|
E-mail allows us to bridge distances instantly. The cell-phone does the same and adds voice. Add the dimension of image and we have a web-cam. Combine the image and voice into a single device that sits nicely on your desk and you have a device that looks much like a regular telephone with a few additional buttons, and makes its connection through your internet. You now have a video-phone, the twenty-first century answer to teaching English between countries.
Two years ago I discovered VisualEdu Corporation, a family-run business out of Ilsan, South Korea that offers twenty or thirty-minute English lessons to some of the millions of South Koreans wishing to improve their English. After a couple of telephone interviews I was hired. During summer months fourteen hours separate the Midwest from South Korea; during winter months it is fifteen. VisualEdu had students it could offer me who want to have their English lessons anywhere between 7:00 PM and 12:00 midnight their time. Subtract two or three and change PM to AM and you’ll see what local times we are talking about. I learned quickly to be an early riser.
My students range in age from nine to fifty. Generally I have been teaching, these two years, One-on-one lessons. Occasionally I have taught groups of three or four. I pick up the headset of the video-phone, dial a five-digit number associated with the student listed on my weekly schedule, and the phone rings. Seongeun or Hoseok or whichever student I am scheduled to work with answers the video-phone and voilà, time and distance have been bridged. The connection is instantaneous. The picture is good, the sound is good. We do a bit of “small talk” to warm up and then, using one of the many textbooks that VisualEdu has provided me, we work from a lesson that will encourage my student to speak.
The focus is on speaking, which means we can also get some grammar into our lesson, and (you guessed it) a bit of vocabulary work. Many of the lessons have short readings, which allow us to work on pronunciation, idioms, reading comprehension, and more vocabulary. I even discovered a useful exercise, one where I have my student repeat a sentence from the reading or a vocabulary exercise. Read the sentence, and then look at me and repeat it. Students find it tough but are challenged. Koreans are no different than people of other nationalities—some like to talk, some don’t. Because these are one-on-one lessons, patience is essential.
Patience is also helpful to have in good quantity because, like all technology, there are occasional problems. The video-phone runs through a server in Korea. Therefore, if the server is experiencing problems, the video-phone will not work correctly. But ninety-five percent of the time it works very well. For the other five percent, you grin and bear it. It never does any good to lose your patience. Do so, and your students, their parents, and your employer will lose respect for you. And for Koreans, respect means a lot.
Of course you want to be paid for your work. I have never experienced any problem being paid by VisualEdu. They have treated me well. Remember also that what you are worth as a teacher depends a lot on how you sell yourself. Koreans expect you to negotiate your worth, which translates into your salary. Bring the best of yourself as a teacher, and don’t forget your business sense. This is, after all, a business. And your students (and their parents) will know when you are giving them their money’s worth. |
PHOTO
From 9 People
