RANTING/VENTING MEGATHREAD 3.0

If they were getting other than the AZ vaccine, more people would be willing to take it.
A first dose of it gives a 30% protection against the indian variant and 50% against the British variant. The second dose is administered 3 months after the first one. So basically they are very far from being safe for a long time. Yet, as per the new rules revealed today: even after the first dose, they won't be required to wear masks in public and will be also exempt from the ban on private gatherings. This could end really bad.

If I come back to Korea I will probably do the IC route because I'm sick of the bs in public schools, not to say there isn't bs in hagwons though!!!

In what country are you living now? Hard to get vaccinated there?

Maybe it's just the people I attract, but I find Korean woman fret over the dumbest crap sometimes. Really, genuinely make mountains out of mole hills. Not just my GFs, but dates, female friends, Co-Ts etc

My CT blows a gasket over EVERYTHING. She's absolutely terrified of upsetting the parents so:

- Nothing remotely scary in my lessons, not even a clipart picture of a zombie.
- No clipart pictures of bugs
- Can't ask them questions unless she's 200% sure they'll know the answer
- Any hint that a student starts showing a sign of struggling to write down/answer a question, she's there to spoon feed the answer
- Accidentally loaded a YouTube ad (Korean ad) that showed a fully clothed Korean couple lying in a bed. Was a mattress commercial and this was a big deal as it was suggestive. 
- Offered to teach them to make biltong during camp, but she's worried they might not like the taste of something new. She suggested "sandwich day", where they do this crazy and wacky thing of making peanut butter sandwiches.

Naturally, I ignore most of her craziness, but yeah, this is one of the reasons I could never handle a relationship with your average Korean woman. We'd drive one another up the wall.

Was walking home from the supermarket and a group of old guys (about 6 of them) came to join me at the crosswalk, I could smell the soju through my mask. Only two of them were wearing a masks and one of them (no mask) was having a sneezing bout, sneezing all over the place, wiping the mucus off his nose and flicking it on the street. Then they started hocking and I decided to jaywalk before this disgusting thing deposited his phlegm near me.

A global pandemic seems to do little to civilise this type. Like small children, it seems they'll only follow rules or etiquette when there's a guaranteed punishment.   

She's worth it, but damn if it isn't annoying as hell. That said, I am the most relaxed person in the world. haha

Anyway, got a meme out of it.

lol i didnt see this when you posted. #4 is my favorite:)

In what country are you living now? Hard to get vaccinated there?

No I mean if/when we leave I'd get into IC work.

https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2021/05/25/national/socialAffairs/Vaccine-Leftover-Naver/20210525173300350.html?fbclid=IwAR2fILmhtcdkEz3anUfeGSXeebAZ7pCBx1zdFMv71UrpJkRE9qMSX8GGaRQ

If they were getting other than the AZ vaccine, more people would be willing to take it.
A first dose of it gives a 30% protection against the indian variant and 50% against the British variant. The second dose is administered 3 months after the first one. So basically they are very far from being safe for a long time. Yet, as per the new rules revealed today: even after the first dose, they won't be required to wear masks in public and will be also exempt from the ban on private gatherings. This could end really bad.

Yeah, I'm going to try for the Pfizer shot.  Three week interval between dosages.  Can get it later and be fully vaccinated earlier than people that hurry to get the AZ shot.  They're continuing to bungle the rollout.  People don't want the AZ shot.  Korea is snapping up the doses while other countries move away from it.  Yes, the odds are low of having a problem, but I read today the doctors in Ontario have increased the odds of having a problem to one in 60,000 and AZ is less effective.  That's a whole host of reasons, if you've managed to avoid getting sick over the last year and a half, to wait for the better vaccines. 

Yeah, I'm going to try for the Pfizer shot.  Three week interval between dosages.  Can get it later and be fully vaccinated earlier than people that hurry to get the AZ shot.  They're continuing to bungle the rollout.  People don't want the AZ shot.  Korea is snapping up the doses while other countries move away from it.  Yes, the odds are low of having a problem, but I read today the doctors in Ontario have increased the odds of having a problem to one in 60,000 and AZ is less effective.  That's a whole host of reasons, if you've managed to avoid getting sick over the last year and a half, to wait for the better vaccines. 

