Speaking Tests

I like my job. It's the best job that I've ever had. It provides me with time to follow my passions and I think that's following your passions really is the fire of a teacher's personality. That being said when I go to work I work hard.

My students are a good bunch, generally. There are many who are shy and do not enjoy English as much as they say they do. This is because they are polite, generally.

I try to enourage them as much as possible and lately I've decided to focus on getting them to come to me for the speaking tests. I think if they are encouraged by grading I can make them feel like they are achieving an easy grade in my class.

However, recently I've noticed that the students who don't like English do not come to any of the teachers but to me especially. I'm too intimidating in their minds no matter how friendly I am and they were discouraged by the other Korean teachers when they saw how busy I am.  So this week, I'm bit the drudgery bullet and I brought the speaking testing into my classes. I'm squeezing it into the times I'm having the students do a crossword or some word search when the stress of testing is in a convivial atmosphere.

It seems to be working in my lower levels best were shy students are getting warmth and attention and I get some smiles by soothing words. The words good and excellent are heard when I they try, as I feel my way towards a  balance of encouraging them to do what they can and pushing them towards what I think they can do.  It's an art so I don't expect quantifiable results like all these behaviorists treat teaching as. A calm and stable presence I am becoming.  I am getting better at keeping my temper at bad students. It's a process which I am still failing to explain into words but it seems to be working to quiet the students. The best I can surmise is that it is waiting rather than doing, negotiation rather than demanding, and stillness rather than movement. Yeah, that's a terrible explanation, but that's just what it feels like.