Module #9 Course Design: Course syllabus & Cover letter(Continued)

Course Evaluation Plan

Course Calendar

Module #9 Course Design: Course syllabus & Cover letter

Cover Letter

Ja Eun Kim
Seyun Middle School, Yeonhee- dong
Seoul, Korea
(02) 332-7375

December 17, 2010

Antoaneta Bonev, Ph.D.
California State University, San Bernardino
5500 University ParkwaySan Bernardino, CA 92374

Dear Dr. Bonev and colleagues

I am currently working at a middle school and teaching the 9th grade intermediate level. There are three different levels: elementary, intermediate, and advanced. Also, the same textbook is used for all levels. English education in Korea had been focused on mostly reading, grammar, and writing, more than speaking and listening. However, the new Korean President Lee Myung Bak has reinforced communicative competence in English. Thus, team teaching with a native speaking English teacher has been commonly performed in classes now. Therefore, I have designed this course, with a native speaker’s cooperation in speaking and listening. For speaking, the native speaker will intensively teach on how to produce a sound clearly.

Since the school already decided to use the same textbook for each level, I added more supportive worksheets for my intermediate students. For reading, they need to build up their vocabulary skills which are related with various topics. The textbook, however, does not provide enough definitions of vocabularies for each chapter, so I created extra vocabulary worksheets for weekly vocabulary quiz. For writing, they need to comprehend key grammar points before writing. By introducing the main grammar points in the beginning of each chapter, students will be able to catch the grammar points which are hidden in the reading contexts. These grammar points will be repeated several times throughout the speaking, listening, and reading. Once they understand the grammar points, they will participate in the writing activities. If needed, further activities or extra worksheets will be given to master the grammar points before moving on to the next chapter. For each chapter, they will be taught these main grammar points through the integration of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

This textbook does not include enough listening practice, but students will be exposed to natural English pronunciation done by the native speaking English teacher. The native teacher will meet the students once a week just for speaking and listening. By interacting with each other, students will develop their confidence and interest in English as a foreign language instead of a tool which they must study in order to get a good score on a test.
This course will approach comfortably to the intermediate students. Encouraging students to study English hard is important, but I believe motivating the students is more important. Their English proficiency level is not high, but there is always a possibility to enhance their English skills inclusively. I hope this course meets the needs for the intermediate students on learning English.

Sincerely,

JaEun Kim

9th Grade English Language Course Syllabus

Course Title: Integrated English Language Course
Instructor: Ja Eun Kim (Vocabulary, Reading, Writing, Grammar)
Teaching Method: Co-teaching with a Native Speaking English teacher
(speaking & Pronunciation parts)
E-mail: gracelia@hanmail.net
Year/Semester: 2010/Winter
Grade Level: 9th grades in EFL
Proficiency Level: Intermediate
Class Meetings: Five times a week
Time: each session 45 minutes
Duration: 12 weeks

Standards

English language learners communicate for social, intercultural, and instructional purposes within the school setting.

At the 6-8 grade levels, English language learners face increased academic and social pressure to perform. In addition, at this level, there is a widening range of student performance.

Listening

Listening is an active skill. By highlighting an assortment of listening tasks across standards, the need to involve students in active listening and purposeful listening skills development becomes clear.

Speaking

English language learners engage in oral communication in a variety of situations for a variety of purposes and in a wide spectrum of settings. As part of oral communication, students are constantly using language in meaningful interaction with others.

Reading

English language learners process, interpret, and evaluate written language, symbols, and text with understanding and fluency. Learning to read in a second language may be enhanced or hindered by students’ level of literacy in their native language. Students who have a strong foundation in reading in their first language bring with them skills that can be readily transferred in the process of learning to read in English.

Writing

English language learners use written communication for a variety of purposes and audiences. Writing can be used to express meaning through drawing, symbols, or text. English language learners may come with writing styles influenced by their home cultures.

