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Your Pay
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You will receive your pay in cash or
direct deposit into your
local bank account.
Direct deposit is more common. Pay is monthly for
everyone in Korea, except for perhaps the rare
person. The monthly amount depends on the
type of employment.
Pay is Korean Won for ESL positions.
Korean Income Tax
- Income tax is 3-5 % . As a Canadian citizen I do not
report any income back home. This seems to vary in other
nations.
The Classroom
- As a first time teacher
with no experience you may have some
difficulties starting out in the classroom,
but you should soon find yourself settling
into a comfortable routine teaching ESL. You may
even become an an excellent ESL teacher.
- You may find teaching ESL
relatively easy as far as jobs go,
especially when teaching children very
basic English and even most adult classes.
Text books for one thing are very simple, from
“how are you?” to giving directions, or discussing
politics with adults.
- For most classes you will teach
from a simple book and may use audio or
video CD'S. There may be anywhere from
1-12 students in a hagwan class. Twelve
is the usual limit
for most private ESL institutes (hagwans)
though sometimes more students are added to a class.
Elementary, middle, high school and Universities,
either public or private will often have much more
students per class, similar to class sizes back home,
such as 20 to 35, again, depending on the school
and it’s class size policy.
- Establishing some level of classroom
discipline is important. Korean students
respond wonderfully to the creative and
humorous teacher, like students anywhere,
but it is better to be 'feared' slightly first,
and loved later. One must establish credibility
first. Western teachers are often seen as
having a soft touch.
- Never say you will do
something unless you are actually going to do it;
empty threats from you will only encourage more testy
behavior from your students. Never try and belittle a student
in front of other students. Face-saving is
essential in Korean culture, especially in the
classroom and damaging a student's image may
cause irreparable harm among his or her peers.
In addition, verbally lashing out at troublemakers is
generally viewed as unprofessional.
- The best course of action is to
politely, yet firmly state your case to the
challenging student and thereafter follow
through with whatever consequences you
illustrated as a remedy, solution, or
in the worst case, form of 'punishment’.
As a last resort, asking a Korean teacher
to help or send the student to the school's
director, called the Wanjungmin (won-jung-min)
may be a best solution. For public schools this would
be the principal or vice principal, but is
not usual to send students to them.
- Above all, have fun and enjoy your
teaching. Often children can be great fun and
lighten your own spirit, can bring you up when
you are down and give you a sense of purpose as
you work away hard in the classroom,
teaching ESL.
Elaborate Information
Being A Great ESL Teacher
- A basic formula exists for teaching
children in an ESL
classroom in most schools, private or public.
- ‘Listen and repeat’ is a major part of
teaching children ESL and sometimes adults and is
important for schools. Speak words loud, slowly
and clearly and have students as a whole and/or
individually repeat
- For reading you can read a short verse in the same
manner and have students read as a whole afterwards.
For higher levels reading on their own to themselves
is fine. Higher level students can also work in
groups and paraphrase a small section of larger
reading, then explain it to the class. Reading aloud individually is
simply very uncomfortable for many students,
especially beginners. Follow up by asking questions
about the reading and reported materials.
- Teaching ESL should be somewhat entertaining
such as some humor, acting and body language in order
to keep children and adults involved and get your
point across better. Simply doing straight teaching
is fine as well, just not as popular with your
students.
- Working along side and covering the same material
as your Korean co-teachers helps students learn well.
This is not often the case as you will most likely
have your own subject matter to teach. Koreans can
translate and explain the English content and you
have the fine tuning as a native English speaker, such
as pronunciation, sentence structure and
meaning of more simple text.
- Try and concentrate on your class, one at a
time. Keep personal outside matters out of the
classroom that will only hinder and restrict your
teaching performance.Show some enthusiasm and that you care and it will
show in your work.
- Teaching adults can be similar to teaching
children and very different at the same time.
Schools will vary on their expectations and
curriculum. Some will expect mostly conversation
classes, little preparatory work and no writing
classes, whereas other schools will want very
strict lesson plans, writing classes and more
preparation on your part. It is great to have some jokes and body language
similar to teaching children, but adults will
expect more from you.
- For a conversation class leading off with a
reading of a selected topic is a good idea,
such as a short reading on “North and South Korea”,
for example. Ask questions about the topic and get a
good conversation flowing. For beginners this will
be more difficult and you may have to ask more
questions to keep any kind of conversation
flowing along. Keep in mind this
applies to small groups of students. Teaching
larger groups, such as a University class
requires more of straight lecturing.
- Take notes of student’s conversation mistakes and go over
them briefly after each class, or have a specific
set class for this. Be confident, work hard and
have patience. Above all, try and enjoy your teaching.
- Other helpful hints include:
teaching methods,
lessons planning and
general teaching ESL
Elaborate Information
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