Classes at Yonsei

Sue Wilson asked some specific questions about what classes are like at Yonsei, and I did want to write about that. So here goes. About homework - yeah, we have a lot, so much that I haven't been posting as many blog entries lately. But now I'll describe - in detail (!) what the classes are like. Later I'll try to share more of my personal experience and reaction being a student in these classes.

Period 1: 9:00-9:50: Room 534 (see picture previous entry), first teacher

• The fourteen students sit in a semi-circle around the room with the teacher in front. There is a chalkboard and large TV monitor that plays CDS and videos - no other AV or Internet.
• The teacher begins by asking a few questions about the previous lesson and usually goes around the room asking each student in turn to answer a question.
• The new dialogue is introduced, always in the same way: teacher reads the dialog while students listen; teacher reads the dialogue line by line while students repeat; teacher goes around the room after each line and has each student speak the line; teacher speaks a line, students in unison speak the next line, etc; then roles are reversed; we repeat the dialogue with books closed; we go around the room as pairs perform the dialogue - student 1 and student 2 recite the dialogue, then student 2 and student 3 recite the dialogue with student 2 taking the second part, etc.
• The new vocabulary is explained (yes, after, not before, we memorize the dialogue).
• We go through various Q/A and book exercises practicing the new vocabulary.
• The teacher begins explaining the grammar, always in the same way: She writes the pattern of the new structure on the board with blank lines for the nouns and verbs, then gives lots of examples of different nouns and verbs that can fill in the blanks and use the new structure. We often have to take turns (going around the class one by one again) making sentences, answering questions, etc.
• We have to keep 2 homework notebooks; at the end of this period we hand in the notebook with the homework we've done for this day, and she returns the notebook we had turned in the day before with the homework corrected and maybe a short comment; otherwise she doesn't talk about the homework at all.

Period 2: 10:00-10:50 - same teacher, same room, same semi-circle, same seats

• It's pretty much a continuation of the first hour - more grammar, more practice questions, more workbook pages to do in class. The teacher has some printed material (vocabulary, prompts) that she shows the whole class - there are no handouts for individual students and the printed material is exactly the same for all the teachers of Level 1. She also has some pages with prepared questions and prompts to refer to for oral practice - again, exactly the same pages all the teachers have.

Period 3: 11:10-12:00 - same room, same semi-circle, same seats - different teacher

• This is supposed to be our pronunciation/reading class, and we use a different companion book to the main text.
• First the teacher gives us back our corrected homework from the previous class and the corrected dictation we took in the previous class; then she gives us a new dictation, taken from the reading we studied the previous day. Then she collects the dictation and home work we had been assigned.
• A new short reading (short paragraph) from the text is introduced, always in the same way: teacher reads while students listen; we go around the room, each student in turn reading out loud all or part of the reading; new vocabulary is introduced (this teacher does not use any other prepared materials); we go around orally reading and answering questions from the textbook about the reading.
• Then we have a short pronunciation lesson, not so much to pronounce sounds correctly as to be able to read Korean orally. There are certain letters in Korean whose sounds change depending on what letter the following word begins with, so each day we learn a new rule about how to pronounce such words together. These words are in the book; we just listen and repeat.
• The teacher has "conversations" with us using vocabulary we've been learning - and a lot of new vocabulary as it comes up - just to help us practice oral conversation (and probably to keep herself from being bored silly).
• She assigns the homework which is always the same: copy the new reading twice; write all the sentences from the previous day's dictation in which we made errors, and study the new reading for the next day's dictation.

Period 4: same room, same semi-circle, same seats, back to the first teacher again.

• Pretty much a continuation of the first and second classes. We have a third book that accompanies the other two - a workbook - and if we have finished all the grammar and practice from the first book we do workbook pages - sometimes on the spot, and sometimes she gives us time to read and write the answers first, and then answer one by one.
• She assigns the homework, which is always the same: copy the dialogue we learned in the first period twice, write the dialogue a third time substituting different verbs and nouns, write sentences using the new grammar structures but our own nouns and verbs 3X each, and then either more workbook pages or a short paragraph to write - or both.

After every four lessons we have a vocabulary test - we are given the words in our language and have to write the Korean word. The same test is given to every Level 1 student.

We will have a 2-day midterm exam in two weeks; I believe there are separate listening, writing, reading and speaking parts. It will be the same test for all Level 1 students.

Both our teachers know English, as well as most of the students in the class (and there are students to translate for those who don't), and they occasionally give a meaning in English, but 99% of the class is conducted in Korean: directions, grammar explanations, side comments and jokes, announcements, whatever.

There is no lab. There are CDs that come with our books with the dialogues we have to learn and other listening exercises; they are not assigned, and those with good listening skills probably never listen to them at home (but I spend a great deal of time with them!)

There are 14 Level 1 classes, and students were placed in their Level 1 class according to their placement test. Our class is Class 14, which is a "high" Level 1 class. Everyone in the class had taken at least some Korean before, and several are quite good (ethnic Koreans who have heard Korean all their lives, etc.). I think this is why we get the extra conversation practice, side comments etc. - and why our teachers speak extremely fast!! I cannot even imagine how the students who have not had any Korean before could keep up; most of us in this class, even the good ones (not me!), are mentally exhausted by the end of the four hours.

And that's how I spend my morning, 5 days a week.