I wrote a report last year on my teaching at the elementary school. It was intended for the next English teacher (if any foreign) who may teach at that school. This present report could serve the same purpose, though Korean English teachers may choose to read it as well.

The Middle school is literally a “step-up” in the English abilities of students and teachers as compared to the elementary. For example, the Middle school has seven full-time English teachers, many with university specialization in English or English education. The principal of the school was once a High School English teacher. This is far better than the English ability at the elementary school, where English was mostly a subject most teachers had forgotten since High school, and where save for a handful of students who went to Hogwan’s (private academies), no students knew any English. But since the introduction of English to the Elementary school that year, the training of teachers in English, the quality of English has improved.

At the Middle school, I had to learn a whole new curriculum. However, 1st and 2nd year students are learning “elementary” English in the first terms and I could use some materials from the elementary curriculum I had developed the previous year. I taught only 1st and 2nd year students. The text book for both years has about 20 lessons each and it develops in gradual complexity, the students ability to master English grammar and vocabulary. At first, I was intimidated by the “difficulty” of these textbooks. Can these students actually learn so much English so fast? It made me try to remember how I had to begin to learn foreign languages when I was that age. I remember a lot of grammar and translation drills. I imagined that the Korean English teachers would be using this method and that I was being called in to help with pronunciation, and perhaps to make English more interesting. At any rate, I was grateful to see a textbook since I taught mostly without one in elementary school, at least, I had the textbook, but most students did not.

Mr. Ross teaching
Unlike the previous year where there were no previous English teachers, except occasional Hogwan teachers, I replaced Mr. Ross, a teacher who had a TESOL certificate who returned to England. The school had a history of hiring full time native speakers back to the days when Peace Corps volunteers worked there, or even missionaries. Mr. Ross taught for one year in this school and was a good friend of mine. We had good exchanges of ideas about teaching methods and how to get along in the Korean educational environment. We could talk with many other private academy foreign teachers but they were not in the public school system. I knew a lot about his school before I went there. In fact, having preconceptions or foreknowledge about the school allowed me to prepare lesson material in advance in Canada. For example, the idea occurred to me to bring a two-video set of the Canadian production of Anne of Green Gables. The book of this movie I heard was on the Japanese Middle School curriculum for many years, and I was sure it would be interesting to Korean Middle school girls as well. I also bought some juvenile literature, which I distributed as prizes, and a very special discovery, the hand-held tape recorder. This latter is an indispensable linguistic tool, and I haven’t yet begun to realize it’s potential. The school also has a language laboratory with excellent video and tape equipment. For the first term I made extensive use of the language lab.

The textbook has a lot of English so I used it as my major resource. I was a little surprised to discover that one of the best year two students could write an excellent English diary (even though her father was a High School English teacher), but she could not speak English. So this is a major problem. My role was to show the students the way towards speaking and using English. This is a daunting task with classroom sizes of over forty students.

Though I am often in the classroom with a KT, we don’t usually do “teach teaching”. In the first term I did some real team teaching lesson planning with a KT. This means we study together how to present the lesson material. But because I have seven English teachers, I cannot make lesson plans for team teaching, which can be intricate, with all of them. There is often spontaneous team teaching in the classroom. This is very good. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to explain a game or activity in English and the KT can quickly make the students understand what I mean. However, it is also challenging for both me and the students to try and communicate the game and be understood. Usually we can. I avoid using normal conversational English unless I think there is a possibility I will be understood. I mean, I try to speak at the level of the students ability. I realize I could be speaking Greek or French to them, not English, unless, I use words they might know. Of course, there is usually one student in the class who can understand some English. Curiously enough, that’s about the average number of Korean students who will study in an American university; about 43:1, or one student per average Korean class size.

The KT (Korean teacher) has many advantages over the NET(native English teacher). They teach four times a week and so they can get to know their student’s names and the level of their ability. They have the rule of discipline, even though NET cannot use this rule in their own country, i.e. hitting bad students. And, KET can speak Korean, so they can explain the vagaries of English grammar to the students. My knowledge of Korean ( and English grammar) is such that I have almost never conducted a lesson on English grammar, though I often long to do so, though every lesson I teach has implicit grammar. Mr. Ross had devised a method for teaching grammar using colors for different sentence parts. I did not continue this method when I took over his classes half way through the year. He also had taken note of all the slower students who were having trouble with English. There are always many students who write every new English word in Hangul (Korean phonetic alphabet) so they can pronounce. Better students remember the sound of the word and learn how to associate sounds with English syllables. Seeing only year one students, and that twice a week, allowed him to spend more time with individuals, and grammar.

The special case I have that Mr. Ross did not are the advanced classes in year 1 and 2. Year 2 students are divided into lower, middle, and higher ability, about three classes of each. Mr. Ross did have a class that was a kind of English club. This organizing of students into their abilities is a new Korean educational experiment. In fact, there is a room in our school for studying this experiment. I have been used to making one class lesson plan for all classes in that year, but now I am becoming more adapted to the idea that the students indifferent levels require different lesson plans. It’s now apparent that the higher classes are way ahead. KET work slower with the lower classes and I must too. So I teach 8 year one classes and 9 year two classes, but I cannot teach only 2 lesson plans a week. Many classes are cancelled because of school events and so on so I have to keep a journal in order to follow what lessons I am supposed to teach to what classes.

The daily lesson journal is invaluable for other reasons as well, as I found out my first year teaching. This year I have been making a long list at the back of my journal on possible lesson activities and games. These ideas come to me in the middle of the night, or while I am reading resource books, or Korean English newspapers. It’s all “grist for the mill”, and I will use almost anything to make an interesting class. For example, I was reading the Korea Times this morning and there was an article on the editorial page by a furniture designer talking about how he learned English. He needed to learn how to speak in order to do business better. He went to Australia to study. He said the best method he found in his classes was the discussion of a topic, brainstorming, followed by a write-up of the discussion. These methods use speaking, listening, and writing. I had the idea of using topics for discussion, a bit risky in middle school, and even riskier with a writing follow-up, but now I may just try it, maybe with higher year 2 classes to see if it works. It’s kind of advanced. I did use it very successfully when I taught small groups of Middle and Elementary teachers, some of whom were Korean English teachers.

One area of my teaching that needs developing is role-play. In elementary school there were role play dialogues for every lesson in the text book. As most students didn’t have a text book. After the text book I could refer to some text instead of a whiteboard. I thought this would have been easier but it really wasn't.