ESL EFL TESOL

Over the last few years, the field of education has radically shifted its traditional emphasis on teachers, focusing instead on the process of learning and the development of learners. In a paper published near the turn of the 21st century, Michael Lessard-Clouston presented a three-step approach for language learning which ESL and EFL teachers can adopt in their classes.

Getting EFL and ESL students learn to become truly effective communicators remain a challenge in many language classes. For example, learning vocabularies is one thing and is generally easy to achieve, but getting students to articulate simple ideas using the English words they know can sometimes become frustrating as they struggle through syntax, grammar, pronunciation and meaning.

One of key functions of ESL and EFL educators is to give their students a few tips on how pull through a situation wherein they suddenly become part of a language encounter with English as the only means of communication. So far across all languages, memorizing common everyday vocabulary and phrases remains the best tool wIth which to equip a foreigner who needs to interact with a local population that uses a different language. 

My name is John Morgan and I taught English for 13 years at Hanyang University in Seoul. I currently work as a recruiter hiring teachers for school positions in Korea. I loved living and teaching in Korea and I hope through these blog posts to offer some advice to new teachers about working and living in Korea so that they may get the most out of their experience.

My name is John Morgan and I taught English for 13 years at Hanyang University in Seoul. I currently work as a recruiter hiring teachers for school positions in Korea. I loved living and teaching in Korea and I hope through these blog posts to offer some advice to new teachers on working and living in Korea so that they may get the most out of their experience.

For this post because I regularly get asked this question and also because it’s around the time when universities will be hiring, I thought it would be helpful to offer some practical suggestions to those who were looking for a coveted university position in Korea.

Recently I heard about a teacher who was almost fired from their position for complaining about a class on Facebook. Stories like this are becoming a lot more frequent – teachers finding themselves in hot water as a result of something they have posted on a social media site.

Every teacher has gone through this before, but it can be particularly unnerving for new teachers - you go in the class with what you think is your best lesson and it falls flat. The students just sit there. No one speaks. Maybe at the back of the group one student is coughing. Panic starts to set in as you realize 

There is a sensitive issue that I’d like to address in this post and that issue is this: Are there age-limits to teaching overseas and if so, why do they exist?

One issue that comes up again and again from teachers that are in Korea is the issue of people coming up to them on the street and wanting to practice their English. For some teachers this is a source of constant frustration. “I’m not a walking dictionary”, one teacher put it to me. However, I’d like to raise the issue of whether or not this is really something to get bent out of shape over.