I couldn't believe it; two nights ago I fell asleep at about 7:30pm. Ollie, my British coworker who lives below me came knocking on my door twice to see me and I didn't even hear a thing! Must be all the hard work:)
My first class of the morning is at 7:40am and my last class finishes at 5:00pm. Somewhere within that period I have two 60 minute breaks. That's a much longer day than I am used to working back home in Australia where the school day starts at 8:45am and finishes at 3:10pm and I have an 80 minute period off and a total of 60 minutes for recess and lunch.
Having said that the students in my classes are wonderful. They are all adults and choose to be there so it's great that they all give it their best. One of the things that surprised me was the level of dediction some of my students have. All of the uni students are on vacation until March so they have no classes at university but there are so many who are doing full days of English study. (I say vacation now with an American accent because I used to ask them what they are doing on their 'holiday' but they didn't know what I was saying)
One of my favourite students comes into the company at 11am with her boyfriend and they spend time studying in the study room, then she takes my class at 2pm and goes back to continue studying until 8pm. Another student Robby, comes to my 7:30am class, then a 3 hour TOEFL class, has an hour break, another 3 hour TOEFL class, has a 2 hour study group and then goes to the library to study until 10pm. I don't know how he does it. I sure couldn't. The guys say that it's because they have done military training. They say it makes them diligent. That brings me to another point. The word 'diligent'. It is used here ALL THE TIME! I don't think I have ever used that word in a conversation outside of parent/teacher interviews but here I hear someone use it EVERY SINGLE DAY. Of all the English words, I think 'diligent' must be drilled in from birth.
In terms of my classes, I teach two different level conversastion classes. One is the lowest foreigner taught class at my institute but all the classes at this level are pretty good. They are definitely keen to learn and take notes. So far with them I have done things like two truths and a lie, find someone who, first impressions, regrets, New Years resolutions and personality traits. I write heaps of my own dialogue jam packed with everyday language and idioms. For my top classes, where the students are pretty fluent, I have such different classes. One has only a 17 year old boy so we analyse rap songs and watch music videos and deconstruct them. Another has a 19 year old girl and we talk about relationships a fair bit. One has an older man and we discuss politics and history and he always asks how I know so much about Korea - he says it isn't normal. Yet another has 2 teenage cousins and a woman in her late 20s. We talk about things like stereotypes, arranged marriages vs marraige for love, positive and negative influences of popular culture. Tomorrow my classes will be on internet addiction and the accuracy of blood type and star sign character assessments.
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