Category: Miscellaneous

Improving Korea by 2025

6/2/2016

People often ask me when I plan to leave Korea after finding out that I have a daughter in elementary school. With so many Koreans trying to get their kids into schools in Western countries and the noticeable drop in the level of the Korean education system after elementary school, it doesn't really come as a surprise. While I don't have plans to pack up the family and head back to America after my daughter finishes elementary school, there are some things that Korea could improve in the next five to ten years that would make it easier for us to stay.

The biggest issue affecting us is my daughter's education. Korea is a country that is held hostage by its university entrance exam, the KSAT. I remember working with high school English teachers in Daegu a couple of years ago and showing them some student-centered lesson ideas. They loved them but told me that they would never be able to use them in class. "They won't help the students on the test," they said. "The parents will kill us."

The test stifles practical learning opportunities and breaks education down to multiple choice answers. Life doesn't work that way but it sure does make it easier to grade. Another major issue with the test is that it is a "one and done" test. Unlike the SAT, which can be taken multiple times in a year, the KSAT is only held once a year and students who wants to improve their score have to take a whole year off. Sure, I'd like to convince more universities to place less value on KSAT scores and emphasize essays, interviews, and extracurricular activities but that would require getting them all on board and that is unlikely to happen. The quickest fix would be to offer the test two or three times per year. Yes, it will cost money and take time to create more versions of the test but since change takes time, I'd like to see the KSAT offered more than once a year by the time my daughter is in high school. I don't know if this will reduce the importance of "teaching to the test" that begins in middle school but baby steps are still steps in the right direction.

Two other issues affecting Korea today are a low birth rate and difficulty enforcing laws focused on the behavior of citizens and residents. I have two ideas to counter these problems. One: require women to perform two years of civil service similar to what Korean men have to do as their military service. These women would be tasked with enforcing laws such as the ban on speaker trucks, keeping scooters off the bicycle paths, and fining people for smoking in no smoking areas (basically the issues the police are "too busy" to actually police). Women would be required to fulfill the service before the age of 25 UNLESS they have a child. This, in theory, could be a gentle nudge to help increase the birthrate while addressing complaints from men that they are required to serve their country and women are not.

Another way to increase the birthrate in Korea is to encourage immigration. Immigration is a tricky issue because of Korea's history and reputation as the "Hermit Kingdom". However, Korea is changing whether people like it or not and if more people from other countries continue to move to Korea then Korea needs to welcome them accordingly. Government offices should be the first place to offer more multi-lingual options. Korea Exchange Bank (oops, KEB/Hana Bank) has been one of the leaders in offering multiple language options to its customers. I believe the immigration office also does a decent job of this. It would be nice if the insurance, pension, tax, and local government offices followed suit.

Finally, and I know this is a minor thing, I'd like apartment buildings and government offices to stop making announcements over loud speakers. When the Korean War ended, South Korea was supposed to be the democratic and free Korea but unwelcome announcements at all hours of the day make it feel like we're on the other side of the DMZ. This is the age of emails and text messages. Why can't we sign up for announcements to be sent to our devices? This is an issue that could have and should have been resolved years ago.

If you have read this far, you might get the impression that I'm not a fan of Korea. Not true. I have lived in Korea for 16 years and I enjoying living here very much. However, no place is perfect and these suggestions are my way of trying to make a good place even better. I try not to complain about things unless I have an idea in mind for how to make them better. No solution is perfect and I understand that all of these suggestions have pros and cons. If I have any facts wrong please leave a comment and correct me.

I think it is important to start a dialogue about these issues because I would like to keep living in Korea and I hope that when its time for my daughter to go to middle school and high school Korea is a country where she can get a solid secondary education, the people who live here have a little more "healthy fear" about following the rules, and we can live in harmony with our neighbors (Korean and non-Korean alike).

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We Need More International Students

11/5/2015

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I've been thinking about this for a while and observing a group activity in my writing class today really provided some clarity for me.

