Welcome back again! 🙂 This week, I want to give an introduction to the teaching program I was in — TaLK. I stayed in South Korea for one year doing this program and had a superb experience and can’t wait to tell you more about it! (P.S. I was originally supposed to stay for 6 months, but I ended up extending to one year because it was just that amazing!)
Teach and Learn in Korea (TaLK) was established in 2008 by the South Korean government as a program for undergraduates and recent graduates to work as an international English teacher in South Korea. TaLK scholars are recruited from the countries of Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and the U.K. The program gives an opportunity for us to contribute our English speaking abilities to schools in rural areas. This can help benefit areas where English learning may have been previously non-existent or limited. TaLK scholars are trained in an intensive one-month orientation before the official work placement. We learn and develop essential ESL teaching skills through lectures, practicum courses, special speakers and cultural activities. We also had Korean night classes to learn and improve our Korean language skills. The classes we took were very informative and helped with preparing us for our future work. Some of the classes taught included classroom management, story telling, lesson planning, co-teaching, solo-teaching, cooperative learning, project-based learning, evaluation, teaching listening, teaching writing and many more. We also had a cultural trip during the orientation to learn more about Korean traditional culture and participated in fun cultural activities such as museum and landmark exploring, taffy and rice-cake making. The program also provides support with mentor teachers and co-teachers at our school to assist us with any problems or questions that we have.
Please check out their website for more information!
Next week, I will talk about how I got into the TaLK program, the application process, interviews and tips! Stay tuned 🙂
and don’t be afraid to ask me any questions! 😀
