STARTBODY

TEFL Whitwell Tennessee

Check out Tesolcourse.com about TEFL Whitwell Tennessee and apply today to be certified to teach English abroad.

You could also be interested in:

This is how our TEFL graduates feel they have gained from their course, and how they plan to put into action what they learned:

said:
Teaching in South Korea has presented many problems for the efl teacher. This essay goes to address some of those problems and identify possible solutions. The school that I teach at is a private academy or hagwon as it is referred to here. My hagwon is neither small nor big and has been experiencing a steady decline in attendance over the last several years. To give you an idea, there were 17 foreigner teachers working at this school just a few years ago and now there are three. Classes here consist of a grammar class, a reading class, a speaking/writing class and a listening class. All classes are taught in Korean except one, speaking/writing which is taught by one of the three foreigner teachers. Ages of the students range from about ten to sixteen years old. All the students here have had at least four years of english teaching and many up to eight or nine years of opportunity to learn how to use the language. The problem is this, the students at this academy have decent vocabularies and can pick out grammar fragments for fill-in-the-blank exercises like champs but when it comes to genuine communication, they can't seem to express themselves at all, not in writing and not in speaking. Out of sympathy, I am looking for creative solutions for the problem but first we need to identify what might the problem be. In volume 7 issue 2 of Asian efl Journal, there is an article in titled: Teaching Korean University Writing Class: Balancing the Process and the Genre Approach, Yanghee Kim a doctoral student at the University of New mexico and Jiyoung Kim a doctoral student out of the University of Illinois argue that there are four problems in university writing classes, “First, a heavy emphasis on grammatical form; second, overemphasis on final product; third, lack of genre-specific writing across the curriculum; and fourth, the need for more diverse types of feedback.” It did not take much time for me to track down evidence for the four problems at my own academy. There is twice as much time spent at this school on grammatical form than on speaking and writing combined. In addition, we foreigner teachers are to correct every grammatical mistake that a student makes regardless of level. The writing book is all about memorizing pre-created forms and regurgitating them as quickly as possible with perfect grammar. The only thing that matters is the final product and no time is given for revision or the re-thinking of ideas. Genre-specific writing means understanding what the audience wants from your work. Every genre has specific language, tone, structure and many other differences that make up the genre. Students at this hagwon only write to the teacher and the topics themselves are repeated. We as teachers are not to respond to the writer's ideas but only organization, grammar and spelling. Lastly, there is no need to give diverse feedback do to the fact that the students are not interested in what we say about their writing but instead are focused on how many corrective red marks are on the paper. Once again, a focus on the final product and not what went into its creation. So, what to do about the problems listed above? The authors recommend the Process genre approach. This approach includes four parts: Balancing form and function, scaffolding language and learning strategy, introducing genre-specific writing and for the students to experience a more diverse types of feedback. If this were implemented at this school, we would need to change many aspects of teaching. First, balancing form and function would mean linking the grammar forms with real life situations where the grammar is beginning used. Instead of an isolated grammar class, the grammar taught in the class would be linked in other classes that would use the grammar lesson in role play situations or writing an essay. Scaffolding the language would mean instruction would begin with modeling while discussing text structure and context, then joint construction of a text, finally independent construction. A slow and thoughtful approach. Genre-specific writing (writing to different audiences) is important because students don't know who they will be writing to in the future. Lastly, Diverse types of feedback. Right now, students only receive feedback from the teacher but diverse types would be like teacher-conferences and peer-feedback.


ENDBODY