just another American teacher in SK

Teaching English in Korea is not an easy job.

You may be thinking “How hard can it possibly be?  If you speak English, you can teach English ~ right?”  WRONG ~ just because you speak a language does not mean that you have the ability to share that knowledge with others or are magically granted the skills to teach it in a classroom.  The assumption that any native speaker can teach  is the biggest flaw with the whole ESL in Korea system.

I’m not a rookie!  I’ve been teaching ESL for a two years, certified as an International TESOL teacher and an ESL tutor,  and have experience teaching in Asia.  Teaching in Korea has, thus far, been an incredibly difficult task.

I don’t know if my students are actually learning English. Most of the time they are bored, not listening, and have no interest in class participation.  99% of the students are rote learners, participants in a basic level of learning where the student has the ability to repeat back something”learned”, with no understanding or ability to apply what was learned.  I feel blessed to have 1% that actually give a shit ….

These kids learn English in public school, take extra lessons, and some of them also have private English lessons.  Can these kids read English? Yes.  Can they write in English? Yes, but they resist.  Can they speak in English? Most of the time they refuse to speak ~ if they do speak, the pronunciation is a challenge.   Can any of them string a sentence together?   For the majority of the students, the answer to that is a resounding NO!

My co-teachers have actually expressed praise for my attempts to focus on speaking in complete sentences.  (WHAT?!)   I have not had the opportunity to observe an ‘English Class’ taught by the Korean teachers, but I am curious what  they are teaching …

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 9:44 pm and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.