How to Ace Your Open Class Teaching English in Korea

If you’re in the English Program in Korea, chances are you will have to do an open class at somepoint. What is an open class? It’s where parents, teachers, and even your principal or vice principal can come and observe your teaching. If you’re teaching in Korea and want some tips and tricks for your open class or just want to learn more about how to do it, stay tuned.

Tips and advice

Here are a few quick and easy tips that can help you plan a great class:

1. Keep instructions simple, explain one step at a time

2. Use pictures in addition to words to provide context

3. Make the activities interactive and take every opportunity for students to speak the language

4. Find language that will be useful for the students (that’s the whole point of learning a second language!)

5. For timing, I recommend each activity take around 10-15 minutes depending on the length of the class, and wrap up and warm up taking no more than 5-7 minutes.

6. Take any feedback with a grain of salt.

Here is a step by step guide to help you plan your open class:

1. Select a lesson topic

   This could be anything from making a phone call to buying something at the store to giving directions. What ever you choose, it’s important to keep it simple in the key expressions you will teach and adjust to the level of your ESL learners. For elementary aged students, I usually go with one main key expression such as ‘I like …….’, a question ‘Do you like ……?’ and the answer to help student build their sentence pattern recognition (ie. ‘Yes, I do’ vs. ‘Yes, I am’).

2. Plan your activities

   A. Pre-teaching the vocabulary

   1. When planning an ESL lesson I’m developing from scratch, I start by pre-teaching the vocabulary. I start by showing a picture and ask students what they see. Sometimes the class is able to guess the vocabulary word before I tell them what it is. Otherwise in the next slide I show the picture with the word and have them repeat after me. I next teach the key expression and work to put the language into context. Instead of having them read sentences off a slide, I try to find a video that shows how the language might be used in an everyday situation. I might also do a short roleplay with my coteacher when I am working with one to demonstrate how the language can be used.

      B. Drilling

   2. In the next part of the lesson, I generally do an activity that let’s the students practice the key expressions. Some great games include pass the ball, where students must pass a ball (or pencil case, or other object) around while music plays. When the music stops, the person holding the item must answer a question. As a general rule, it’s important to do SPEAKING activities, especially for Korean students. Many people of older generations learned English grammar only by listening to a teacher, but not practicing speaking. As a result, there are many people who can perfectly read and understand English, but feel nervous or embarrassed when they try to speak. Because of this, as a teacher its critically important you help student practice speaking. Also, they can do worksheets on their own at home to reinforce what they’ve learned, but with you there they can practice listening to how words are pronounced and sound, an invaluable tool for any language learner. My advice to anyone teaching English abroad is to take every opportunity to maximize students speaking in class, whether that be practicing student to student with a partner, or whole class to teacher, or student to teacher. Make the class interactive and it’s bound to go well.

      C. Production

   3. In the last part of the lesson, I usually try to focus on an activity that allows students to use the language they’ve learned independently. One great activity for this is role play. Many of my elementary aged students love being hams and acting out different stories, which makes the learning feel like play rather than work. If I’m doing roleplay, I find an example video (generally a cartoon) that uses the key expressions. I then divide students into groups, usually of 4-5 or however many parts there are in the roleplay and let them practice. At the end of the activity, I let 1-2 groups act out the mini play in front of the class, sometimes giving them props. Roleplay works with all ages and is a great way to put language into context.

      D. Wrap up

   4. I finish the class by letting them know how well they did and sometimes I preview the next lesson.