, “I see. Go on,” to
keep the conversation going. Part of what English Language Teaching (ELT)
entails is showing how native speakers talk to each other, so it is authentic. Echoing also allows speakers to clarify things the other person said. Again, it's common among native speakers.
Yet, it has its
drawbacks. For one, constant echoing can get annoying and repetitious. Sometimes I have felt like the stereotypical old man talking down to a little kid in a classroom. Also, students
can tune it out. Consider that if I am echoing Billy
the student, I’m probably training the students to listen to me instead of
Billy. The students will ignore whatever Billy says and will wait for me to
repeat it, which is not so good. I admit that this does happen in my experience.
One thing to do is
instead of echoing Billy, we can ask the class, “What did he say?” Mr. Griffin and some of the attendees suggested doing so. This does three
things: It shows that students’ speech is important, it keeps the class on
track by acting as a short listening exercise, and it allows the class to
participate by repeating what Billy said. Moreover, when the class (or an individual student) speaks, it can allow for speaking in full sentences, ie "He said he went to Seoul," and thus acts as an summary exercise.
It’s never been my
habit to ask the class, “What did he say?” in the past. But when we were
discussing it at the workshop, I thought, yes,
this could work, and resolved to change how I interacted with the students.
I’d downplay the echoing and introduce “What did he say?” as a way of keeping
the class on track. And the question is working! I
started asking “What did he say?” first thing on Monday morning, and it is
indeed boosting class participation. I’m speaking less and the students are
speaking a bit more. Of course, I am not asking "What did he say?" all of the time--just some of the time. Like anything it, would get stale if I did it at every opportunity. Still, it's quick and effective. My coteachers have even picked up on the question and have begun asking it themselves. I haven't asked the students to respond in full sentences or not. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. We can teach that when the time comes. For now, I'm happy to have learned something new and effective in class.
Thank you to the
teachers in the room who mentioned this excellent little strategy! I’m afraid I
don’t know all of your names, but what you said is making a difference in my classes.
Thank you, Mr. Griffin, for giving a fun workshop. It was light on the jargon,
yet it had substance and it inspired plenty of conversation. Again, it was good to meet you. Here's hoping we meet again. Notes: ELT Rants, Reviews, and Reflections- Quality teaching site from a man with over a decade of experience. KOTESOL - Korean Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages: A professional group of English teachers in Korea. It includes hagwon, EPIK, and university teachers. Korean English teachers are also welcome!
We were at lunch
around six weeks ago when Ms Lee the coteacher asked me if I could help teach
guitar to the students during the Friday "club activities."* She’s a
guitar player herself and had started teaching the students when the semester
began in March. I normally use Friday afternoons to prepare for the next week’s
classes, but I jumped at the
chance because it meant more time to play guitar and a chance to share some
music with the students.* I asked about the skill levels. "Mostly
beginners," she said. She added a second later, “So, is it okay?” Of course
it was! When could I start? As it turned out, I could start that very day. The
clock on the wall said half past noon. Club activities would begin at two
o'clock, which meant that there was enough time to run home, grab the guitar, and get
back to school. I did just that.
We got going
at two o’clock. I quickly saw that the
students were indeed beginners. They were busying themselves with awkwardly
moving between open chords, finding their fingering and their rhythm. The boys
and girls (five total) clearly wanted to get playing, but they needed help with
chords and rhythm first. Lee and I ran through the standard open chords
to warm up. The students followed along. They did their best to keep up with
us.
The only way to learn
guitar is to play it, but an even better way is to learn from actual songs
because they provide a context for learning. In the case of helping the
students learn the chords elementary chords D, A, and G major, Ms. Lee led the
students through "Reflection" [회상] by the Korean group rock group Sanulrim [산울림] because it rides on
an easygoing D-A-D-G chord progression. I didn't know the song before she
played it, but I instantly took to it. The students had been practicing the
song before, but they were still struggling with the steady rhythm and the
changes.