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Course Description

This course is designed for intermediate level of 9th graders, which includes reading, listening, speaking, writing, and grammar with cultural diversities. This course will assist students to build up their vocabulary through weekly vocabulary quiz and this will lead to improve their reading comprehension gradually. Also, the key expressions for speaking and grammar will be introduced on the first day of each week, so that students know what they need to remember for their upcoming exams. The speaking, pronunciation, and listening parts of this course will be provided with teaching team; a native speaking English teacher and the main instructor. Through this co-teaching, students will reinforce their speaking skills in a natural way. Since students are going to be assessed about their listening ability, the main instructor will also cover listening part as well. For this lesson, the content of listening will be related to the reading and speaking contents and this will help students understand the chapter easily. The goal for this course is to build up confidence and interest in English. By turning in their portfolios which contain their all completed worksheet, vocabulary quiz sheets, daily learning logs, and writing samples, students will witness their improvement slowly and at last they will leave the classroom with full of knowledge.

Course Outline by Topic

1. Cultural Understanding
2. What Good Is a Weed?
3. It’s Such a Pleasure for Me to Learn
4. Living in Space
5. Across Siberia to North America
6. The Little Prince
7. Are You Going to Help Me?
8. How MP3 Music Files Work
9. Ms. Wise, What Should I Do?
10. We’re All One.
11. Healthy Eating and Physical Fitness
12. More Than One Language

Course Goals

Goal 1: Students will develop their interest and confidence in English and enhance capacity for being able to communicate.
Goal 2: Students will be able to communicate related to daily lives and general topics.
Goal 3: Students will utilize the ability to understand about various information of foreign countries.
Goal 4: Students will have the proper hierarchy of values by understanding different cultures of foreign countries and recognizing Korean culture afresh.

Course Objectives

1. Students will understand the main ideas about a topic when listening.
2. Students will be cooperative with peers to improve communicative skills.
3. Students will enhance their pronunciation and intonation through a native speaking English teacher’s help.
4. Students will differenciate Korean culture from other foreign cultures.
5. Students will understand main ideas and supporting details when reading.
6. Students will enhance vocabulary skills through various contexts.
7. Students will be challenged to comprehend the main purpose of further intensive readings.
8. Students will apply their knowledge into real technological resources.
9. Students will understand main points of grammar from each chapter and apply their acquired knowledge into making sentences with their own words when writing.
10. Students will share their writings or researches and exchange feedback in class.

Course Requirements

1. Students are expected to be self-motivated, actively participants in the class.
2. Students should be fully responsible for given assignments and class activities.
3. Students must submit assignments by due dates on time.
(No late assignments will be accepted.)
4. Students are expected to respect other classmates and encourage each other to make an effective learning environment.

Required Text

Lee, B. M., Park, K. H., Han, J. K., Jung, J. H., & Stephen P. V. (2003). Middle School English 3. Seoul: Chun Jae Education.

Grading Policy

Daily learning log, Daily class participation, vocabulary quizzes, listening comprehension test, portfolio of all learning materials (e.g. worksheets, writing samples), and exams (mid-term and final) will distribute the evaluation over 12 sessions. No late assignments will be accepted.

Make up Work Policy

Students must be responsible for submitting assignments by the assigned due dates on time. If not, those students will receive a zero on the designated assignments. If a student has an excused situation such as illness, injury, medical appointment or bereavement, the student is responsible to inform the instructor. With the instructor’s approval, the student will receive 2 extra days to complete the missing assignments. If the work is still not turned in on time, the student will not receive a credit on his work.

Course Evaluation Plan
Course Calendar
(Please see the next page)

Assignment #8 Evaluation of curriculum (textbook)

Summary of curriculum evaluation

By evaluating the textbook that I am teaching with right now, I learned teaching cannot be done without well-organized textbooks. Textbooks are a great tool to teach English in an integrated way. It was not hard to analyze the textbooks by using the given rubrics.

