Update

I know everyone is eagerly waiting for a video tour of my apartment, and it is coming. I'm having some technical problems, but those will be solved. Specifically, the file size is too large to upload, so I have to downgrade the resolution. Too bad, because you could have seen my apartment in dazzling HD video. Oh well.

So to tide you over, let me explain my teaching schedule to give you a sense of how I spend my days.

I work 6 days a week, only resting on Sunday. On Wednesdays and Saturdays I only have 1 class that is 3 hours long. On Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays I teach 2 classes that are 3 hours long, for a total of 6 hours per day (confused yet?).

In terms of the classes themselves, I have 5 different groups of students. Class sizes vary, from a low of 9 to a high of 15 (15 is the max number that any class can have). That may not seem like a huge spread, but in a room that is about 240 square feet it can make all the difference.

ChungDahm Institute, the company I work for, divides students by skill levels, not age, although all the students of a particular class are approximately the same age. The lowest level is called Engish Chip, or EC for short. This is further divided into 4 levels. I, for example, teach two classes of EC-3. The understanding level is still basic, so all the activities are grade-school level. Yet most of the kids in these classes are in elementary school.

The next tier is called Memory English, and is divided into 3 levels, called Mega, Giga, and Tera, in that order. I teach 2 Giga classes and one Tera class. This material is more intermediate, and correspondingly the students are mostly in middle-school or early high school. The readers in these classes are about 40-50 pages long, and have higher level vocabulary. It would be the equivalent of maybe 5th or 6th grade reading in the U.S.

Each class is highly structured; each day the format is the same, but the content differs. It is the same with the homework. Each class meets twice a week, and during the 1st class of the week the class takes 2 written tests over memorization and sentence structure. The 2nd class of the week an oral test is given, in which students have to recite selections that they have memorized. During class time, we go over reading comprehension, there are listening components, and there is writing practice, with a little speaking practice thrown in. Students get a chance to hone all of their skills, and in fact have no choice but to, since speaking Korean is strictly forbidden while class is in session. Each class has a 5 minute break every hour. I teach almost 6 hours straight most days, but it goes fast. Believe it or not, a lot of days I'm pressed for time!