Looking at the vaccine delivery timeline, it seems that more than half of the AZ shots will arrive by the end of June. Which means, the later shipments will be reserved for the second doses. Therefore, from July, AZ vaccine will most likely not be given as a first dose. (I don't know how many doses of AZ is included in the Covax facility bundle)
Moderna shipments will arrive soon and Pfizer will keep delivering more and more. Once the essential workers are vaccinated, they will start to administer these as well to the general public. So from July, there is already a good chance to get these through the no-show system. Or just wait untill your age group becomes eligible. July: people in their 50's, Aug: 40's Sept: 30's...

My wife and I are all signed up for June 11 for the first shot.

Me, June 7.

Every single class was acting the fool today. Every_single_class. I had to cancel the game in all but one of them and made them complete worksheets instead.

Students tend to be super mellow/unenthusiastic on Mondays at my school. Not whateverthefuck this was. It felt weirdly planned.

I had a bad class with my top class today. Not that anyone was misbehaving or anything, but most of the students are at a decent level.
I have to teach the textbook and came to class with a bunch of the questions about the dialogue ready to go. Broke the questions down by level.
And the students struggling with the easiest questions threw me off and got me flustered. D: (Doesn't happen too often) Just makes me feel bad when one of my good classes struggle, as I think I made things too hard haha.

I had a bad class with my top class today. Not that anyone was misbehaving or anything, but most of the students are at a decent level.
I have to teach the textbook and came to class with a bunch of the questions about the dialogue ready to go. Broke the questions down by level.
And the students struggling with the easiest questions threw me off and got me flustered. D: (Doesn't happen too often) Just makes me feel bad when one of my good classes struggle, as I think I made things too hard haha.

I had one of those days too................ ............after 2nd period I wanted to slam my head on the desk and just nap........my students couldn't even read the word "I" so my coteacher says oh it's too hard............... ...........4th and 5th graders should understand and be able to read "I"

my students couldn't even read the word "I" so my coteacher says oh it's too hard............... ...........4th and 5th graders should understand and be able to read "I"

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if I can learn hangeul over a weekend, then you can learn to read hello/I am/this is/funny over the course of two or three years.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if I can learn hangeul over a weekend, then you can learn to read hello/I am/this is/funny over the course of two or three years.

then my coteacher says its ok to not know there's no problem with that............... .he's right but after 2 years and you still can't read "I".......there are other problems besides my teaching

I had one of those days too................ ............after 2nd period I wanted to slam my head on the desk and just nap........my students couldn't even read the word "I" so my coteacher says oh it's too hard............... ...........4th and 5th graders should understand and be able to read "I"

I'm fully middle school. I have grade 1 students this year who practiced how are you. I'm __. for 5 weeks and still struggle with it.
I also have a grade 3 middle school student who can't even do that.
Today was middle school grade 2 at my main school. 5 of the students there, I'd personally recommend to go for the scholarship to study in an English country for a month.
But today just threw me off so much, cause I made small simple questions that were met with silence haha (Though I know those 5 students were itching to answer, but they also know that I typically choose a student to answer based on their level. for the lower level students, I'll give them a super simple question, those 5 I usually give the hardest questions too).

And I agree, after a year, they should be able to read the alphabet. :o

I had one of those days too................ ............after 2nd period I wanted to slam my head on the desk and just nap........my students couldn't even read the word "I" so my coteacher says oh it's too hard............... ...........4th and 5th graders should understand and be able to read "I"

It's partly my fault because frankly, I can't muster up the energy or motivation to teach phonics consistently when the CTs and curriculum are essentially reversing my efforts, I see these students once a week and I have no support base to work with (no communication with parents).

I'm trying to get the students to... read. Basic reading as in look at a CVC word and sound it out.

After 3yrs of English, many cant read 'cat', 'bet', 'mut', 'dig' etc.
So I'm starting the process of squeezing in a phonics lesson whenever I can.

It's difficult to not smack my CT over the head with a book. She has 3 teaching licenses (elementary, middle and adult) as well as her masters, yet she still defends her approach of making them write. "Where is the post office?" 20X for homework when they can't even sound at a basic CVC word.