The textbook is designed for 9th graders. The school where I work at now divided the students into their English proficiency levels: advanced, intermediate, and elementary. These different levels are using the same textbook though. The content of the courses in the textbook covers various themes, such as American holidays, stories of celebrities in the world, different cultures and customs, etc. The book, also, provides these contents in a variety of sections of English: listening, speaking, reading, and writing/grammar. Currently I am teaching intermediate level students. Some of them are not motivated and interested in English at all. Others are interested in English and want to do well on tests, but they do not know how to study English in a strategic way. The students are required to take mid-term and final exams per semester. Most of my students’ goal is to get a good score on the tests. In Korea, the tests are usually focused on reading comprehension and grammar expressions. This naturally designated the whole English class to pay careful attention on reading and writing with grammar only.

The textbook that I evaluated was excellent for grammar part for ESL learners. The book provides ample questions to practice certain grammar expressions, however the other domains of English (e.g. speaking, reading, listening, and writing) were covered less. This textbook, also, has a week point in the assessment area. It does provide various practice for grammar and several reading comprehension questions, and pair-up activities for listening and speaking only. The DVD, which was provided with the textbook, also does not supply a variety of assessing tools for the students’ level. Offering ample practice help students to achieve a certain goal of grammar expressions, reading comprehension, speaking, and listening. However, teachers had to create their own assessment worksheets in order to check their student’s level or to check if the goals were achieved.

Through the evaluation of the textbook with the two rubrics, I noticed there were some similarities and differences. Some similarities that I found are the following:

It is an excellent curriculum if…

• Materials meet objectives and goals.
• A variety of activities were provided and appropriate for a level.
• Instruction is progressed in an organized manner.
• The course used teaching technology effectively.
• The course provides enough chances for students to participate actively.
• The course provides extended homework which is integrated with the separated acquired skills.

There were some differences from the rubrics, too. Most of them were neglected when I created my own rubric. I did not think those were much important.
An excellent curriculum should…

• Provide a variety of strategies for teachers, such as direct instruction or paired/group projects.
• Provide research-based materials which are appropriate to student’s needs.
• Provide well-organized teacher’s guide.
• Provide support materials and parent support materials.
• Offer suggestions for re-teaching a concept, providing additional practice for struggling students.

I would like to recommend this textbook for intermediate and elementary levels. For advanced level, if the textbook supplies additional challenging materials, then it would be okay. Goals and objectives are also written on the first page of each lesson. Overall, the content of the textbook meets the goals and objectives appropriately and is well organized. If teachers prepare extra materials according to the students’ proficiency levels, this textbook will be practically used.

Graves Ch.5 Reflection

I am currently teaching 9th graders at a middle school in Korea. Since the second semester is almost over and the students are already done with their final exams, teachers have a hard time teaching classes these days. The students think they have no reason to study now because they were already evaluated for the finals. Since the students are unmotivated on studying, teachers wanted to create a fun activity for them instead of using the same textbooks. I, also, designed a course about 9.11 New York terror with a variety of video clips and a movie. However, the vice principal told the teachers not to use video clips as a teaching material. Without showing the students the video clips, it was not easy to make an important point on how terrible the terror was. I ended up making visual charts with pictures and telling the story orally.

Teachers always get to design a course and fix the plans frequently. In order to create a course, they need to know the backgrounds of the class before formulating goals and objectives such as students’ ages, their current English proficiency levels, a number of students in class, or time period. An English Camp program is going to be held in January at school where I work. I was asked to teach reading and listening parts from Monday through Friday for 90 minutes, 3weeks. I am supposed to design these two courses for this camp, but there is no information about the courses. I do not know how old my students would be, how many students would be in my class, and what their current English proficiency level is. The school does not know how many students will apply for this course or how old they are going to be yet, but the school wants me to submit lesson plans in two weeks. Since there is a lack of information about the course, it is hard to set goals or objectives. Through this chapter, I was guided how to formulate goals and objectives for a course. I started asking myself what I really want my students to learn from my class. And then, I also thought what kinds of learning outcomes the students should expect from when my class is over. Once I started thinking simply, I could narrow down some goals and objectives explicitly. Now I think I can work on what materials (contents) I should use and how the students will be evaluated.

