Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL September Meeting
Time: Saturday, September 7, 2013, 1:30 p.m.
Place: Chosun University (Gwangju), Main Building (본관), Room 5210.
Admission: No charge. (Future membership is welcomed.)
Schedule
1:30 pm: Sign-in and Meet-and-Greet
2:00 pm: PRESENTATION: Part I
Getting Students Involved Outside of the Classroom
Tim Thompson (KAIST, Daejeon)
2:45 pm: Refreshment Break
3:00 pm: Thompson Presentation: Part II
4:00 pm: Swap-Shop Session
Share your Teaching Ideas, Classroom Activities, and ELT Games, Books, etc.
(Open to All Attendees. Handouts welcomed.)
4:30 pm: Announcements / Drawing for Door Prizes / Closing
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6:00 pm: Summer Social
(Doaa's Rooftop, Downtown: http://www.koreatesol.org/content/gwangju-jeonnam-chapter-summer-social-...)
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Presentation Abstract and Presenter Biographical Sketch
The Presentation: Getting Students Involved Outside of the Classroom
By Tim Thompson
Getting students involved outside the classroom is a formidable task for any language teacher. While homework can be assigned, most assignments do not involve communication with others. In this presentation, Tim Thompson will first describe his Apprentice English class, which focuses on outside-of-classroom projects that are reported on and discussed during actual classes. Through these experiences, the students can gain practical skills in addition to the opportunity to practice using the target language. The pros of cons of having students work outside of class will be discussed, and suggestions on how to create unique classes for university level students will be shared.
Ideas for reducing dependence on textbooks will also be given. Tim will outline his English Communication class which is a required course for university freshmen. He wanted to build the course around 3 Ps: practical, portfolios, and perpetual. Practicality was important because students would be studying and interacting through English in their courses for the next three and half years at KAIST. Portfolios allow students to feel pride in their accomplishments at the end of the semester. They can look back on the things they created and remember what they did to complete them successfully and be aware of the pitfalls that can cause a project to end in an unsatisfactory way. Perpetual refers to the idea that media projects can create institutional memory as well as help the next group of students taking the course. It is important that the students taking mandatory English courses accumulate life lessons in addition to skills.
This presentation will include schedules and rubrics for creating textbook-free courses which will have students active and engaged outside the classroom. Time in the classroom can then be spent planning and reviewing with classmates and the instructor, giving everyone involved time to reflect on what they experienced and learned.
The Presenter
Tim Thompson is a visiting professor at KAIST in Daejeon. He has been teaching in Korea for fourteen years. Tim has written children’s books (www.blagonwights.com), founded an e-learning company (www.educationanyware.com), conducted teacher training workshops all over Korea, and published magazine and journals articles on teaching. He has edited KOTESOL’s The English Connection (TEC) magazine and served at the coordinator for KOTESOL Teacher Training (KTT).