There are 19 students in my undergraduate writing class, 17 Koreans and two Saudis. After giving them some time to brainstorm essay topics by themselves, I put them into group of three of four students to share their ideas and get feedback. There were five groups. Without any prompting from me, three of the groups started speaking in Korean and the other two groups spoke English. I'm sure you can guess which two groups used English. Even the Korean students in the groups with the Saudi students spoke English to each other.

Here's the elephant in the room (or on the campus). KAIST bills itself as an international university. It's a school where many of the classes are taught in English and there are exchange and degree-seeking students from around the world. The challenge that we face here, however, is the authenticity of using English on campus. Simply put, if there aren't any foreigners in the class, the faculty meeting, the office, or the group of people walking through campus, English isn't being used. And of course it's not!

The best classes I have taught here have had international students in them. International students not only bring their unique cultures and backgrounds to campus, they bring a real need for the school to become international and multicultural. I have watched a senior from the UAE make friends with two Korean freshmen by working on a group project together. One of the the freshmen was so motivated by this new friendship that he visited the UAE over the semester break and was shown around by the senior. We need more of this.

There are many ways KAIST can become more international. We need more foreign professors in every department. We need office staff with adequate English skills and experience living abroad. We need a stronger foundation program for English language skills like other international universities have. But most of all, we need international students in more of our classes. The Korean students at KAIST are able to speak English and use it to collaborate on projects and in class discussions; they just need a reason to. A classroom with only Korean students isn't an international classroom and doesn't provide sufficient motivation for the students to use English as the medium of communication, only international students can do this. Let's invite more of them to join us here at KAIST.

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Why Isn't Programming a Model for How We Teach Languages?

10/20/2014

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I was talking shop with a colleague today who mentioned that he thought it would be interesting to examine how programming/coding was taught in Korea and the UK. We discussed it for a bit and I decided to write down some observations.

Observation 1: Programming is taught as a skill that needs to be used.

The outcome of a programming course is to see whether or not you can actually write a program that works. Multiple-choice tests might check whether or not the students understand the theory but writing a program that actually runs is how most courses are evaluated. This also holds true for learning a foreign language but speaking and writing tests are much harder to evaluate than whether a program runs or not (unfortunately).
Programming courses also do a good job of starting with simple concepts that are then used to construct programs of increasing complexity. Sound familiar?

Observation 2: Programming is mainly taught to people who plan to actually write programs.

Humanities majors are not required to take basic programming courses at most schools even though they would undoubtedly benefit from them. That being said, since computer science majors are the students who are mainly enrolled in programming courses they enter these courses with a reasonably high level of motivation to learn the content and the skill. Should English courses be required for all students in Korea?

Observation 3: Teaching a foreign language as an exercise is not motivating by itself.

Requiring students to study a foreign language because it may help them in the future is not motivating by itself. Additionally, if students are not given real opportunities to use the language on a regular basis it will feel like an exercise that should only be mastered until the time of the test at which point it can be forgotten. Too much content is recycled year to year because it isn't being used outside the classroom.

Obviously, there are some limitations when it comes to teaching a foreign language the way we teach programming but it sure does seem like a good example to benchmark from. Thoughts?

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What Would You Do with Five Months Off?

6/20/2014

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Imagine you have a job that pays you not to work five months every year. What would do with all that time?

I had big plans for those two 10-week breaks before I landed a job where they were a reality. I was going to scuba dive all over the world. I was going to rent beachfront bungalows for entire months. I thought about trying to write a book. It was going to be epic. Then I got married and had a kid. Bye-bye selfish dreams.

Now I have the time but don't have the time to enjoy that time the way I had planned it. These days when it comes to semester breaks I think in terms of "my work" and "their work". Instead of leaving my family and sitting on a beach I come into the man cave that is my office at school and fool around. Sometimes I get inspired and write a short article or apply to present at a conference. If an invitation to speak at a teacher training event comes up or some editing work is requested I can focus on that without having to worry about a class schedule breaking my concentration. Sometimes I try to improve a rubric for one of my courses or think of ways to make it a little better. These breaks are the reason why I have time to help volunteer organizations like KOTESOL. But mostly I don't work and that's what a vacation is really all about. It's about making the stress melt away and, if you have a job you enjoy, actually giving yourself the chance to miss it and hopefully appreciate it more.

