ELT Experiences

In my previous post, I shared the announcement that I was relocating with family to South Korea. There were a number of challenges that I was facing with regards to my work and visa before relocating, as nothing had been confirmed at the time of writing. If you are interested in what I had to do prior to my arriving in South Korea, I uploaded a video where I documented my month leading up to my relocation.

On Friday 18 August, I finished my eight week pre-sessional course with my international students and said goodbye to them all. I also had a final online meeting with the course convenor and fellow tutors, and said my farewells. Two days later, my family and I left the UK for an indeterminate amount of time and headed off to Korea. My brother-in-law has been a lifesaver and sorted out our accommodation, and we moved in after staying in temporary accommodation for two days.

Employment

Soon after my previous video where things were not confirmed, I received an offer of employment with a university in Daejeon. I discovered during my job hunting that many jobs outside of Korea were for private language institutes (also called ‘hagwons’ 학원) which both have advantages as well as a greater number of disadvantages, so to receive an offer of employment with a university from outside of Korea was a blessing and I feel very honoured to be given the opportunity to transfer my employment from the University of Sussex. My main duties will be preparing Korean and international students for their corresponding business undergraduate degrees as well as aiding them with their academic skills. There are opportunities to get involved in other activities, and I am looking forward to seeing how things evolve with time.

Visa Status

My status in Korea is sponsored by my employer which offers less flexibility for my work status. There are other opportunities to do a variety of voluntary activities with my visa, but I initially have a one-year visa despite signing a two-year contract. I also do not have a re-entry visa so travelling on holiday to visiting other countries can be a little difficult initially. However, visas in South Korea are very similar to the UK or Australia in some degrees and I will have to work towards getting permanent residency in a number of years.

To achieve permanent residency, you have to achieve a number of points and there are various ways to gain points, with things such as education, employment, home ownership as well as various other tasks. Personally, during my employment, I would like to take Korean classes to prepare me for the TOPIK as this would be recognised for my applying for permanent residency in the years to come. However, time will make things clearer in terms of getting residency in Korea as I am unlikely to return to the UK, and may stay on with family in South Korea.

Final Points

There are a number of things that need to be completed after starting my employment, these including getting my Korean mobile phone number sorted, getting my bank organised, completing a medical check-up, as well as receiving a refund of my flight to South Korea. All these will take time but much is hinging on the issuance of my Alien Residence Card (ARC) but I have a date to collect this on 6 September – some days after I start my employment.

Although I have a few days before I start, there are some orientations and general meetings that I need to attend – I even went to a compulsory lecture for all professors earlier this week about engaging and teaching Korean university students. I also had the opportunity to meet my fellow colleagues. I am looking forward to joining Korea TESOL Association and going to the regional meetings in the coming months.

After returning from South Korea from a trip during the Christmas of 2019, I was ready to return to my work and continue teaching international students at the University. Things were going well for in the first three months on 2020, until news broke of a virus doing the rounds in China and Italy. About a month later in April, all staff were advised to work from home remotely.

The next few years were rather surreal with our family contemplating on life’s big quests. One thing that became clearer when speaking with family was the desire for us all to return to South Korea, and that sparked our efforts to return for an indeterminate amount of time, once the pandemic was no longer an issue. Therefore, my wife, son, and I have decided to return back to South Korea at the end of August 2023.

If you have been living under a rock for the past few months and unsure what is Chat GPT, then this is essentially an online AI tool that can be used to generate requested content. There have been many English teachers recognising the potential with language learners, and I thought I would share my experiences so far with private English students with some tips for use in an educational setting.

1. Create Exam Questions

The first idea that teachers could use for Chat GPT for is to generate essay questions, particularly for IELTS students. All you have to do is ask Chat GPT to generate some essay questions for English students and in seconds it provides some inspiration. If you are preparing students for IELTS or a range of Cambridge Examinations, and do not wish to use previously delivered model questions with them, Chat GPT could be used to generate a range of questions for learners.

With the example provided in the image on the left, you could select a question at random or give learners an opportunity to choose. There is also a brief reminder for potential students of the time constraints for the IELTS Writing Part 2 being 40 minutes.

The New Year is always a great opportunity to personally reflect on the previous year, but it is particularly important for me as a teacher. This is mainly due to the fact that I started teaching back many years ago in December in South Korea. I have now been teaching English in some capacity for over 17 years and have many fond memories. So where did this all start me?

I was really forced into TEFL in South Korea in the winter of 2005, as I had been job hunting for six months after graduating and had failed to secure any form of employment in the UK. As I was married to a South Korean national, it seemed fitting that we try our luck in her country. We packed our things, shipped them to the other side of the world, and then caught a plane to Seoul. It seems another time entirely.

I arrived in this exotic country, with absolutely no knowledge of Korea, an undergraduate degree in International Business, and renewed enthusiasm to secure employment, doing what I could to support my young family. Anyone who has had the opportunity to travel to South East Asia would particularly understand that the only field that is really available for arrivals – particularly in the early 1990s and 2000s – was to teach English to young children. I was able to secure employment almost immediately with a private language institute (also commonly known as a ‘hagwon’), which was completely different to what I failed to achieve back in the UK for six months.

When first starting teaching in South Korea, I was based in a very small town (about an hour and a half away from Seoul) where I felt like the only foreigner there. Most jobs in the local area for locals were working in factories or in local convenience stores. Back in the winter of 2019 (prior to the pandemic), I recently met up with my boss and had a chance to see how the town had changed. It is now completely different to how I remembered it, with many new towns popping up. Many of the rice paddy fields have now gone now and it resembles more of a small city rather than a remote town.

Anyhow, when I first started teaching children in the winter of 2005, I had no certificate in English language teaching other than completing a weekend course, prior to my departure to Korea, which barely gave me the necessary skills or confidence to teach. However, I bought Grammar in Use, spent all evening planning my first day of classes, and felt like a nervous wreck upon entering the classroom. After a few weeks of planning, and getting used to my new adopted country, I refined my lesson planning, having realised that I had six classes of lessons per day and could plan one lesson per day.

This one lesson could include a variety of tasks within 50 minutes and usually my first lesson would involve elementary students with my final class being with intermediate learners. I could cover the same topic, have the worksheets all prepped within 30 minutes and have an idea of what to do in each class by grading the difficulty or activities. And that was my introduction to English language teaching in South Korea.

After fourteen months of teaching young learners, I really wanted to take my teaching to the next lesson and decided to undertake a CELTA at the British Council in Seoul. The whole process of applying can be a separate post, but I remember starting the first day after commuting a couple of hours to the centre. The CELTA Tutors were incredibly supportive and patient to all trainees, and I still keep in touch with them.

Now fast forward 17 years and I am now based in the UK teaching a range of classes – EAP, Business English, General English, IELTS Preparation to name just a few. I have met many students, taught thousands of hours to both young learners and adults, received many gifts from students, and had the chance to make many new friends. This career has been very rewarding with highs as well as a lows.

Nevertheless, here is to another 17 years.