Rubric for Course Evaluation (rough & final draft)

Please click the images to see clearly.

Assignment #5 Annotated Bibliography

EESL 614 Assignment #5 Annotated Bibliography
By JaEun Kim

Citation #1
Jones, D. (2007). Speaking, listening, planning and assessing: The teacher’s role in developing metacognitive awareness. Early Child Development & Care, 177(6/7), 569-579.

Summary #1
This paper highlights that learning is conducted by talk, which is listening and speaking. When children learn a new lesson, they usually acquire the new skills throughout the interaction with the peers and adults. Jones says, “Learning takes place most effectively within a context of social interaction through the joint construction of meaning.” In order for the children to learn effectively, they need adults who can provide the learning to develop their knowledge, skills, and understanding. This brings out the importance of teacher’s role.
Jones states, “The teacher’s role in developing speaking and listening is crucial.” He also introduces the four approaches that the teachers can help the children to improve their learning.
The first approach is dialogic teaching. Through the interaction between the teachers and the children, the kids can promote their learning. When the teachers initiate a concept of new learning, the students give response to it and they both share their ideas and feedback. This interaction is also divided into four discrete: collective, reciprocal, cumulative, and supportive. The teachers and the learners address the learning tasks together, so that no one works alone. Since they also share ideas and listen to one another, they can earn cumulative knowledge and finally reach common understanding in a risk-free environment. The second approach is developing matacognitive awareness. In this teaching strategy, the role of a teacher is very important. It should be central to encourage the students. The third one is planning. Teachers should plan the speaking and listening according to the four strategies which are interdependent: social, communicative, cultural, and cognitive. The last one is assessing. The ideal goal of assessing is to help the students to access themselves and understand how to improve. In order to evaluate themselves, the environment should be risk-free. The children need to build up their confidence and self-esteem. By setting targets with teachers or sharing feedback between the teachers and the children, self-access will be done effectively.

Review #1
I definitely agree that talking is a means of learning. When teachers explain a concept, they usually give lectures. When students have questions about a new concept, they have questions to ask. All these learnings are conducted through speaking and listening. In order to speak and listen, there should be interaction. Through the interaction between the teachers and the students, students can develop their learning, skills, understandings as well as their cognitive awareness. This effect can be developed the environment of learning place is risk-free. In Korea, one of our old perspectives is the teachers are speakers and the students are only listeners. However, this method only stops the learners developing their cognitive awareness. In order to improve their learning, the interaction between the teachers and the learners must be in central.

Citation #2
Piercey, D. (2010). Why Don’t Teachers Collaborate. Phi Delta Kappan, 91(9), 54-56.

Summary #2
In this article, teachers can have different perspectives on the team teaching or collaboration on their lesson. However, they need to make their assumptions clear, so that they can fully understand one another. Piercey quoted healthy team’s characteristics from Lencioni. Teachers have high degrees of trust, are willing to engage in conflict in open discussion, hold one another accountable, and focus on collective results. Piercey points out the main problem of not collaborating with other teachers is their attitude toward leadership. They often convey an attitude of “I am in charge and you are not.” This type of leadership only leads to the failure of collaboration. They must change their own attitudes first. They need an attitude of servant leadership instead. They should also have mutual goals of their teachings. They need to share responsibility for participation and decision making and to have a voluntary relationship (p.55).

Review #2
As an English teacher, I am also expected to collaborate with our Native Speaking English teacher at my work. I think I had the attitude of “I am in charge of this class, but you are not.” It would be hard for the native teacher to adapt her teaching into my teaching style. We should have shared the goals and responsibilities. The most important thing, I learned, was to have an attitude of servant instead of owner. I thought I owned a class with a bunch of students. By setting a goal with the native speaker in a collaborative way, I hope my class is improved.

