I do “telephone teaching” sometimes, with the elementary students. Not very many, but about a half-dozen a week or so. I have some rules about how this works, since I designed the concept and suggested it as a way to build goodwill from parents (parents love the telephone teaching because they get to see their child actually using English on the phone – it’s a demonstration of the hagwon’s commitment to the students). So really, the telephone teaching is a sort of marketing gimmick more than it’s a valid pedogogical technique.
And it’s true that most of the students are pretty low ability. One thing that I do is that I ask the student to draw a picture based on something we’ve attempted to talk about. The conversations are pretty simple: “What do you like? What are you doing right now? What will you do this weekend?” Anyway, I tell them to draw something and present it to me the next time I see them. It’s a sort of comprehension test, too, then, since if I get the wrong picture (or no picture), I know they haven’t understood.
Jeonghyeon drew for me a Purple Cat and Yellow Lion, based on telephone instructions, on some scrap paper. She presented it to me yesterday, proudly.
What I’m listening to right now.
Madonna, “Frozen.”
I distinctly remember when this song came out, in 1998. I remember I was sitting in the Burger King in Craig, Alaska. The video and song came on, on the TV in the restaurant. It was raining outside. It’s always raining in Craig, Alaska. It’s weird how some songs associate to such vivid memories.
