How to Teach Critical Thinking to ESL Students in South Korea at Almost Any Level
In the best of times, teaching ESL in South Korea is about far more than language acquisition. For advanced students, it is about inspiring boundless English language application. For any level learner, effective ESL education means inviting awareness of the potential for language application. In other words, there is no point in developing fluency without simultaneously developing the human behind it. There is every need to use teaching ESL as a vehicle for fostering self awareness and awakening higher consciousness in a rapidly evolving world.
How do we meet students at their level of comprehension while also inviting them up to exercise critical thought and relate literature and film themes to their real lives? Here I will share how I ensure that my lessons are concrete enough to meet students exactly where they are. Several of my classes have been lower level for their grade in both critical thinking skills and fluency and yet we managed to have awesome, fully loaded discussions that were turning points for the students' emotional investment in learning.
I always begin laying the foundation by asking the most basic comprehension questions possible. No matter how skilled the pupils, a proper warm up is vital. I give students two answer options. Sometimes the second answer option is ridiculous to provide humor and to build their confidence so I can affirm them at every moment. This enhances their willingness to participate when things get more challenging.
We might begin with: "Who's the main character? Are they a boy or a girl? Is the setting in the forest or the city? Are they happy or unhappy about situation x? Are they excited or scared about situation x? Why? Any other feelings you notice? Describe their problem. What are their choices? What seems good about this choice? What seems tricky about this choice? Who is helping them? Who is against them? Why? What is the bad guy's motivation? Why? What happened to character z to make them angry and hurt so they would do this?"
We go at a pace that is comfortable for the students, make lists and charts on the board together, re-read out loud together and discuss key words and idioms as needed. Subjective answers to subjective questions are always received as correct and valuable. If the students are doing well without me providing answer options, we move on to open ended answers. If they begin to struggle, we return to choosing between two answer options. I am careful to only "tell" the minimum, just enough to provide the container for exploration. The discussions are majority students' voices. I do my best to reflect any inaccurate answer as a chance to look more carefully.
When comprehension is established, we move on to relating to the characters and events: "Who here has had this problem before or known someone who has? What were your choices? Raise your hand if you are similar/different to character x. How? Who here agrees/disagrees with choice x? Why?"
In one of the rudimentary classes I mentioned earlier, we read "Boys Start the War" by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Its theme is rivalry between boys and girls. We outlined all the ways the boys and girls think they are different. We went over why the boys were upset and how the girls reacted and how both sides kept seeking revenge on each other until kids started to get hurt. Book details were both spoken and written down, on the board, on paper, in teams and individually. We noted that the reason the boy characters were upset did not have anything to do with the girls they blamed, but with their loss of other male friends. "Raise your hand if you have been mean to someone because you were actually sad about losing someone else. Would you like to share your story?"
As a class we became clear on "rivalry," as when two sides think they can't both share something, that one side has to "win" over the other. Every student could relate very much to this theme and could talk about examples of it in their life. Every student agreed that boy/girl rivalry never stops and there does not seem to be a clear solution in real life. We talked about gender role: "What are boys/girls taught to do? To be? How to act? How to talk? How to dress? How to behave? What are jobs/activities "for only" boys/girls? What is not "okay" for boys/girls to do/be/act like/look like? Who decides what is and is not "okay" for boys? For girls? What happens if we don't follow these rules? Who can change or disagree with these spoken and unspoken "rules" that we all live with? How are the "rules" enforced in our communities? By parents? By teachers? Friends? Presidents? Whole cultures? Everyone we know? What happens to the boys/girls who choose to go against these rules? What happens to boys/girls who naturally fall outside these rules, for example, being a very tall girl or a shorter boy? How do these "rules" for boys vs. girls hurt us? Describe a time you wanted to do/be/have something that was outside of your gender expectations. How did you feel? Did you do it anyway? What happened? What were the thoughts in your mind? Did you feel like you had to do it secretly? Were there people you hid it from? How young were you when you understood your role as a boy/girl? How do we learn these roles? How are we punished for breaking them? Can punishment be unspoken, like being ignored or not chosen? Describe how gender roles are changing. Describe someone you know of who is breaking gender rules. What is special about them? What do you notice about their environment and the people around them? What are examples of their bravery?"
We continued this discussion over one month, in eight classes. Every student could come up with things they wanted or wondered about that fell outside their gender role and so they felt they are not free to try it. One female student wanted to cut her hair short, but her mom said no. Another male student said sadly, "I LOVE the color pink! But I have to settle for red, because there are no pink clothes in the boys section."
"When we feel we are not free to be something that a person of the opposite gender is free to be, sometimes we feel angry, upset, or jealous. We are not really angry at them, but hurt because we are not free. Raise your hand if you agree." All hands raised. "Examples? Stories?" We had arrived at a true understanding for the motives of all the characters in the novel.
On the final day, I introduced the students to a practice called gender-neutral parenting. "Neutral means not taking sides. Gender-neutral parenting is when parents allow their kids to explore things for both their own gender and the opposite gender. Girls can play with cars, trucks, or dolls. Boys can wear boys clothes or the sparkly dress from the girls section." Gender-neutral parenting is an increasingly popular practice in cities like Boulder (Colorado, U.S.) and other places where counterculture is a identity and disengagement from the establishment is a lifestyle. We talked about how these parents are choosing schools for their kids where teachers are open-minded and supportive: when a child expresses curiosity about something usually associated with their opposite gender, they are not punished or redirected. Instead, they are encouraged to explore their curiosity fully. We discussed how these parents are preparing their children to have courage and communication skills to handle negative reactions to their choices. We acknowledged how the field is not equal and boys are less free to cross gender lines than girls are, while boys are more free than girls in other areas. I provided as many photo and video examples as I could, specifically a short clip about a young male ballet dancer talking about how although he gets made fun of all the time, doing what he loves every day makes the challenges seem very small: he manages by surrounding himself with people who support his choices.
I prepared the students very carefully to be open and respectful of examples of gender-neutrality. I took care to honor the whole spectrum of student reactions. Every student was surprised and moved. All but one expressed whole-hearted support for gender-neutral parenting. That particular student said that while he was uncomfortable with some of the examples and against the idea of boys dressing like girls, he was simultaneously in awe of the courage shown by the boys who did. It was actually he who I was most proud of for honoring his own beliefs while also seeing the best in the other side. That kind of honesty is the best anyone can hope for. He was formerly a very apathetic student and this month was the month he started to spark and from that month on, his effort was commendable.
It is my greatest hope that Korean ESL students of today can see studying English as more than just a necessary means to gain the approval of others, job security and global economic traction. It is my hope that they might see English instead as a way to unlock the opposite hemisphere of their minds. We're all our own unique balance of yin and yang. If our first language is our yin, the gift we received subconsciously from our mothers upon birth (and from other participants in our early development), our second language is our yang, the gift we actively pursue for ourselves to consciously stoke the fires of our ever expanding awareness.