Hey everyone,

Yeah I know it's been 6 weeks since my last post. So how are things. Well unfortunately I haven't been able to do a lot of travelling because I was silly enough to run for the bus one evening in october and ended up spraining my foot. That meant three weeks in a bandage/ half cast thing and even now a few weeks after that was removed, I experience a lot of pain if I try to turn or if I am on my feet for a significant period of time (which is almost every day teaching).

I've managed to do a little travelling over the past 6 weeks. First I went to Gamcheon Culture Village in Busan. This is a beautiful village set into a hillside where most of the houses are covered and walls in art-work. It is a wonderful place and gave me a few good ideas on things we could do in Brixham to spruce the place up.

Towards the end of October there was the Cheoyang music and culture festival in Ulsan. There was lots of different international foods, some traditional korean performances including dancing and plays, as well as a jazz group. The festival ended with a Parade. I really enjoyed it but then I made a silly mistake. As I was leaving I saw my bus coming so I ran to the bus stop. As I got there, I turned and twisted the mid part of my foot. This caused me a lot of pain and the next day I had to go to hospital.

That was an experience in itself, although made much easier by having a korean friend who was able to translate. It started with them taking blood pressure and a blood sugar test - I have no idea why. Then they stuck a needle in my bum which was apparently a pain killer but just left me in more pain. Then came an X-ray where they thought I'd fractured my foot but a further MRI scan (very expensive) showed there was no fracture. my foot was bandaged and put in a half cast and then I was sent home but told I could work. This was probably bad advice considering all the health advice websites I've read since. The hospital visit cost me about £70 and that was after half of it was paid by my insurance - I'm so thankful we have the NHS in England. The next day I had to take time off work again to visit the hospital and get it checked by a foot specialist. And two weeks later I had a third visit to the hospital where they removed the cast because the pain was gone. It may have been too soon though as I still get pain sometimes. I can at least walk without pain now and go up stairs without a problem. It does mean my plans to hike up Sinbulsan mountain to see the silver grass fields and the beautiful views of the mountain trees changing colour is not going to happen.

Near my apartment is the Eonyang Castle. There was a special festival there in late October. It was very close so I was able to go visit it. There were music performances in the evening and the following day there was what I assume was a traditional shamanic performance. I assume this based on the fact there was an altar, offerings were given, there were lots of large flags with half human-half animal images and the music and dancing seemed very traditional. It was a very interesting thing to watch.

The schools have had sports days, festivals and competitions recently. They've also had exams so it's been quite a busy time for them. The middle school sports day was interesting because they did a form of wrestling which I'd never seen before. In the afternoon they also had a festival where the students sang, danced, played musical instruments and held a hilarious "miss Dukwang" show in which some of the boys dressed up as women, to the delight of everyone except my co-teacher. At the elementary school they also had a sports day which involved the kids performing a traditional farming song using 4 instruments. I was very impressed with them.

The elementary school had midterm exams last week and two of the four grades got quite bad results. I was feeling quite down after this, but there were a couple of reasons for it - firstly there was not enough time to get through the textbook lessons so we had to rush some of it, and secondly was the fact that they cancelled our review classes for those two grades to do a fire safety presentation - which meant the kids had no time to restudy what they had learned a few months ago. In the Middle School we've also had the first speaking tests and next week there are more speaking tests and end of year exams.

Teaching itself has been difficult as one of my last posts pointed out. Things have got slightly better since, but I have realised recently that the problem isn't just me - the other teachers in the school complain about their inability to control the middle school students too. I'm beginning to realise that the only discipline procedure used in the school seems to be hitting the kids which is never going to have the desired effect at their age. Still, I finally found a way to get their attention this week - by making them put their hands on their heads and close their eyes, my oldest class actually shut up. It only lasted for the few seconds while I got them to do that...and then they started talking again. But it's a start. I have also found a very successful short game which I am using in the beginning of my classes now - countdown (like the one on TV) which the kids seem to enjoy. In my after school classes I have changed what I am teaching to a project on "make your own country" (one that I previously did with my elementary school grade 5 & 6) because I found out the grade 1 of middle school were finding my classes too difficult. This project will enable them to learn lots of new vocabulary related to things like geography, weather, politics, economics and so on, as well as to be creative by making things like a flag, map, national anthem, tourism brochure, weather forecast and so on.

In elementary school, I have been focusing on teaching sight words this term. I taught my grade 5 and 6 the 100 most common words which apparently make up 50% of all words they would come across when reading any English text. I started doing the same with grade 3 and 4 but realised they weren't really picking any of it up because I wasn't giving them context, and when I found a textbook which taught only 4 sight words a lesson instead of the 10 I was trying to teach, I changed to using that textbook. I have also realised another assumption I had made - that if they knew the alphabet, they knew the sounds, was also wrong. They can recite the alphabet, but ask them what sound the letter makes and many of them have no idea. This is a problem because it means they cannot read even basic words like "cat" by sounding them out. Last lesson I decided to correct this and I started off teaching them the sounds of letters and how to put the sounds together to make a word. It was then wonderful to see one of the students who had been struggling all year with English get the answer right to a question. The look of surprise on his face when I said his answer was right, followed by the smile, was lovely. It has led me to the firm conclusion that focusing on teaching speaking to the early grades is completely the wrong thing to do. I am now convinced that teaching them the sounds of the alphabet, and how to use those sounds to put together words should be the first priority for teaching English to beginners. It helps them develop good pronunciation, it enables them to read words independently and therefore self-teach, and the boost they get in confidence can set them up strongly for later English teaching. And I have also observed the effects of when this doesn't happen - some of my middle school students cannot read words when I write them on the board, they struggle with the letter sounds. The rest of my lessons with my youngest students therefore will combine the textbook lessons focused on a few sight words with going over the sounds of letters and how to make simple words with them for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, grade 5 and 6 will do a project on Korean Food which will culminate in them creating a recipe book together (because I've also come to the conclusion that my job isn't so much to teach them about my culture as it is to teach them how to speak about their own).

Finally as it's been a long post - for Halloween I had my elementary kids making mummy's which they thoroughly enjoyed. And I've still been attending language exchange, using Memrise website for vocab and studying with a new textbook to help me pick up some more Korean. I am up to about 250 words now and it's nice because I have had a few experiences where people have said something to me in Korean and I've actually understood what they're saying. YAY! With less than three weeks to go until David and another friend Ross come over, I'm also getting excited.