Citation #3
David, J. L. (2010). Closing the Vocabulary Gap. Educational Leadership, 67(6), 85-86.

Summary #3
English language learners usually struggle to understand what they read because they have limited knowledge about vocabulary. In order to help the students to expand their vocabulary, teachers need to devote more time to explicit vocabulary instruction. However, the reality is different. In this article, Jane points out, “The teachers face the challenge of identifying which words are most important of their students to learn” (p. 85). The researchers say that the more the students acknowledge the new words, the more their comprehension level goes up. Jane supports this, “This shows a strong relationship between vocabulary size and reading comprehension level. The relationship grows stronger as the students progress through school” (p. 86).
Learning new words is not done by memorizing. The learners must use the word several times in various contexts. Therefore, the teachers need to help the students to expand their vocabularies through repeated practice and feedback. The teachers can plan a lesson of vocabulary by adding “speaking”, “listening”, or “writing” activity, so that they can use new words in authentic and engaging contexts. By doing so, the achievement gap between students with limited vocabularies and their peers will be close.

Review #3
I felt guilty when I was reading this article. It is so true that most teachers do not devote themselves to create vocabulary lessons. I, also, considered “reading”, “speaking”, “writing”, and “listening” were the only main aspects of English language. However, in order to achieve these four separated skills, knowledge of vocabulary is needed. If the students do not know new words, they cannot comprehend a new context and this will be an obstacle for their comprehensive competence. From now on, I need to identify which words are most important for my students to acknowledge, so that they can strengthen the relationship between vocabulary size and reading comprehension level.

Citation #4
Ellery, V. (2010). How Do We Teach Reading as a Strategic, Decision-Making Process. Reading Teacher, 63(5), 434-436.

Summary #4
This article introduces one of the effective strategies of comprehension is summarizing. Summarizing is retelling a main point of a story. Ellery defines, “Summarizing is a strategy that helps the reader identify and organize the essential information found within a text” (p. 434). In order to summarize a context, students need to organize the story in detail. One of the best activities for students to develop the ability to recount the stories sequentially is Detail/Retell. First, teachers and students discuss and practice with retelling daily. For instance, they can ask each other like “What did you do over the weekend?” They are able to retell what they did briefly. Second, the teacher demonstrates retelling after they read a short text. The teacher gives the details of the story, so that the students can create some images of it in their minds. Third, teachers can use some visual props-Story glove, Baseball mats, Hula hoops, and Table of contents - to increase the detail of the stories. Story glove can be used as a reminder of the elements (characters, setting, problems, events, and endings) of the stories. Baseball mats and Hula hoops are used to help the students to follow the stories sequentially. By stepping on the 1st base, or standing inside of the first hula hoop, the students know what happened first in the stories. The last activity, shown in the article, is Table of contents. The students can follow the stories in detail by looking at the titles written in the table of contents.
Ellery also highlights the importance of instructing vocabularies. She says, “Students need many opportunities for developing a rich vocabulary through listening, speaking, reading, and writing in an integrated manner. Vocabulary instruction should be an integral component in a daily literacy block” (p. 435). She introduces a way to motivate the students when they encounter unfamiliar words. Students write new vocabularies they encounter in a notebook. With group members, they discuss and guess what those words mean from some clues provided by teachers or contexts such as sentences or related sentences. Then, they may look up the words in dictionaries or glossaries and compare their guess with the original definitions. They continue this method to increase their new vocabularies.

Review #4
Teaching reading was always an unsolved problem for me. My students feel bored right away as soon as they open up their books. One of the reasons they are not interested in is a lack of their vocabularies. I have been looking for some fun ways to teach reading and vocabulary and I found some finally. I really like to try those four activities of reading – Story glove, Baseball mats, Hula hoops, and Table of contents- and see how they work for my students. Also, having the students guess what the unknown words mean is a great way to draw them to a new vocabulary world.

Citation #5
MacGrath, M. (2005). Beyond behaviour management: Manage or motivate? Education Review, 19(1), 57-64.

