the job

I'm back in a PC-bang. It's a lot less crowded this time. I suppose that's the difference between midday on a Sunday, and 11pm on a Monday. I reckon this will be the last time I'll have to patronize this place; I'm supposed to be getting internet installed in my apartment tomorrow morning. I'll believe it when I see it.

I haven't given a very good description of my job yet, and seeing as how I came to Korea to work, I figure that should be a vital part of a blog about my experience.

Well, I teach kids that range in age from 6 to 15. The good classes are the ones that are 9 and 10 year olds who have a childrens book that I use to teach them with. They'll go around the room and read the book, then I'll teach them nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and any other basic grammar concepts. We'll also go over basic comprehension and vocab, and they have a workbook as well that they can do. Those aren't bad.

The bad ones, more specifically the worst one, is the class in which I have 7 twelve year old girls. If you told me to teach 7 twelve year old American girls, I would have no clue how to start or how to get them to listen to a word I say. After being put into a room of 7 twelve year old Korean girls I can now say that I have even less of a clue. The only way that I have figured out to elicit any sort of response from them on any topic, is to talk about how ugly and untalented I think that "Big Bang" (a Korean boy band that is all the rage right now) is, even though I don't know anything about them. So I'll say Big Bang is ugly, they'll say I'm ugly, then I'll make a vain attempt at teaching them how to write a paragraph.

Those are the two extremes. All in all, it's a pretty exhausting day's work (MWF I teach 2:30 to 9:30, T TH 2:30 to 6:30), but, hey, it is a job. And hell, I've only been at this for 6 days; I don't think it's unreasonable to expect things to get better with time.