Today the computer technician in our school came and asked me to come to her office to help her with something. I had no idea what to expect, but I decided to see if I could help her out.
I arrived at her office and she sat me down at her desk. She then presented me with a single spaced, one page English essay that she had written. She is applying for a working holiday in Canada. I pulled up the paper and began the task of gently correcting poor English. It's not that this woman has bad English, she has very good English, but it's hard to write in a language that is not your own. She usually had the gist of what she wanted to say but just needed me to help clean it up.
What I found most interesting was the fact that she spent four weeks in January taking a TESOL course when she was visiting Canada. I knew that she had been in Vancouver but I didn't realise that she had spent that time studying English. I did notice that her English was better, but had just attributed that to her having spent four weeks in an English speaking country.
At one point in her essay she talks about her experience in the Canadian school system (she spent one week doing a practicum). She was amazed that the other teachers spoke to her and didn't make her feel like an outsider just because she was Korean. She spoke about how great it was that Canada was a multi-racial society. The other point that she made was how different the school systems in Korea and Canada are. She said that Canadians focus on process, whilst Koreans focus on the product. She loved the Canadian system because it doesn't focus as much on tests... it focuses on students learning at their own pace. Although this may not be entirely the case, it is a pretty fair assessment of the two education systems, at least from my limited exposure to both.
My current situation gives me 40 minutes twice a week with each of my ten classes. My classes have at least 32 students, sometimes 35. All of my students are at different levels. Some of them can speak amazing English, others struggle to answer the question "How are you?" I find this to be a challenging job. I long to spend more time with my students, whatever level they're at, to help them along the process of learning English. For now, I will have to work with what I've got, to try my best to help my students become excited about learning English. I am excited to hear a Korean teacher talk about how much she enjoys the process education system. It gives me hope that one day Koreans will put less stress on getting good grades, and more stress on the process of learning.
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