What’s better: One year, one country or one year, many countries? I definitely agree on the latter, which is why we put together this list to help English teachers in Korea decide how best to use their vacation days while living abroad. Asia is huge, beautiful, and exploding with must-see destinations.
Introducing our latest teacher interview: Eric Adams. Eric is a recent college graduate from Maryland who has been teaching in Taiwan for the last year. These last few months in Taipei has been his first living abroad experience.
As the pitch of the wind rushing past the window rises and the scenery whips by, there is a sense of motion unparalleled by most other modes of transportation. Indeed 300 km/h is not particularly fast for an airplane, and the flight from Seoul to Busan is much quicker, but gliding along the ground at these speeds is a new experience that amplifies the excitement of travel.
It’s one thing to talk about establishing clear rules right from the start of class, but it’s another thing to implement them effectively. It’s crucial for classroom management, to have a simple set of rules that you enforce consistently and fairly.
Talk to just about anyone involved in South Korean education, and you quickly learn that the pupils of this rising Asian nation are tired. Not only because of the daily school grind, the fatigue also comes from the invasion of continued academics into what little break they have.
The Hanok Village near our host’s house shows the traditional peaked roofs and swooping eaves of pre-modern Korea, but this one looks somehow different. Its straight lines and clean roofs belie its recent renovations. Similarly, Jeonju presents a deep cultural heritage just beneath a surface of tourism and modernity.
As an ESL teacher, there is a good chance that you’ll find yourself teaching a class of total beginners. This doesn’t just mean that they will struggle with basic sentence patterns or pronunciation – it means that when you step into the classroom and say “Hello, what’s your name?” you’ll be greeted by blank stares and the sound of crickets chirping.
Do your students greet the words “Take out your journals” with a collective, resounding groan? For most students, expressing their ideas on paper is a challenge even in their native language, let alone doing so with creativity, style, and decent grammar. Throw a foreign language into the mix, and writing can seem utterly daunting.