It turns out that I don't like not having anything to do. I make work for myself but it doesn't feel like work because I like to see productive outcomes that are the results of my labor. MY labor not THEIR labor. When the new semester rolls around it's back to doing what I was hired to do and that's fine because if I enjoy the five months off I am afforded annually I'll be ready to get back in the classroom and get back to work.

When I teach job interview skills I include the question "How did you spend your last semester break?". I probably wouldn't hired a candidate who answered that they got drunk and played video games but someone who burned themselves out taking a full load of intersession classes and working a part-time job wouldn't be a shoe in either. Happiness comes from balance and that's what "my work" gives me. I have the option to do it on days that I am inspired and the option not to do if the well is dry.

What would you/do you do with all that time?

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Are All Teachers Hypocrites?

6/1/2014

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As teachers, we have a duty not only to teach our students the content of our courses but how to function in society so that they have the better chance to be successful. We often have to show tough love by enforcing deadlines, creating seating charts, and strictly correcting errors on writing assignments. But when class is over are we practicing what we preach? More often than not, the answer is no.

More than half of the presentation proposals that were submitted for this year's KOTESOL International Conference were submitted in the three-day period before the deadline. A quarter were sent on the last day. Ten more submissions came in after the deadline. Educators had more than three months to prepare and send their proposals but chose to wait until the very last minute. We roll our eyes when freshmen behave like this and then do the same thing ourselves.

Another example of teachers behaving like students can be observed while attending academic conferences. When students go into a new class for the first time they tend to sit in the back of the room. A few keeners will sit in the front but the room usually fills up from the back. Go to any conference and you will see the same behavior from teachers. We sit in the back, pull out of phones, and try to sneak out if the session is boring. Sound familiar?

A third example can be seen when teachers post things online (English teachers are also guilty of this). Typos abound. Words are misspelled and errors with homophones such as there/their/they're are frequent. "Why didn't you check you're work before submitting it" we ask our students. For the same reason we didn't read our own post before clicking send, I guess...

Do as I say and not as I do. Teachers need to do more than make rules in our courses. We need to model strategies for success and actually practice what we preach.

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Shouldn't We Evaluate Our Bosses?

5/29/2014

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In my university professors give students grades at the end of the semester. No surprise there, right? Students also give mid-semester feedback and end-of-the-semester feedback scores and comments to their professors. These scores impact our career as they can be used to justify whether we are offered a new contract or not. Department heads use student feedback scores and other quantitative measurements such as how many students register for our classes and average class GPA to determine whether or not we should keep our jobs.

Let's add this up. Teachers evaluate students (grades), students evaluate teachers (student feedback surveys), management evaluates teachers (stats), but when do teachers evaluate their bosses? I'm still waiting for someone to ask what I think about the job my bosses are doing. I'm not sure if no one simply cares or they are afraid of the answers and what they might mean.

Currently, there is no survey to ascertain how my bosses are doing. If there was such a survey, what should be asked? Here are some sample question ideas:

1. What has your boss/director/department head done in the past year to help you do your job better/more effectively including training, access to resources, or professional development opportunities?

2. How has your boss/director/department head motivated you to do more than the minimum requirements in your department?

3. How does your boss/director/department head congratulate you or show appreciation when you do a good job?

4. How does your boss/director/department head handle disagreements with faculty members?

5. How well does your boss/director/department head communicate with faculty members regarding departmental issues? Is your input asked for? If so, do you feel is it valued?

6. How satisfied are you with the level of communication with your boss/director/department head?

What do you think? Should questions only be asked that can be answered with Likert scale responses? Do you trust the policy makers in your school to read your written-out responses? Do you think a boss/director/department head would actually lose their position if they received poor feedback? Is it all just a waste of time?

