For something like two years now I’ve been trying to find the time, and energy, to post a list of books that elementary school and middle school level native English teachers in Korea would find useful for the absolutely ridiculous lack of planning, literally last second planning education culture that is prevalent across Korea.
Ah, before I continue, here are some links to other posts of mine that new teachers, and for that matter veteran teachers, might want to read if they haven’t seen them before.
English Camps in South Korea – A Guideline for Foreign English Teachers
While surfing Korean English native teacher blogs today I noticed this post Yet again, I’m annoyed! by a blogger I enjoy reading, strangelands. The sad thing is that as more and more time passes I see yet another expat teacher getting more and more frustrated by the ridiculous unprofessionalism of the education culture in Korea . . . but there’s nothing we, as expat EFL/ESL teachers can do because the education culture is so utterly lost and chaotic that even the Koreans who can actually see the problems don’t know how to manage them.
Anyways, on a more productive and proactive note I am posting a list of books that EFL/ESL native English teachers can use for their regular semester teaching, after school program classes, and for summer and winter camps.
This blog post stems from the comment I posted for Yet again, I’m annoyed!
Go buy “Projects for Young Learners” Resource Books for Teachers by Oxford, and do the Fantasy Island project with the kids. Unless you’re given kids who are beginners/false beginners you can do the projects with them in the fantasy island unit (about 10, I think), and just make lesson notes for yourself as you go through the camp each day. Actually, considering the fact that you’ve been given such little prep time you might consider doing the task-based project anyways. If you have a co-teacher who can translate, the kids can learn a little vocab, a few useful short expressions/questions-answers, or whatever you choose, and then do the project and while interacting with you they get some experience doing a project and having to try and use their English to communicate….after all, that’s all the Koreans want, right? For the students to learn English by osmosis and proximity to the foreign teacher; this is the embodiment of the general teaching culture in Korea that thinks it’s okay to give a teacher these kinds of teaching and learning conditions….
Also, try picking up “Games for Children” Resource Books for Teachers by Oxford. It’s full of different games with different levels, amounts of time, degree of difficulties in game concepts and cognitive levels, etc.
The cheapest book you can get is this one,
Oxford Basics: Simple Speaking Activities.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800
You can pretty much modify the vocab and language goals for each of the 20 or so lessons found in the book on the fly.
Get some books and then stress will disappear (well, it’ll be less anyways), and your prep is done in terms of before the camp. Photocopy the pages from the book, make some insanely small lesson notes for each thing you’ll use, and hand them to the idiots that ask you to do a camp with no info about location, classroom conditions, resources available, language learner levels, etc.
Other titles you might want to check out.
Five-Minute Activities for Young Learners
Penny McKay and Jenni Guse
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers
W30,000
Lessons from Nothing
Activities for language teaching with limited time and resources
Bruce Marsland
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers
W25,000
Games for Language Learning, Third Edition.
Andrew Wright, David Betteridge, and Michael Buckby. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers. Series Editor, Scott Thornbury.
W28 000
Oxford Basics: Simple Speaking Activities.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800
Oxford Basics: Presenting New Language.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800
Oxford Basics: Vocabulary Activities.
Slattery, Mary. Oxford, 2004.
W5, 800
Oxford Basics: Cross-curricular Activities.
Svecova, Hana. Oxford, 2003.
W5, 800
Storytelling With Children.
Wright, Andrew. Oxford, 1995.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley.
W26 000
Very Young Learners.
Vanessa Reilly & Sheila M. Ward. Oxford, 1997.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley.
W26 000
Games For Children.
Gordon Lewis and Gunther Bedson. Oxford, 1999.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley.
W26 000
Drama With Children.
Phillips, Sarah. Oxford, 1999.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley
W26 000
Art and Crafts With Children.
Wright, Andrew. Oxford, 2001.
W26 000
Projects With Young Learners.
Diane Phillips, Sarah Burwood & Helen Dunford. Oxford, 1999.
Resource Books for Teachers, Series Editor Alan Maley
W26 000
Art and Crafts with Children
Andrew Wright
Oxford University Press
W26,000
Creating Chants and Songs
Carolyn Graham
Oxford University Press
W26,000
Writing with Children
Jackie Reilly and Vanessa Reilly
Oxford University Press
W26,000
Drama with Children
Sarah Phillips
Oxford University Press
W26,000
Oxford Basics: Simple Listening Activities.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 1999.
W5, 800
Do As I Say: Operations, Procedures, and Rituals for Language Acquisition.
Gayle Nelson, Thomas Winters, and Raymond C. Clark. Pro Lingua Associates, Publishers, 2004.
W19 000
Oxford Basics: Simple Reading Activities.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 2000.
W5, 800
Sentences At A Glance, Third Edition.
Brandon, Lee. Houghton Mifflin Company 2006.
