 Eric from Etiqued here for a very special live stream. Just let me know if you can see me and if you can see my friend, Robin right here. Hi, Robin. Hello, and I would like to welcome my audience because we're both going live on our channels. So it might be a little confusing for both of our audiences, but I have my audience. Eric has his audience. So hello to my audience and Eric's audience. Yeah, guys, we're doing something very special. The first time we've done it, it's actually we are streaming on two YouTube channels at the same time. So we're on my friend, Robin's channel. It's a YouTube channel for English teachers where he goes live and he helps English learners and English teachers, obviously, and my channel. So if everything's working, you can do both of them. What's your channel? Etiqued English teachers. Okay, and I'm doing mine from Learn English Live. Wow. So Robin, please introduce yourself. Hello, my name is Robin Shaw and I am a YouTuber and I'm also a professor here in South Korea. I've been living in South Korea for about 23 years now teaching English at all levels. And I started YouTube about eight years ago. So I've been building a few YouTube channels and that's about it for me. How about yourself? Can you introduce yourself? Well, actually I just heard from some of the viewers. They said that Eric, you can't hear me. Guys, can you hear me now? Because I added myself to the stream. So we're trying something very new right now. So if you can hear me, just put it in there. We're doing something very new. We're dual streaming. Okay, the audio is good now. Thank you so much. I'm gonna ask my audience. Can you hear and see both of us? Let me know in my chat. Okay, so my friend, Robin just introduced himself. He's been working in Korea for a while. He's a great teacher and he also has a couple of YouTube channels. Very creative, creates a lot of content for English learners. My name is Eric and I'm an English teacher also in South Korea and I've got a YouTube channel for teachers. Okay, let me just see. I think everyone's there. Okay, everyone can hear. So guys, if you've got any questions for Robin, please put it in the comments below. He has some great channels. This one is a live channel for English learners and he also has the Shore English Online YouTube channel. You should check it out. And the difference between our channels is I teach students directly and you teach teachers like me and I have learned a lot from you. So thank you for making me a better teacher. Well, Robin, you've been a teacher for a long time and one of the things you told me is that you actually, you've recruited teachers in the past and I was curious what do you look for in a good teacher when you recruit them? Yeah, being in Korea for such a long time, I've done multiple jobs, not just teaching but recruiting like you said and I haven't recruited in a long, long time but at that time is trying to convince teachers to come to Korea. So that was the biggest obstacle because a lot of teachers were thinking, South Korea is close to North Korea. Is it dangerous? What's the culture like? There's a lot of teachers worried about coming here. And most of my job at that time was convincing teachers, it's okay, Korea's a great place to come and live and teach. And then from that, I looked for kind of open-minded, easy-going teachers. Korea is like every country has a unique culture and sometimes that culture, well, it can cause culture shock and teachers coming to Korea sometimes have that culture shock and I've had teachers who've come to Korea and they've left Korea within a week, not because of the job itself but more or less they just couldn't, they didn't like the food or they didn't like the weather. There was all kinds of excuses but so the teachers, I wanted teachers that could adapt well. I think that's so important. Someone that adapts well, someone that's trustworthy, someone that I think it's also important to be able to get along with people too. When you're working with a team, you want someone that can easily join the team and isn't too difficult. I think that's the way I see it. Yes, how did you come here? Were you recruited or did you just have a friend here already? I taught in South Africa where I'm from and I wanted to see the world because South Africa is quite far removed from most places being in the southern tip of Africa and I did some research on countries to go to with good programs and good reputation and stumbled across South Korea and I thought, oh, that might be interesting and so the first year I went on the internet, I found someone a small school in a very rural part of Korea down in the south and I've been here ever since. I'm moving to different schools and getting different types of experience at elementary level, middle school, high school and now finally at university. Yes, I think if you survive in Korea over two years then you can survive a lot longer like me and you. I do have a few questions from my audience, Eric, if you could answer quickly. How long have you been teaching in Korea? I've been teaching in Korea for 11 years, I think. 11, 12 years, you tend to forget the years now and by the way, guys, if you've got any questions on my side for Robin, please put it here. I'm following around on my phone, just checking all the messages. And one of my students asked, how did we meet? Well, this is interesting. I don't know, do you wanna answer it? Well, I don't have a good memory. I don't know who reached out first. Was it me reaching out to you? You reached out first. Okay. Yeah, so Robin, like the YouTuber community we're always looking around or at least I'm also always looking around for people to work with. And if someone that you can collaborate with or just chat to, it's very important to build these relationships. And Robin reached out to me first. He sent me a message. And of course I checked out his channel and I was really impressed with the amount of work and dedication he had or he has. And then one day you came down to Daegu and we had lunch together and that was the first time. Yeah, so I often reach out to many teachers and not many reply, you replied because I reached out to you because I saw your channel and I saw the hard work you're doing. A lot of people, I'm sure your audience, even my audience, they don't really know how hard it is to run and build a YouTube channel. It takes many, many hours during the week and we don't get much money for this for the amount of time we put in. You really have to love what you're doing to invest so much time. So I saw your channel and wow, this guy's doing a really great job and still congratulations on the growth. I'm always impressed when I see your hard work, diligence and the growth. Yeah, I feel like it's something I have to do. It's not just a side hustle or something that is fun for a moment. It's so important to reach out and be able to learn new things and then share it with people too. I think we've got an amazing opportunity. And one of our teachers here, actually this is Paul and he also has a channel called