::A Geek in Korea::

We are at the point of the year where teachers are slowly wrapping up books they used for the first half of the year. The school will choose books for a summer program that starts near the end of June. Some classes are running on fumes trying to stretch out the last few pages of material to keep a book alive for a few more weeks. Other books have been chewed up and digested, requiring the teachers to find something to teach in the interim.

The second highest level of classes in the school is something I teach. It’s one of the two middle school classes I am responsible for. The book we are using currently is by far the worst book I use through the week, but as far as test preparatory materials go, it isn’t that bad. It’s got all the buzz words of a successful book series: It’s Internet based testing. It requires integrated skill sets. It’s well rounded. While it might not be the most interesting material, if you have to teach for a test, you could do a lot worse.

There are only so many books, and only so many preparatory tests you can get students ready for before they move to high school and switch to more intensive late night schools. The Seoul National University preparatory test, called “TEPS” is a step down from the current international standard test we are preparing students to take.

It had no speaking or writing skills. The “TEPS” test is grammar, reading comprehension, vocabulary, listening, and lots of memorization. The entire test is multiple choice, and everything is hair splitting over the fine points of grammar or subtle meanings in highly contrived situational contexts. It’s basically the continuation of every hellish Korean designed English test taken to it’s most ridiculous useless extreme.

My director handed me several books covering these tests and asked my opinion of the entire series. Should we teach these to students? The book I teach to them currently is 100 times better and more useful, but it’s still the worst book I teach bar none. Things were so niche and so specific that you could learn everything in the TEPS book and still not know how to hold a coherent conversation. You’d know how to use several hundred idioms, but never have any situation in which you could use them.

I gave my harshest thumbs down possible. I questioned the necessity of preparing the students for an English test that wouldn’t do them any good outside of Korea’s warped education system. I told them I thought it wouldn’t make the students well rounded, only better on one test no one really should be taking in the first place. If these students wanted to study abroad, they had better things to do with their time.

I recommended a class based on my high school experience. Short stories, discussions, writing, critique, etc. It worked for me, and I’d enjoy doing something other than teaching for a test for once. The limiting factor seems to be the students free time. All of the students go to several other schools, all competing for their free time. The likelihood that I could get a middle school class motivated to read an entire short story is very slim.

Lazy students bring down the discussions, and you can’t build on things if they don’t get the materials prepared beforehand.  Unless we were allowed to give the students “reading time” in each class to get back to speed, it’d be too much to expect of students that are too tired to keep their heads up when the classroom goes quiet for a minute. Still, it’s better to try and fail while doing something new than being trapped teaching some hellishly boring classes for months on end.

It seems I was the “go to” guy for information about picking high level books. My foreign coworker rubber stamped whatever I said when the director asked him before my arrival. If I don’t give it the thumbs up, it might not fly. It’s nice to have that kind of weight in the school. The shrieking lady didn’t get consulted. This is only the first in a series of choices that will mean how well my summer teaching schedule will turn out.