Episode Twenty-five

Interview with Jackie Bolen: Teaching in Korea and ESL Games

Show Notes

In this week's episode of Expand Your Horizons, our guest is Jackie Bolen. Jackie taught English in South Korea at private institutes and universities for over ten years. She now lives in Vancouver, Canada where she does some teaching, writing, and various online things, including running her two websites, eslactivity.org and eslspeaking.org. She is both CELTA and DELTA certified and believes in the value of communicative, interactive language learning. She’s particularly interested in using games in the ESL classroom, and she’s published several books of games and resources for ESL teachers. In her spare time, Jackie is usually on the hunt for the most delicious kimchi she can find, which she says isn't that easy in Vancouver! She joins us on the show to discuss teaching in Korea and share tips for finding a job, and she offers some great advice on how to make the ESL classroom more fun.

“I’m all about student-centered teaching. I think anytime I can take two minutes to set up an activity and then students are interacting and talking with each other for 30 minutes, I can think, ‘I’ve done good work here.’ (. . .) So that’s always my goal.” ”

In this Episode

• How Jackie decided she wanted to teach English and got her start

• Why she decided on Korea as her initial teaching destination

• How requirements for teaching in Korea were different in the past than they are now

• Why university jobs in Korea are coveted and what qualifications a teacher needs to apply

• What a “hagwon” is, and the pros and cons of teaching at one

• What to look out for when applying for a job- potential red flags

• Questions you should ask (and where you should look) to make sure the job you’re applying for is legitimate (https://www.waygook.org/)

• The importance of using Facebook groups as a resource for checking out jobs

• Checking out hagwon black lists to avoid scams/ unpleasant working situations

• What daily life is like for a teacher in Korea

• The expat community: activities and clubs

• Saving money in Korea

• Why Jackie decided to get CELTA certified after teaching for five years

• Her experience on the CELTA course

• How her years of teaching contributed to her success on the course

• Her advice for prospective candidates: brush up on grammar!

• Why knowing the grammar terminology makes the CELTA course much less stressful

• Her experience on the DELTA course - how the DELTA exam helped her solidify her confidence in language analysis

• “Pragmatic competence” (the term I couldn’t remember in our discussion of the DELTA exam)

• The benefits of using games in the ESL classroom

• Balancing the use of a textbook in class with time to play games

• How to motivate students by getting them moving around

• Why less teacher talk is an indication of a successful lesson

• The feedback Jackie got on one of her first CELTA lessons and how this changed her teaching philosophy

• One of her favorite interactive classroom activities: a class survey, or “find someone who” (you can download an example of it below!)

• Why activities with a communicative goal are effective

• How Jackie gets inspiration and ideas for her ESL resource books

• Why she started two Facebook groups for ESL teachers: English Teachers Abroad and Resources for ESL/ EFL Teachers

• Her favorite thing about the ELT industry

• Why she spent most of her teaching career in Korea, and why she moved back to the United States

• What she doesn’t love about the ELT industry

• Her favorite travel destinations in Asia: Hong Kong, Laos, and Thailand

• The resources Jackie offers, including her websites: https://www.eslactivity.org/, https://eslspeaking.org/, and her books on Amazon.

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Want to try out a version of the “Find Someone Who” activity Jackie referenced in this episode? Download it by filling out the form below.

Episode Twenty-four

How to Teach Speaking

Show Notes

We know that helping students develop their speaking fluency is important, but are students really getting better at speaking EVERY time they're talking in a lesson? How can we measure whether students’ speaking skills have actually improved during class? In this week's episode, we look at how to devote an entire lesson to speaking fluency. We’ll walk you through the stages of an effective speaking lesson, break down exactly what to do and why, and give you practical advice for helping students experience a boost in their fluency— even from a single lesson.

In this Episode

• Why teaching English isn’t just teaching grammar and vocabulary: it’s about skills, too!

• The productive skills: speaking and writing

• How teaching a skills lesson is different from teaching a systems (grammar or vocabulary) lesson

• How students speaking in the classroom is different from practicing speaking outside the classroom

• How you can make sure your speaking lesson is more than just “speaking and leaving”

• The suggested structure for a speaking lesson

• Why starting with a lead-in still matters (because it always matters!)

• Why ANY speaking activity isn’t THE speaking activity in a speaking lesson

• How to set the speaking task with intention (and how this differs from students actually doing the task)

• Why a speaking task needs a communicative goal

• How to design a speaking task that will motivate students to speak

• Why a demo of the speaking task is important and how to set this up

• Why it’s helpful to give students “useful language” for the task and what kind of language that might be

• How to plant this “useful language” in your speaking task demo

• Why you should think of this language input stage as “language light”

• How to let students prepare for the speaking task (brainstorming time!)

• Why there’s a lot that goes into a speaking lesson before students even get to the speaking task! (But also why you don’t want to make your speaking lesson too “top-heavy”)

• How to pair or group your students for the speaking activity (why it’s helpful to be deliberate here)

• Why you’ll want to stay out of the way while students are actually doing the speaking task

• What to do while the students are speaking/ engaged in the task: monitor (but stay aloof!)

• What to listen for as you monitor

• How to prepare for a delayed error correction stage (why you don’t want to correct errors on the spot in a speaking fluency task)

• What to do immediately after the speaking task and before delayed error correction: content feedback

• How the communicative goal (that you set up for the task) contributes to content feedback

• How to maximize content feedback and ensure everyone is engaged

• How to get the most out of delayed error correction

• A summary: the three keys to a speaking lesson that make it truly effective

• The ideal way to extend a speaking lesson: have students repeat the task after error correction

• A variation of how to structure the speaking task(s) if you have a longer lesson

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Want to teach this speaking lesson? Enter your email address and we’ll send you the party planning speaking task we referenced in this episode, so you can try it out in your classroom!