Lee also asked me if I
had anything to teach the kids.Immediately, Link Wray's classic 1958 instrumental "Rumble" came to mind:If the kids were going to
learn basic chords, they should learn them from the classics. Moreover, “Rumble,”
while an instrumental, represented a key piece of musical (and American)
history. It brought the power chord to the masses.
I got to work on teaching
the song. Lee herself didn't
know know the song, so I jumped to that great music resource, Youtube, and
found someone's "video" of it. We listened. Heads nodded. I demonstrated
the famous D-D-E and D-D-A riffs
a few times. Everyone caught on.
Now, as any guitarist would know,
"Rumble" has a tricky B7 chord followed by a descending E scale run.
The E scale isn't difficult to play, but it takes practice to get right. The B7 though...after
14 years of playing, it’s still a hard chord to get right!
Still, we gamely ran through the song. I knew something was
clicking because Ms. Lee and one
of the boys in the group latched right on to that descending scale run and wouldn't stop playing it.
Repetition’s one key to learning. Guitar and English have that in common: The
only way to get better is to practice, practice, and practice.
And from there, we
jammed. We jammed on “Rumble,” we jammed on “Reflection,”
and we jammed on exchanging our music. I learned a cool Korean number; they
picked up a classic American one.
Notes:
*Teachers, take note: If there is any way whatsoever that you can
contribute something to your school’s various programs, do so. It will benefit
you for several reasons:
You’re an integral part of the
community.
You’re not just there to teach.
Commitment to work and considering work as family mean plenty over here.
You get more time to do stuff you enjoy.
* Every Friday afternoon, the students get two or three hours
away from regular classes to pursue extra-curricular things like music and
board games.
* I'll have to post some stuff on Sanulrim, for their first three LPs are quality fusions of 60s pop and 70s rock jams.
Christal finished her contract and headed off to begin her next journey. She certainly made the most of her time in Korea: Every time we met felt like the first time because she was always on the road. She had boundless energy for seeing this country. She worked overtime and taught the kids well.
[Note from 12 June] I wrote this micro-post in a fit of bewilderment at just how loud the school hallways can get in the middle and high schools. Kids will be kids, of course, but the laissez-faire nature of passing time contrasts greatly with the "sit down and be quiet" nature of classroom expectations. It's either on or it's off; it's hot or it's cold...
Tangent: In times like this I think back to middle and high school in suburban Wisconsin. We were as loud back then? Maybe so. Over a decade's passed, so maybe the memories have grown muddled. But then, we had five minutes to change classes and the Koreans have ten. We were too pressed for time to get wild. Whether or not that was a good thing, I don't know. I remember middle and high school as a time when we had to hurry to class, lest we suffer the consequences. The teachers began class at the sound of the bell. Yet over in Korea, the kids have ten minutes plus however long it takes for the teacher to walk from the teacher's room to the classroom. Classes begin when the teacher walks into the room in Korea. This means that the students can enjoy as much as 13 minutes between classes. Come to think of it, maybe I'd have jumped for joy if I was in the same situation. It's hard to say. When in Rome...
It's no secret that I enjoy walking; I do a lot of it here since everything is close in town. Last weekend, I spent most of an afternoon walking to Gimhwa and back via the walking paths along the Wasu Stream. The sun shone brilliantly and the weather was about as good as spring gets before the summer rains come.
As mentioned before, Cheorwon County sits on a Korean War battleground. It's home to Sniper's Ridge, in fact. See the beautiful monument below:
The stairway to the top, with the flowers in full spring bloom.
The monument
A wider view of the monument. Not pictured: The other cannon.
Pastoral Gimhwa, the town just north of Wasu.
Just north of where the Wasu Stream meets the Hwa River. I stopped here to eat a roll of a kimbap.
Above: Two bunkers built into the earth near the monument. Bunkers are everywhere here. The soldiers probably use the bunkers when they have drills.
