Camp Fulbright

During orientation ETA's spend two weeks being involved in Camp Fulbright. It is an English immersion camp for Korean kids (anywhere from 8 to 17 years old) that has two purposes: to teach English to Korean children and teach ETA's how to teach. For those of us who have never taught before, the value of the camp is immeasurable.
A particularly challenging aspect is figuring out how to teach Korean students who have grown up with a different style of learning. Korean classes tend to be focused on memorization and repetition, which means that students can probably read and write fairly well but have a great deal of difficulty in speaking and hearing English. Since I am also taking Korean language courses, I can completely relate with the students. If I have to sum up the language learning experience, I have four words: it is very hard!
I got to teach my first and second class last week and here are a few tips I picked up. Foreign language teachers must be prepared to repeat directions over and over and over. For my first class, what was intended to be a lesson on establishing clear and concise rules (they were supposed to invent a game and make rules so everyone could understand) regressed to me flailing my arms in front of class while fruitlessly explaining the rules of the activity. Oh the irony.
Another lesson I learned is SP-EA-K S-L-OW-LY. Many ETA's vastly underestimated how much we had to slow down our speech. The problem was, Korean students were generally way too polite to point out that they had no idea what we were saying, so they just nodded their heads every time we asked if they understood. I was told that if a teacher can get half the class to repeat instructions, then you are having a good day.
Keep students busy and provide them with structure. The students I encountered felt very uncomfortable when they had to use their own judgment for the assignment. Most eventually started playing with their Korean-English dictionaries. Basically, one teaching generalization I have come up with is if it worked for me in college, don't use it here. That is by no means an exhaustive list and over time I'm sure I'll develop more rules in retrospect.
We are told that the purpose of ETA's is to provide Korean students the opportunity to actually communicate in English rather than to study the grammar and syntax of the language. Basically, I see it as find ways to keep students motivated and interested in learning English for their own fulfillment. I recognize now that that will be incredibly difficult because Korean students, especially high school students, work so hard for their college entrance exams. During the last year of high school, students take an incredibly rigorous and important exam that practically determines their futures. During testing day, all airplanes are grounded for a few hours to prevent distractions during the test. The goal is to get a high enough score to get into one of the SKY schools (Seoul University, Korea University, Yeongsei University). High school students will often times start class at 8 AM and go home at 10 PM (with a couple of breaks somewhere in there). On the plus side, college is apparently far less intense than high school.