Writing Class

For one month, July, I am teaching writing in English to university Korean students. I teach two sessions in the morning of roughly 12 students each. They are in all different levels in English. Some are comfortable in English and some feel very challenged. All are trying as hard as they can to master the fundamentals of writing. They sit every morning from Monday through Friday in sweltering classrooms for one hour and an half each. It is very hot and humid in Korea now and the air conditioning in the classrooms are not working all that well.

There are two textbooks and are based on the ESL model(English as a Second Language). They are not expensive as they would be in the United States and are pretty good. I was not given a teacher's book which is a shame.

On the first day, one student got a writer's block and was scared to write one paragraph. I wanted all of them to write one so I could see what level they were at in order to individualize the instruction. He could barely write a sentence. Now he is writing and everything is fine.

Everyone has to write in class and now they have to peer edit each other. This seemed to them easy at first because they could write on the paper "Good" and that would be it. I said that is not what editing is all about. If it is good, why is it good and write down those points. Then the students would ask the writer what he or she meant by this or that sentence. No, I would tell them. If you don't understand something. You write that on the paper. The students are learning to be better editors so they can teach their fellow students and themselves how to be the same.

I read the more interesting papers or "publish" the ones that have the elements of good writing at the beginning of class. I often catch small mistakes I missed so I learn to read their papers out loud when correcting at home and the students see how things are caught when I do. Now, they are reading the papers out loud. We both learn.

One of the things I am teaching them is that as writers, they are in charge of what they put down on paper. I never grade opinions. For instance, we have different religions in the classrooms. Usually since I teach at a national university we try to keep religion out of the classroom, but I just ignore it when it comes up. The students never talk politics and all of the men are veterans since all men have to serve when they are 18. I think everyone has valid point of view.

I have two rules in my classrooms: stay awake and be on task. I don't care what the students do if they are on task. I have gone through one week and I am amazed to how much they learned. Many of them have electronic dictionaries and they cost as much as a laptop but much easier to carry. They are allowed to use those dictionaries and each other.

Although it is a lot more work to teach writing then conversational English, I am really enjoying it. I also think the Korean students are very pleasant and very polite-maybe too polite. They are learning that they are in charge of themselves and what they write about. I don't assign topics only the kind of writing we will be doing that day. Family means a lot to the students and they often write about them and I learn about their background. I talk about my own. July is proving to be very interesting and busy.