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We Impact Our Students in the Craziest Ways

5/23/2014

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The other day I sent a message to a former student who I had heard had recently gotten married. We ended up chatting online for a few minutes and he mentioned that he uses something I said (four years ago) when he conducts training sessions. I asked what it was and when he told me I had no memory of every saying it. It wasn't one of my main teaching points that gets repeated every semester but an offhand comment that stuck in his head and became something he used in his own professional life. I wonder how often this happens.

In the last several years I have started asking students what they learned in my class and how they might use the skills we practice in the future as a final exam question. Sometimes students repeat verbatim things that I said during classes. While it is flattering to hear that entire phrases were stored away in my students' heads it is the random nuggets that I didn't really assign much value to that reappear and startle me, like running in an old acquaintance out of the blue.

Whether I'm teaching a presentation skills course, a business course, or a writing course, I hope that my students take away the skills associated with that class's topic. I also hope that they learn how to manage their time, take responsibility for their projects and assignments, and learn to behave like professionals. If they learn how to be more successful and nothing else in my course I still consider it a success. There are courses I took in university that I gleaned life lessons from but remember zero content from. That still qualifies as time well spent in my book.

I want to be an educator that helps my students learn, whether they have any interest in my course or not. I often use this line when conducting teacher training workshops: "Our job title might be 'English teacher' but we are teachers first and foremost." What will students remember about you and your course years later?

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Creating Demand Among Students Is Elementary

5/9/2014

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I watched Sherlock Holmes - A Game of Shadows last night. Holmes deduced that Professor Moriarty was creating demand for the supply of war-related products that he had amassed and I was struck with the idea that language teachers need ways to create the same urgency for what we have to offer our students. Three ways to do this are to create a secondary demand for academic reference letters, remind students that university is a competition, and demonstrate practical uses for the language we are teaching.

It is important to remind our students that they may need us to write reference letters in the future. After all, who better to write an eloquent reference letter in English to an American graduate school or business on Baker Street than their university English professor? What do they think that letter will say? "Jeong Bum did the bare minimum to pass my course." "Mycroft tried hard when he could be bothered to attend class." If students want me to write that they exceeded my expectations and were a pleasure to know and to teach, they had bloody well better earn it.

Teaching job interview skills is a great way to show the competitive aspect of our students' time in university. Have several students answer the same question one after another and ask the other students to choose who gave the best answer and why. Skill-based questions such as "How any languages can you speak?" and "What can you offer that other candidates cannot?" highlight one student's strength against their rivals' weaknesses. If you can highlight where a student needs to improve before he or she is a senior, that student has a chance to increase his/her skill set. If you wait until their last semester, it may be too late and they will have to work with what they have. Hopefully your students won't have to disguise the fact that they aren't as prepared to enter the workforce as they should be.

Consider teaching some of the skills that can benefit students in a job interview and during their career in your English classes. Teamwork, leadership, working with technology, time management, creativity, and presentation skills can all be taught in English-based courses through project work. This will be a greater challenge with lower-level students but not impossible if you keep things elementary. Your students may not understand why making a boring podcast episode is helping their English ability and in the long run it may not. However, many of the skills listed above do go into creating a podcast episode and students then have something tangible to show for it at the end.

In order to sell a product at a high price a salesperson must first build the product's value. Explain to your students why you drive them so hard and remind them of what's at stake. They may not be able to deduce it on their own. When they see that they are not only working for you and a grade but also for their personal development and their future career they should clamor to buy what we are selling. It's not a mystery, after all, that we are here to help our students succeed and proceed. Perhaps they will even become doctors one day.

Note: You can use this with your students as a sample five-paragraph essay.

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New EFL Teachers Should Find a Niche

5/1/2014

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A Dilbert classic on presentations

If you are a newer teacher in the ELT industry and are looking for career advancement advice, look no further. Find a niche and specialize in it. It's great that you can come into a new job and handle classes teaching the four skills. That makes you employable. But what helps you become "in demand" or, at the very least, harder to let go? I believe it is specializing inside our industry and working to create a positive reputation for yourself in that area.