My task was to get them to write 20, 3-letter CVC words using the vowels 'A' and 'E' as the middle letter so:

CAT, BET, MET, HAT etc.

I even wrote some consonants on the board and emphasised that they could be completely random words, they didn't have to mean anything. After that, one by one, they'd come to my desk and read out what they've written. If I'm satisfied, I'd sign their work and task them with helping the other students.

One girl actually panicked and broke down into tears because, from what I could tell, she was forced to think for herself and nobody was telling her exactly what to do. So many students struggled with the simple concept of making some random CVC words and while reading its absolutely certain that they were never taught the phonetic sounds of English letters and, by extension, how to actually read. As C02 said and the point I made against my CT who claimed reading CVC words was 'so hard' for them. If someone like me, who absolutely sucks at learning languages is able to read and write Hangul in a weekend then they can learn phonics if you do it properly and give them a bloody chance.

So, according to my CT. They're simply taught:

The names of the English letters (typically hangulised), not their phonetic sounds
Spelling and sighting words without reading
How not to hold a pen/pencil (not a single 6th grader in a class of 15 is able to hold a pen properly).

No surprise, my CT with all her qualifications can't pronounce the vowels properly and speaks at an English level worse than your average rural, black South African (speaking English as a 3rd language) person with little formal education.

It's partly my fault because frankly, I can't muster up the energy or motivation to teach phonics consistently when the CTs and curriculum are essentially reversing my efforts, I see these students once a week and I have no support base to work with (no communication with parents).

I'm trying to get the students to... read. Basic reading as in look at a CVC word and sound it out.

After 3yrs of English, many cant read 'cat', 'bet', 'mut', 'dig' etc.
So I'm starting the process of squeezing in a phonics lesson whenever I can.

It's difficult to not smack my CT over the head with a book. She has 3 teaching licenses (elementary, middle and adult) as well as her masters, yet she still defends her approach of making them write. "Where is the post office?" 20X for homework when they can't even sound at a basic CVC word.

My task was to get them to write 20, 3-letter CVC words using the vowels 'A' and 'E' as the middle letter so:

CAT, BET, MET, HAT etc.

I even wrote some consonants on the board and emphasised that they could be completely random words, they didn't have to mean anything. After that, one by one, they'd come to my desk and read out what they've written. If I'm satisfied, I'd sign their work and task them with helping the other students.

One girl actually panicked and broke down into tears because, from what I could tell, she was forced to think for herself and nobody was telling her exactly what to do. So many students struggled with the simple concept of making some random CVC words and while reading its absolutely certain that they were never taught the phonetic sounds of English letters and, by extension, how to actually read. As C02 said and the point I made against my CT who claimed reading CVC words was 'so hard' for them. If someone like me, who absolutely sucks at learning languages is able to read and write Hangul in a weekend then they can learn phonics if you do it properly and give them a bloody chance.

So, according to my CT. They're simply taught:

The names of the English letters (typically hangulised), not their phonetic sounds
Spelling and sighting words without reading
How not to hold a pen/pencil (not a single 6th grader in a class of 15 is able to hold a pen properly).

No surprise, my CT with all her qualifications can't pronounce the vowels properly and speaks at an English level worse than your average rural, black South African (speaking English as a 3rd language) person with little formal education.

The sad truth is your battle is not with your KET, but with the suneung (and explains why she can't speak well either).  Being able to sight-read for comprehension, not the ability to sound out new words, is what is valued in the exam.  Well, a little; it is mostly to wrestle with grammar points that would make Strunk and White scratch their chins.  I used to teach HS and every year one question (maybe more) on the test would perplex me.  I would know the answer, but struggle to explain it. 

It's the nature of the beast--we want to teach communicative competence but that's hard to test in the suneung format, so they test what is easy to test.  That said, I have now taught at three different elementary schools in Seoul, and only one or two in a class can't do basic phonics. 