Summary #5
This article starts off with a common situation given. It is Monday morning and a 14-year-old boy came to class 15 minutes late. Disciplines might be done differently depending on how teachers interpret events. The article argues that the teacher’s reaction to this kind of situation is based on the teacher’s own judgment which is related to his past experience with that student. The author introduces how the teachers manage the misbehavior and motivate those students effectively. Teachers often meet students who do exactly what the teachers told them not to do. In this situation, the teachers usually like the students to sit quietly and concentrate. This may be useful skill, but not the ultimate goal itself. In order to engage the students in an activity and motivate them, there should be a positive relationship between the students and the teachers. MacGrath quoted from Marland (1993) that the second greatest motivation (that is after achievement) is the pupil’s relationship with his teachers. Achievement can be a great motivator for the students, but for many young children they need a motivating relationship before they try to achieve a goal.
There are some elements that help develop and maintain constructive relationships with individuals and classes. First is building trust. Teachers need to show their students that they are on their side. However, giving them an image of being a “friend” is not appropriate. They should be firm, but provide unconditional regard. Second, teachers need to treat everyone with respect all the time. When the young children misbehave, the teachers tell them with respect. In this way, they maintain the constructive relationship. Third, teachers are in charge. Teachers need to show that you care about the students and lead them as far as each can go. When the teachers express that they are the helpers of the students to achieve a goal, there can be a strong relationship built. Fourth, set a mind of working together. Between teachers and students, they cooperate and work together as a partnership. If the students need help, the teachers go help them. If teachers need an assistant, the students can offer a help, too. Last, teachers need to show that they can listen. Teachers need to listen and accept what the young person says. MacGrath (2005) emphasizes that, “At times showing empathy is important in order to build a trusting relationship” (p. 62).
In order to help the students promote achievements, teachers need to review the following steps constantly.
First, teachers should get their thinking straight so they can stand firm. Second, teachers need to refine their communication skills so that they can relate positively and creatively with children and young people in a range of situations. Third, teachers develop an ever-increasing sense of unconditional positive regard towards themselves and others. Last, teachers need to develop a support network for themselves and a supportive lifestyle to maintain a balanced perspective and keep things in proportion (p. 64).

Review #5
Teachers often face some situations related to student’s problematic behaviors which they wish to avoid. As a teacher, I have also experienced several misbehavior issues and I have been wondering how I should handle the situations while motivating the students in a positive way at the same time. I have discovered that some of their misbehaviors were interpreted by my assumptions which were in relation to my past experiences with the students. However, building up a positive relationship with students can be a key to my question. By showing them that I am a helper and a motivator to lead them to achieve a goal, their behaviors can be changed. Instead of correcting the misbehaviors as a teacher, students can correct their own behaviors with the trusting relationship and furthermore they can achieve a goal, too. However, the important thing is the teacher’s role. Whether the students are motivated or not, their learning depends on the teachers and the role of the teachers can influence the student’s life in some way.

Reflection on Graves Ch. 4,8, and 9.

Instead of writing, I tried creating a mind map. I am actually planning this lesson for my students next week. By planning a lesson with the mind map, I have got some specific ideas how to lead the class.

If the image is too small to see, please click on the image.

Teacher Curriculum Interview

Teacher Curriculum Interview Questions

1. Why do you want to be a teacher?
2. What do you think will be the most challenging aspect of teaching for you?
3. At the end of the school year, how will you determine whether you were successful or not?
4. How would you go about planning a lesson?
5. How would you individualize a curriculum for students at various levels?
6. What kind of teachers would you prefer working with? why?
7. What do you think was your most successful lesson you have taught and why?
8. How would you discipline the students who curse out in class while you are teaching?
9. How would you discipline the students who curse out in class while you are teaching?
10. How do you evaluate your students?
11. What do you think the role/ responsibility of a teacher should be?
12. Can you share with me about your philosophy of teaching and learning?

What I have learned through the interview...

