Teaching Listening

I was woken by a ringing phone at 7:30 AM. As in, ante meridian, when the sun is just barely up and I'm not yet. It was Joelle, to say that the meeting has been postponed until next week because the people at the other schools couldn't be ready. How typically Korean. I confirmed with her last night as I was leaving work that the meeting was still on. What could have possibly happened between 8:30 PM and 7:30 AM to change that?! I managed to be ready to LEAD the meeting, and write and grade a test, and write an outline for the special summer class, as well as my normal 2~3 hours of checking the students' English diaries and hour of putting daily reports into the computer. The other teachers couldn't manage to write a page about a topic and show up at our school to talk about the topic?! What makes it even stranger is that Joelle sent a text message to Matt at 3:43 AM (as in the middle of the night!). But because it didn't say who the message was from, Matt thought it was another junk message, so showed up at school at noon anyways. (Hello! This message was in English, and refers to a "meeting"--he could have called someone to check.) Since Tanya doesn't have a phone yet, Joelle went to Tanya's apartment to tell her.

I've decided that Matt hears what he wants to hear. He gave me his paper about the meeting topic today. I told him he could hang on to it until we have the meeting, and hand it in then. I did, however, see enough of it to know that he wrote about the wrong thing. Last week I clearly told him that the topic was listening, specifically, how to teach the listening books. I then named the two major listening books that we teach, along with a couple of the minor ones. Well, his paper is about how to make children listen--be firm, have clear rewards and punishments, etc. Apparently he needs to study how to listen! He hates teaching the listening books. I don't think he gets it that teaching listening skills is a real part of teaching EFL!! You can't just say to the kids, "Listen to this and circle the answer you're supposed to circle." You have to explain the vocabulary to them and help them know what to listen for, and make sure they're listening hard enough but not too hard. (Sometimes if they're listening to every word they get preoccupied on the words that they don't know. I emphasize that they should, in most cases, listen for the meaning of the passage.)

He asked me about the flashcards I was studying, then said something about having no interest in learning Korean. I asked if he had any interest in getting a higher education in TEFL because it would be beneficial to know a non-Romance language. He said there was no way he would do TEFL again. (He didn't quite use those words, though. He's been using some pretty, shall we say, "strong" words recently. I have half a mind to tell him that I'm a lady and not to use such language around me. Perhaps I'm being a prude, but if you have a decent vocabulary, there's absolutely no reason to use certain words. They don't add emphasis, they only make you look like an uneducated, inconsiderate moron.) So, he's a month into a 12-month contract and he hates 95% of his classes because he doesn't want to make the effort to understand and make the lower levels understand him.

The day went by very, very, very quickly. I didn't get as much study for my Korean test done as I would have hoped, but did get all of my daily reports entered into the computer, finished correcting the English Diaries, and did my first adjustment of the "points" that the students earn or lose depending on their behavior, attitude, or completion of homework. Tomas got -10 because he refused to do anything in class, while Ally and Jenny received +3 for their excellent phone conversation yesterday. Some of the Korean teachers are much more free with handing out points--it's not unusual for some students to have 100~200 points in some teachers' classes, while in others the points are around 30~40 or firmly in the negative. That's sort of sad--if I had -100 points, I think I'd probably lose all hope of ever getting out of the hole, forget about ever having enough points to redeem for a prize.

Notable phrases from the kids: Tony (5 PM, a 9th-grader) said that when he congratulates people on their birthday, he says, "Why are you born?" Harry (6 PM, 6th grade) told me in a very serious voice, "Beth, you are weird." He didn't leave any hint of a question, but it was a solid statement. (I had just very dramatically acted out the story we had read to make it more exciting and make sure they understood it.) When I walked into the 7 PM class they all started shouting, "Cockroach! Cockroach!" as they pointed at the floor to make sure I remembered Wednesday. Yes, kids, I'm not forgetting that anytime soon! (I made sure they knew the word "cockroach" so if a similar situation ever happens again they can inform me a little earlier as to what the problem is!)