W10 000
Paragraphs At A Glance, Third Edition.
Brandon, Lee. Houghton Mifflin Company 2006
W10 000
Share Your Paragraph: An Interactive Approach to Writing, 2nd Edition.
George M. Rooks.
Longman, 1999.
W13 000
Oxford Basics: Simple Writing Activities.
Jill Hadfield and Charles Hadfield. Oxford, 2000.
W5, 800
Julianne and I also picked up these titles recently, and have found them to be VERY useful to have in our teaching library.
Reading Extra: A Resource Book of Multi-Level Skills Activities (Cambridge Copy Collection) by Liz Driscoll (Spiral-bound – Apr 26, 2004)
Pronunciation Games (Cambridge Copy Collection) by Mark Hancock (Spiral-bound – Feb 23, 1996)
Writing Extra: A Resource Book of Multi-Level Skills Activities (Cambridge Copy Collection) by Graham Palmer (Spiral-bound – Apr 19, 2004)
Here are some more titles that might be worth checking out (but that we do not own).
Primary Activity Box: Games and Activities for Younger Learners (Cambridge Copy Collection) by Caroline Nixon and Michael Tomlinson (Spiral-bound – Mar 5, 2001)
Jason
Kimchi Icecream 
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 6, 2010 at 1:47 am
Gary
Jason, I’m going to make a point that’s more a request and I hope you don’t take it too personally because it’s in reference to a tone we all tend to take in our blogging about Korea; in other words, I’m not attempting to address you necessarily but the rhetoric in your post. And I’ll repeat: I think it’s something many bloggers do without thinking about. SO…
I have to say that I’m tired of reading complaints like your first paragraph. I taught for ten years before Korea and can promise every foreigner teaching here, or who will teach here, that the incompetence in the Korean education system is not any more significant than in other education system, though it may differ in kind. I don’t know how long you taught before teaching in Korea, but these complaints aren’t about KOREAN education; they’re applicable to ALL education.
NOTHING I’ve read is out of the ordinary. And the camp thing form the Strangelands blog sounds extremely fishy. It’s rather easy to blame the breakdown of communication that exists on “arseholes” but I’ve found that now I can speak the language the communication breakdown happens far less. In addition, we are contracted to teach a specific number of camp hours (EPIK and SMOE folks, that is.) If you’re teaching less than 60 hours, you may be confronted with a sudden additional camp at another location. So, the complaint sounds awfully dubious. Too many teachers whine about lack of communication who like to take advantage of it when it rewards them for it. In this case, a teacher sounds like he/she was going to get an extra week off and is now upset about having to fulfill contractual obligation.
Anyway:
The focus on standards, the blaming teachers for all problems, the hyper-criticism of the teacher’s union, the reliance on objective grading standards, the ridiculous teacher evaluation standards, the lack of peer critique, the lack of teacher training, the distant but oppressive state power: these are present in Korea and the US, for example. Of course, the foreign teacher feels them a little more intensely likely because of our isolation from our colleagues 교무실에. Well, I know teachers who use their classroom as their office and so have little to no contact with their colleagues.
I know you have many readers, and so I was tempted to post this morning because I think we need find better means of critique than using the adjective KOREAN, and noun KOREA, as pejoratives. It’s rather patronizing and paternalistic and always sounds as if foreign teachers are better, more educated, more dedicated than Korean teachers. And that’s just not true. In fact, one of the problems with foreign teachers in Korea is that a vast majority are inexperience and incapable of handling the complex classroom and administrative and faculty issue they’re asked to confront on sometimes a daily basis.
Korea is not a training ground for teachers. The majority of my foreign colleagues’ complaints (not all, mind you, Korea is as intolerant as the US and intolerant, dogmatic Koreans can be pretty insufferable) the majority of complaints that I’ve heard tend to be related to their lack of experience.
That said. Gripe over. I want to thank you for the list of refs. ^^
December 6, 2010 at 3:59 am
kimchiicecream
Gary,
Thanks for your comment. I’ve heard this before from what I call ‘expat apologists’ who try to rationalize something that cannot be rationalized–or put another way, the expat version of what usually boils down to this expression (which I truly hate), “You don’t understand Korea.”
When I use the word “Korea” negatively it is to refer to cultural behavior patterns, and not to the ethnic group. I want to clarify that first, and stress that I am fully aware that not all Koreans share the same behavior pattern, nor do all Korean teachers have the same problems.
In my experiences talking to hundreds of native English teachers teaching in public schools from all over Korea, and at all levels of schools (elementary, middle, and high school) I basically met two groups of native teachers: those who won the lottery and were posted to schools with competent co-teachers, administrators, and a vp and principal who knew what they were doing, and the second group of teachers who ranged from some mild problems now and then to nightmarish environments that were killing them professionally and personally.
