Last night, I gave a presentation to the parents of the kids who will be moving up from elementary (6th grade) to middle school (7th grade) at the new school year – which starts in March in Korea. The curriculum undergoes major changes, both in public school and in hagwon. So the hagwon does a lot of orientation for parents of kids that move up. This is part of that. Curt spoke for over 2 hours. My bit was about 15 minutes. I’m speaking in a style that hopefully is understandable to at least a plurality of parents – slow, clearly enunciated – but there are no doubt parents that aren’t understanding my English.
In the presentation, I’m talking about my debate program – I’m trying to sell it, essentially. There is so much focus on exam-prep at the middle-school level, that a lot of the parents don’t see the benefit of a debate program or even of building speaking skills in general – there’s no speaking component to the national English exam, after all.
The video of the 3 kids’ before-and-after debating skills that I’m presenting is here, if you’re interested to look at it.