Some teachers get into technology and become Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) specialists. Other take it a step further and learn how to program and become e-learning content developers. This niche is always developing and there is a lot of potential here for people just starting their careers.

Writing (especially technical writing) is another popular niche. Professors at my university who teach scientific writing to graduate students are always in demand and can parlay that experience into a qualification for technical editing. Teachers with these skills can advance in their field or shift to another one (teaching to editing).

Presentation and interview skills are what I have chosen to focus on. I have a BBA in Marketing and Management and my first experience with content courses was a business projects course that I taught eight years ago. I brought that course to KAIST and proposed that I teach it here as well. I taught in intersession camps and asked for presentation classes. I included presentation elements in many of my courses and taught undergraduate presentation courses for several years. In 2012, I cited demand from graduate students to join the undergraduate presentation courses and proposed a graduate-level presentation skills course. The experiences I had proposing the new business course, teaching successful camp and regular-semester courses in the subject, and citing student demand helped the administration make a positive decision to open the new graduate course.

Credibility is important in the ELT industry. Too many newspaper articles focus on "backpacker teachers" or foreign teachers who get in trouble with the law. We need to show our students and administrators that we are serious about our field and very good at what we do. One way to accomplish this is to highlight the practical experiences that we have in our specific niches. If you work in CALL, create a new website or e-learning program. If you are a writing instructor, join the editing team of a journal and point to that experience when a student challenges the grade they received on an essay. If you teach presentation skills, go speak at conferences and observe other sessions' speaker so you can give an up-to-date assessment on what speakers are doing well and doing poorly. The best educators teach their students using real-world experiences, not merely textbooks.

I guess dinosaurs could be a niche too...

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What Students Can Learn from Making Podcasts

4/29/2014

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I have been requiring freshmen who take my sections of the mandatory English Listening and Speaking course at KAIST to do a podcast project for the last three years. The students record at least two episodes of a podcast that they design and create a marketing plan for. Groups with two members are expected to record 4-5 minutes per episode. Groups with three members need to record 7-8 minutes per episode. Websites such as soundcloud.com are great for helping students put their podcasts on the internet and see how many listeners they can attract. Beyond the speaking and listening practice this project affords them, students also gain hands-on experience creating a product for a specific target audience. This will help them become better writers, presenters, and business people in the future.

Below you can find the rubric that I use for the project.

Objectives: teamwork experience, long-term & short-term time management/goal setting experience, understanding the importance of identifying a target audience and their needs, selecting appropriate content for a target audience, familiarity with relevant technology, advertising/promotion experience, recycling of presentation skills, and practical, task-based English practice.

Per episode

____ Did the episode(s) match the time requirements?

____ Spoke at an appropriate volume and speed

____ Appropriate language used/pronunciation understandable

____ Showed energy and enthusiasm

____ Appropriate episode introductions and conclusions

____ Segments were utilized

____ Appropriate teamwork

Overall

____ Was it designed with a target audience in mind?

____ Did the podcast format and content match the target audience?

____ Podcast could be sustained

____ Effective in terms of entertainment or education

____ Team made appropriate promotion plan (attractive and clear title, keywords for searching, target
listener description, marketing ideas, goal for hits)

____ Goals were met for number of hits

It wouldn't be fair of me to ask my students to undertake a project that I didn't have experience with myself. Before they begin I direct them to my podcasts: TEAK (Teaching English at KAIST) and Around the Carillon.

Students' podcast examples can be found here.

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Forward>>

Improving Korea by 2025

We Need More International Students

Why Isn't Programming a Model for How We Teach Languages?

What Would You Do with Five Months Off?

Are All Teachers Hypocrites?

Shouldn't We Evaluate Our Bosses?

We Impact Our Students in the Craziest Ways

Creating Demand Among Students Is Elementary

New EFL Teachers Should Find a Niche

What Students Can Learn from Making Podcasts

Tim's Thoughts

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