I should point out here that I believe that it doesn’t matter whether or not you are a TRAINED, LICENSED, and EXPERIENCED TEACHER before entering the Korean teaching and working environment, and that newbies are newbies. Both the fresh out of university with no related degree to education or English and no ESL/EFL certification run into the same bs that the professionally trained and experienced native teachers do. All too often the training and experience newbies have also raise their frustration levels even higher than the untrained newbies cause they see far more quickly how messed up the education system is.
Also, why is it “patronizing and paternalistic” to say the same things that good Korean teachers say? Is there an ethnic-authority-qualification license I need to apply for? Is my voice not authentic because I’m white and Canadian? Is what I say automatically disqualified because of my identity?
Reframing the focus of the general lack of professionalism and educational standards onto the native English teachers is to a small degree legitimate, but from my point of view the causality is out of whack when you do that.
When I criticize the education system’s problems I don’t do it in the manner that all too many expat teachers, and first time teachers do it in Korea–I do it in a manner that identifies the issue, and then suggests possible ways to manage the problems, or even overcome the problems.
I’ve read a fair amount of your blog and you seem to be one of the expat teachers that lucked out and got a good school, and good set of colleagues to work with. I’d suggest that if you hadn’t that what I have to say would suddenly be seen in a completely different light. I’ve experienced this before with expat teachers who take the apologist point of view in discussions with me, but then later I see them again after they’ve moved to another school, or their co-teachers have changed, or whatever, and suddenly they GET what I’m talking about . . . I find it rather amusing that it took them so long to open up their minds to the fact that the majority of native English teachers have to deal with ridiculous problems in their teaching and working conditions, but at least they GET it.
I’d have to say I strongly disagree with you when you say, “these complaints aren’t about KOREAN education; they’re applicable to ALL education.” I didn’t teach before I came to Korea, but that, I believe, is fairly irrelevant to this discussion as contrasting and comparing education in Korea with education back in North America, for example, is utter nonsense. The philosophical foundations of the two regions are completely unrelated, and pretty much every other facet you can think of has a different socio-cultural context in the current time peiod.
I have worked with several, and talked to several, professionally licensed teachers from different countries around the world who have come to work and teach in Korea. For example, one teacher had a Masters of Ed, and had taught high school back in America. When he arrived he needed an enormous of coaching and support from me, the guy with a 100 hour TEFL certificate and an Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Language and Literature–yeah, the guy with no papers related to teaching, and no experience teaching professionally was coaching the guy with years of teaching back in America, and with a masters . . . this is just one example of the many times I’d talk to professional teachers with decades of experience who walk into the Korean education environment and are shocked and horrified by the lack of planning, lack of communication, and lack of professionalism in any sense of the word.
Suggesting native English speakers need to learn how to communicate in Korean is something that I think is a pathetic joke. It takes years to become fluent enough to articulate yourself in the language, and once you begin speaking in Korean, Koreans expect and assume you’ll interact with them according to Korean socio-cultural norms. It is Korean culture, all too often, that is the ANTITHESIS of open and direct commmunication! There are grammar forms that you cannot use with your senior, and there are negative expressions and critical expressions that you DARE NOT USE too. Think about the fact that a junior should not ask too many questions, or even hint that their senior is screwing the pooch by not telling them the planning info they need to know in order to prep for a camp properly–how is THAT the native English speaker who is communicating using Korean. . . how is THAT THEIR FAULT?
Gary, your point of view is based on the wrong order of chicken and egg causality–sorry mate. The TRAINED teachers, supervisors, and policy makers in Korea are the ones who have set up a hiring system in which 23 year old Stevie with a degree in Biology, no EFL/ESL/CELTA training, and no teacher training or experience back in his home country or experience traveling and experiencing living and working in a radically different culture can get a job teaching in a public school classroom, for example. Little Stevie doesn’t know what he doesn’t know–and in his particular set of circumstances I’d suggest that his ignorance is a valid excuse because there aren’t many ways for him to make himself informed enough to know he really shouldn’t come to Korea to teach because he lacks the training and relevant experience to do the job. In fact, the people offering him the job are telling him, and reassuring him, that he DOES have the qualifications he needs for the job: he’s thin, young, good looking, and a native speaker of English. The problem is the ROTTEN EGGS that perpetuate this system of hiring–not the chickens coming here to teach and work. (Alright, that is a wee bit messy, but I’m not revising it as the idea gets across, lol.)
I also want to respond to your comment, “I’m not attempting to address you necessarily but the rhetoric in your post. And I’ll repeat: I think it’s something many bloggers do without thinking about.” I’m am VERY aware of my rhetoric, and use it DELIBERATELY to evoke reactions, generate discussions about the issues I engage with, and hopefully spark debates and energy being directed towards the topics and issues that I blog about. If you take this blog post and look at it big picture you might be able to see that I identify a problem, and then suggest a proactive manner in which native teachers can take personal responsibility with the elements that they actually do have power and control over; namely, they can invest some of their own personal money in some books so that when the ridiculous lack of planning cultural behavior presents itself to them they can then be empowered to deal with the situation with less stress and frustration.
