Day 262

Saturday September 5

Today I got up and went to my Korean lesson.

We studied from 2:30-4pm. Today he was telling us things we would hear in a restuarant. Things like "how many people are with you?", "What would you like to order?", "kimchi jiggae and bimimbop please", "more water please", "how much is it?", "its 3,000 won", "Thank You", "the meal was delicious"

Its very difficult! I had to look at my notes when we were practicing. Korean pronunciation is hard. I don't think I'd be able to carry on a conversation with a Korean because they speak very fast and I speak very slow.

I was looking at my books for speaking class today. I have no clue what I'm going to do. How am I suppose to make 2-4 pages last 50 minutes? I'm only suppose to do one lesson every class according to my lesson plans. Why are we using the same books for 6 months? Its really hard. They just hand me the student books and expect me to know what to do. If I had a teacher's guide I'd be able to make a better lesson because there would be tips. There's nothing in the book that can be used for homework. I'm going to have a lot of extra work coming up with homework for all of my classes. Say goodbye to free time!

Oh my goodness I'm going to need a lot of extra materials to fill up time in my lowest level classes. I have to teach spelling twice a week..i think once a week would be enough. I have 2 fifty minute classes and I have to cover 5 pages a week until November. So I'll split up the lesson and do pages on one day and 3 on the next day. Why not just have it once a week? They just have to make it hard for me! 100 minutes for 5 pages of material and its kindergarden level spelling. HOW! I'll just have to make them say the words a bunch of times and write the words a bunch of times. and write the word in a sentence. THey are going to spell it so much that they are spelling geniuses when i'm done. They will be spelling in their sleep.They are going to hate me! I could do spelling bees with one of my classes since I have 5 students but I can't do that with a class that only has one student. And its not even hard words. This week we learned 3-4 letter words. In my highlest lower level class our longest word had 5 letters.

I wish I could teach reading to the lowest level. I was looking at her plans and in reading class she gets to cover about 15 pages at a time. That's something I could do. Read it twice. go over vocab they may need to know. ask comprehension questions. That would be easy! But no I have to teach spelling! yuck! If I cant make it last I'll just give them a word search as busy work. If the school doesn't like it then too bad!

I don't even know how to give tests and homework for conversation class. I'm teaching from the student book so there arent any resources for me to use. Plus there isn't time to take away from class to do exams. I need every single minute of class to do the lessons because they are long. the only class that actually has long lessons. I need to figure out what is important and what can be left out of the lesson.