Every month I have a "read-aloud" activity, usually a story, where I go around the room and have each student read a sentence or two from a slide, and mix in some new/unfamiliar words.  Most students can do it, the few cannot, and a few can do it with some phonics prompting.  We use these activities as an informal assessment.  Of course, one technique is to pick a strong student for really hard slides, and easy ones for the weakest--this builds confidence.  Today, the 6th grade did my "roadside attractions" read-aloud (I'm going to go on a trip, etc) and as expected one or two per class have to be fed every word.

Hangeulizing English words is simply a big no-no for me, and I always get my Cos to stop doing it.  But the books persist, only in reverse.  This lesson on future tense has visits to Cheomseongdae going on, and a trip to Yongin--one of the better students absolutely could not figure out where or what Yongin is!  And if "library" was a vocab word in the previous lesson, why is the picture in this lesson labeled with 도서관 ?!?

Anyway, I feel your pain.

It's partly my fault because frankly, I can't muster up the energy or motivation to teach phonics consistently when the CTs and curriculum are essentially reversing my efforts, I see these students once a week and I have no support base to work with (no communication with parents).

I'm trying to get the students to... read. Basic reading as in look at a CVC word and sound it out.

After 3yrs of English, many cant read 'cat', 'bet', 'mut', 'dig' etc.
So I'm starting the process of squeezing in a phonics lesson whenever I can.

It's difficult to not smack my CT over the head with a book. She has 3 teaching licenses (elementary, middle and adult) as well as her masters, yet she still defends her approach of making them write. "Where is the post office?" 20X for homework when they can't even sound at a basic CVC word.

My task was to get them to write 20, 3-letter CVC words using the vowels 'A' and 'E' as the middle letter so:

CAT, BET, MET, HAT etc.

I even wrote some consonants on the board and emphasised that they could be completely random words, they didn't have to mean anything. After that, one by one, they'd come to my desk and read out what they've written. If I'm satisfied, I'd sign their work and task them with helping the other students.

One girl actually panicked and broke down into tears because, from what I could tell, she was forced to think for herself and nobody was telling her exactly what to do. So many students struggled with the simple concept of making some random CVC words and while reading its absolutely certain that they were never taught the phonetic sounds of English letters and, by extension, how to actually read. As C02 said and the point I made against my CT who claimed reading CVC words was 'so hard' for them. If someone like me, who absolutely sucks at learning languages is able to read and write Hangul in a weekend then they can learn phonics if you do it properly and give them a bloody chance.

So, according to my CT. They're simply taught:

The names of the English letters (typically hangulised), not their phonetic sounds
Spelling and sighting words without reading
How not to hold a pen/pencil (not a single 6th grader in a class of 15 is able to hold a pen properly).

No surprise, my CT with all her qualifications can't pronounce the vowels properly and speaks at an English level worse than your average rural, black South African (speaking English as a 3rd language) person with little formal education.

when the students stop being spoon fed everything, every test answer etc and learn to use their heads it will be better........i hate it when a student says a different answer or a unique answer and then immediately says sorry because they think it is wrong.............. I applaud you for trying rather than the right answer so why say sorry?

when the students stop being spoon fed everything, every test answer etc and learn to use their heads it will be better........i hate it when a student says a different answer or a unique answer and then immediately says sorry because they think it is wrong.............. I applaud you for trying rather than the right answer so why say sorry?

I agree with that too. What I started doing is saying: Don't say sorry. English isn't always a math problem where a question will have a single correct answer. Sometimes there are many different ways to answer a question in English. (My co-teacher usually translates that into Korean for them). My higher level students have become more willing to try their own answers. The lower level students are still kinda looking for -the- answer though.

Was walking home from the supermarket and a group of old guys (about 6 of them) came to join me at the crosswalk, I could smell the soju through my mask. Only two of them were wearing a masks and one of them (no mask) was having a sneezing bout, sneezing all over the place, wiping the mucus off his nose and flicking it on the street. Then they started hocking and I decided to jaywalk before this disgusting thing deposited his phlegm near me.

I moved to Jeju from Seoul in 2020. I have never seen this type of behavior down here but I saw it a lot in Seoul. 

A global pandemic seems to do little to civilise this type. Like small children, it seems they'll only follow rules or etiquette when there's a guaranteed punishment.