I’m not sure if you know about all of the different kinds of problems that happen in the weeks and days leading up to camps, during the camps, and afterwards, but I’ve written about these things in detail in my guide for camps post, and I won’t bother to repeat them here. As for things sounding “fishy” in the strangelands post, that’s just bizarre of you to say cause what I read sounds NORMAL and I’ve heard it from the vast majority of native teachers I’ve talked to at workshops I presented at, orientations I presented at, and in the day to day chats on the street, in coffee shops, at parties, etc. I’m sorry, but it rather sounds like you’re living in the DOA (deliberate oblivious act) bubble that too many Korean teachers, and some expat teachers, like to hide in so that they don’t go mad from all the stuff going on around them.
I’ll finish with addressing this comment: “the majority of complaints that I’ve heard tend to be related to their lack of experience.” I’d suggest that this needs to be altered to, “the majority of complaints that I’ve heard tend to be related to their lack of support from colleagues, lack of professionalism, and lack of cross-cultural awareness in Korean schools, administrators, and teachers.”
We obviously have very different points of view regarding this topic. I’ll close with saying I agree with Michael Hurt’s two posts,
http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2010/06/why-you-should-always-do-the-right-thing-or-why-you-shouldnt-fuck-the-bears.html
“But on a few things, I won’t budge. To some people, me criticizing the mental (and formerly, physical) violence of the school system, or the ubiquitousness of prostitution, turning a blind eye to obvious and clear human rights abuses in the North, or the fact of the massive corruption that continues to eat away at Korea’s own values of equality of opportunity — makes me some kind of cultural imperialist. To me, these are either people who just don’t like me and will attack me anyway, or they assume that I haven’t thought about the fact that these values are shared by many Koreans themselves. The “right thing to do” is often clear and obvious, actually — the only thing that makes certain issues huge contestations is the fact that on one side stand people who want to do what everyone agrees is the right thing, and on the other side stand those who simply stand to use their power to exploit others.”
Taking some of Michael’s ideas and applying them in a different context makes sense to me. What I mean is that I think there are a lot of KOREAN teachers who agree that the system is broken, and that there is a gross lack of professionalism in the schools, and in the educational practices of Korean teachers. I know this for a fact because I’ve had hundreds of discussions about this with teacher trainees in my courses for the six month Teach English in English program I was a teacher trainer for, and I know this because of the discussions I’d have with my Korean colleagues at dinners, during lunches in the cafeteria, and in other situations.
Gary, based on your point of view, that a native teacher should learn to speak Korean and thereby gain a better understanding of what is going on, and be able to communicate and deal with the problems that occur (as in the camp prep situation), well, I’d say read what Michael says,
“But traditionally, the Ajussi the Older also has an obligation. He is obligated to stand as a living example of virtuous behavior for the Youngers; he is supposed to use his power to help deserving Youngers advance in life; the Older has a moral obligation to earn the respect he is given. Contrary to common Korean social practice, the Older does not deserve automatic respect, especially when the Older has clearly stepped outside of agreed-upon social/legal bounds. Hence, the Confucian justification for standing up to unjust rulers, resisting social oppression, etc. Because that’s in there.”
I’d also refer you to other principles of Confucianism and how the older Koreans are ethically and morally bound to help the younger and less experienced people–or, in this case, the younger untrained and inexperienced native speakers that THEY have chosen to hire, and fly to Korea to teach. In the big picture of who has the bigger ethical and moral responsibility for the problems native English speakers face Korea’s OWN CULTURE SAYS THEY DO, and that THEY ARE TO BLAME when problems arise!!!
“People use the word “culture” like its some magical invocation, as though, once named, it becomes a thing of religious significance, as though it’s some kind of blasphemy to “interfere.” But it’s not that fucking complex. In fact, once you’ve figured out how things generally work here, it’s not hard to figure out what’s culture and what’s just plain wrong.”
In terms of teaching and working in Korea, and the educational culture and school culture . . . a lot of it is JUST PLAIN WRONG! This is not about me having delusions of grandeur and speaking from a colonial/imperial/paternalistic place of privilege and power–I’ve put in my time in terms of sweat, blood, and tears, and spent THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS of my own money training myself on how to be a better teacher, and how to teach my Korean students better, and the list goes on.
http://metropolitician.blogs.com/scribblings_of_the_metrop/2010/06/more-on-the-fucking-of-bears-or-do-the-right-thing-ii.html
I think I’ve made my point, or rather, several points.
Jason