Phonics & Letters

This week, I started teaching a Phonics-leveled class (for the first time since i've been at GEC). Phonics is the absolute-lowest level that you can get - The only thing kids know is 'Hello', and sometimes, the letters 'A', 'B' and 'C'. That's it. The kids are generally very young, though (4 or 5 years old), and pretty wide-eyed when it comes to seeing a foreigner for the first time.

During the first class, this Thursday, I walked in and said 'Hello!'. All the little kids replied 'Hello'. I tell them 'My name is Alex!', to which they enthusiastically replied 'My name is Alex!'.

Ahhh, boy.

I spent the first 10 minutes teaching them how to properly answer 'What's your name?', which they eventually got. The rest of the class was spent teaching them about the letters A and B - practicing writing the 'big' and 'small' versions, as well as practicing speaking, and learning a few words that started with those letters.

The fun part of a phonics class is that you get to sing really corny, but very catchy songs. After the class, I caught myself humming 'A... A is for Apple and Ant! A... A is for Arrow and Alligator! B.. B is for Boy, and Bed!'.

I'm teaching this group until the end of May, so it should be fun. Having been teaching lower-level classes for awhile now, i'm starting to catch on to some common mistakes; most notably, the small B and the small D being confused by a lot of kids.

Sometimes they turn out to be pretty funny.

The picture at the top was drawn by one of my favorite students, Sarah, while we were learning 'This is my'. Her dook, with the title 'dook' made me laugh - and if you consider that she's one of my best kids, you can imagine the sort of spelling-mistakes that I usually see (Her class is about 5 semesters-beyond the Phonics level)

Even at the highest levels, some kids still struggle to grasp basic grammar and spelling. The second picture is one that I took of my phone (I couldn't figure out how to e-mail myself pictures). Back in December, once of my advanced-kids wrote this message on the board, before class: (spelling as-written)

'Aelx hand some man~ Jamiy'.

Jamiy (whose actual english-name is Jamie, a boy) thoughtfully decided to write down that he thought his teacher was a 'hand some man'. So, there's your lesson: While the spelling of some kids might never improve, at least they'll always find some way to keep you laughing. English is very, very difficult to learn, when you consider how different the Korean Language structure is, so I can't do much more than commend most of these kids (including Jamie).

They've made this a fun job, no matter how hard it can be at times - and they're awesome for it.

Have a good weekend!