Through the teacher interview, I learned how important the co-teacher's role is in class. As one of the Korean English teachers at my work, I did not know that the native speaking English teacher needed my help in her class. When she was teaching my kids, I thought she was the teacher and she needed to control the class, not me. However, I learned that I know about my students more than she does, so I should at least help motivate the students while she was teaching. I usually did not wake up the sleeping students in class. I thought that was their choice to miss the class and sleep instead. From this interview, I looked back my teaching style and learned that I should be humble and love my kids. I still remember that the teacher that I interviewed, Grace Lee, saying, "Discipline in Love and Teach in Love."

Module #2 My Reflection

I am currently teaching English as a foreign language at a middle school in Korea. One of my classes is specifically focused on Grammar and speaking. I have had a hard time designing this language course because of two factors. The first is the difference of English proficiency level. Some of the students have lived and studied abroad in the U.S.A, so their English level is very high. Others, on the other hand, wanted to learn grammar and speaking with no background knowledge. Since there is a huge language gap, it is hard to set a goal and design my course. Currently, I am assuming the level of the entire class is intermediate, so I have started to design specific lessons targeting their needs.

While reading these two chapters, I realized that my experience as a second language learner, and as a teacher, are absolutely affecting the designs of my lesson plans. I noticed that most of my students were shy in showing me their expectations for my class. When I was a student, I also did not say in which way I wanted to learn English, so the instruction was absolutely teacher-centered. This did not help me learn the language, but only got me scared of making mistakes. That is why I thought the student-centered approach would be effective in acquiring English. However, the lower-level students felt that my class was not easy to follow, and they wanted me to teach the grammar step by step. They are not satisfied, but the high-level students are. I am still struggling to fix this dilemma. It is hard for me to meet all my student's needs at the same time.

About me!

Hello, everyone?
My name is Ja Eun Kim and I am so excited to learn about Curriculum Design for TESOL with you.

Since I was nine years old, I have been interested in English and I ended up getting into a teacher's college, which is Hongik University in Seoul with English Education major. After I graduated with the teaching credential for secondary schools(my target teaching level) in 2006, I started working at several schools as an English teacher.

The first school was a middle school in Seoul. I worked there for about a year and a half. A level of the students that I taught was intermediate and some of them were very poor at English grammar. I still remember that I spent a lot of time planning lessons with various materials such as visual aids.

The second school, which I worked at, was a private Christian High School in California, U.S.A. I got offered a teaching job while I was volunteering as a ESL Camp chaperone. The principal of the high school hired me as an English grammar instructor for 3 years. (December in 2007 up to June in 2010.)

The third school that I am currently working at is another middle school in Seoul.
I am teaching English to 9th graders and I have so much fun with my new students.
I am so happy whenever I find the students getting interested in English itself.

Since I am teaching English to the students, I have often found that curriculum has changed a lot. When I was a learner, the focus of the curriculum was just reading, grammar, and writing. I remember there were spelling quizzes and grammar questions, but not speaking(dialogue) or listening. We always had to be under pressure of memorizing and studying for tests or quizzes and English was one of the major difficult and boring subject to many people.

Today, however, the curriculum has various sections such as dialogue, listening, reading, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, writing, further reading comprehension, introducing different cultures. Now all these various sections are intergrated in a one language, English, which is the global language.
As a result, the new curriculum helps the students learn English focused not only on reading and writing, but also on speaking (by understanding its cultuer) and listening.

Since technologies have been developed these days, I feel I need to use some devices for my classes, too. However, I am not good at those technologies and I always got stuck. I only use text messages, electronic dictionary, subway map, and sometimes videocalling on my cell phone. I do not use internet access on it. I always thought my cell phone could distract my class, so I have never brought my phone with me while teaching in class.

While taking a curriculum design course in this quarter, I would like to learn how to use mobile technologies for my language teaching in a different way. I want my classes to be more productive and fun to learn English and I am sure using technologies will interest the students in some way, too. I can't wait!