Guitar Instruction English Application ProgramGuitar Instruction | English Immersion | South Korea The guitar has always been part of my life and I seem to take it with me where ever I go. My first experiences in teaching come from giving guitar lessons. I have taught guitar now to various levels for over twenty years. The guitar program in South Korea started with a handful of interested students. I found myself wanting to do more for my school. I also wanted to make a clear contribution as I was in a new place and starting a new career. After my first semester of teaching, I volunteered to give guitar lessons during my office hours, as time and the school would allow. Once the school heard me play guitar and once the administrators witnessed the language interaction taking place in our humble little guitar club, something wonderful happened. I came to school one day to find boxes and boxes of guitars. My co-teacher told me simply that today is guitar day. I helped the students unpack dozens of guitars, string and tune them, and set up a music classroom adjacent to the ESL classroom. This is one of the happiest days in my memory. After teaching a few classes, my school told me "We think you better teach guitar all the time." I was so happy. The real purpose of an ESL classrooms is to create an environment in which the students feel free and comfortable to experiment with the language, to try different sentence structures, to make mistakes, to learn from them and simply experience what it is to communicate with another person in a different language. The Guitar Instruction, English Application program created a constant and immediate need for the students to employ their language skills. All of them were highly motivated to learn the guitar. About half of them were equally motivated to learn English. The guitar, used as a mechanism of exchange, provided endless hours of student to student interaction and student to teacher interaction. While I don't believe in the "English Only" classroom rule, I do believe in an "English Mostly" classroom, as we were at heart an ESL class. The students were guided through coursework I had previously developed. We started with simple chords and scales. By the end of one year, about half of my students were able to transpose music from one key to another, to site read, and to play professional songs. We ended the year with a special Guitar Concert which I helped my school set up. The guitar concert was a big success. I believe it is important for musicians to have goals and to play in front of others. This gives a real sense of immediacy to our practice times. The students chose their own songs. This was a very important day for our school. Most of the faculty including the principal and vice-principal attended, an honor in South Korea. The program was so successful that we actually took it to the local community center as well. I taught public or open lessons to students of all ages, on a come and go basis. I am proud of this program and I believe it still exists today in my absence. The school even invited me to play at the graduation ceremony at the end of the year. The students played two songs and I played one. As I was leaving employment of the school, they had purchased even more guitars so that the students could practice at home. It was all music to my ears. The student's language skills improved in the two areas of most need for language students in South Korea: listening and speaking. South Korean students score very high on reading comprehension and the writing of acquired languages. However, the biggest need is in speaking and listening. Students were able to employ and hone their skills in these two areas on a constant basis, making clear progress and achieving an immediate reward for their efforts. My hope is that their language skills and musical skills will stay with them into adulthood. |
The newspaper article below featured one of my classes at and English Camp. The school was pleased to have attention brought to their school.
I was thrilled to be featured in an brochure for an English Camp Parent Day. We taught the students English songs such as Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Stand by Me.
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