Hardboiled English. And he said, I visited Korea and loved it, but I'm curious, what initially drew you guys to Korea? So you asked me that, what about you? What drew you to Korea? I graduated university. I was a young guy at that time and I was an English major. And like many English majors, you have a student loan and we don't have a job upon graduation. But Korea, not just Korea, but at that time I had to choose between Korea, Japan and Taiwan. They were offering a job, a house and airfare. That's a pretty good deal. You know, when you're newly graduated and you get a job, you get the plane ticket, you get a home to stay in, that's a really attractive offer. And I took that offer to start working immediately, getting experience. I plan to stay in Korea just one year. Yeah, everybody just wanted it. And then returned to Canada. But I didn't imagine, I couldn't imagine that I would love Korea so much and that it's not bad here, it's not bad at all. Do you have another question? Because I've got one more. I have a lot of questions for you. Okay, let's do one of yours and then we'll get to Kailash. I'm just scanning my... By the way guys, my sound was off earlier. I want to say welcome to the Deal live stream. We're actually streaming on my channel and on one of Robin's channels. It's called Learn English Live, I think it is, Live English Classes. And but Robin also has another channel called Sure English Online, and which is very successful, but that's a practice channel. This is the real thing. Yeah, I see hardboiled English is also in my chat. He's watching both of us, both of our channels. But I don't want to steal. You know, actually we do our live streams similar time every week and I don't want to steal your audience at all. So I try to watch Eric as much as I can. Do you plan to stay in Korea forever? To be honest, you know, I'm getting a bit antsy and I want to move, I want to have new experiences. You know, one of the questions, and I'm going to answer that further, I just wanted to add this to it. So Kailash asked, could you describe your difficult time in your current area? And the truth is right now in Korea, I've got a good job, I'm safe, I've got food and I've got time to devote to my YouTube or to writing books, my projects. But personally, I feel kind of lonely and I'm also getting a bit bored of Korea because I've almost done everything there is to do in Korea and the world is big and time is going by. So unless there's something that keeps me here like a job or, you know, if I meet someone, I'll stay. But actually, you know, I feel like moving someplace and trying something new. I'm not sure if it's gonna happen. Is it because of your recent trip back to South Africa? No, it was nice seeing something different, but my trip to South Africa was good to see my family, but I don't plan on moving back to South Africa either. Okay, we live in different cities. So Eric and I can meet whenever we want. He lives about three hours away from me by train or bus or car, how long by car? But I would love it if you moved up to the Seoul area. I think there's a lot of things we could do together to build your channel and help with mine. So please, before you leave Korea, please come up to the Seoul area. I'll do my best because I see some friends on social media like Instagram and there's so much to do, so many great people there. And obviously, I'd love to work with you because having someone in your life with similar interests and where your goals also kind of work together, it speeds things up and you'll get further. There's a great African proverb where if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. Okay, I understand the loneliness part and I think COVID attributed a lot to that, especially these days. But yeah, I think you should give Korea at least another five years. I'll think about it. Okay, let's talk about English because I got a lot of English questions. Let's do it. Someone asks about Hollywood movies. They're asking what's a good way to watch Hollywood movies and I guess what's your opinion about, should students be watching Hollywood movies or should teachers be using them as teaching material in the classroom? Good question and I will say yes and yes, but with a small asterisk next to it, Hollywood movies, they use current English, they use current slang, they use expressions that are useful to learn that you won't get in a book because books get older, but with new Hollywood movies, they use English that is current. For teachers, it's also useful because you can get your students interested in these movies they watch and teach them through those because let's say you've got kids that are interested in Marvel, then you can create these role plays using the characters or you can get them to watch certain parts and try and speak the same way. If you find some of the characters from a movie that have clear pronunciation, you can use those as an example. Now, the way that you're supposed to learn it, it'll help you if you start combining your skills. So let's say you watch a movie or a Netflix show and you've got the subtitles underneath, you'll also be reading and once you watched a scene, try and remember or try and practice it out loud, try and repeat it. So if you just sit there passively and watch the movie, you won't learn a lot, but if you apply what you see, what you read and you repeat it, maybe you write it down if there's some vocabulary that you don't know that they say, go and find out what it means and then use it in a different sentence, then you're going to make more connections and learn faster. I would add to that for students. Students can be eager or they might think, it's important to understand a Hollywood movie. That is kind of an indicator of being fluent to them. And I would say not necessarily, there's millions of people around the world that use business English, which is kind of an international English. They don't need a Hollywood movie slang or idioms to help them do business or advance in their career. But when students approach a movie, I always tell them, before you start with a movie, start with a smaller chunk of material, like a TV show, like a 20 minute, maximum 30 minutes before you try to get into Marvel movies, which can go beyond two hours. That could be overwhelming to some students. Same with books. A lot of my students, I'm going to learn English so they pick up Harry Potter. Harry Potter book is like, that's not a starting book. These things are thick and they're quite advanced. I know they're considered children's books, but the English in them is for upper intermediate advanced users. So I would say to those students, again, don't start with these Harry Potter books, start with a smaller pieces of material. Work yourself up to Harry Potter. I like what a lot of students, English learners that I know, they watch something like Friends. I know BTS, their famous, their leader speaks English quite well and they asked him, how did you learn English? And he said, well, he watched the Friends episodes and what he would do is he would watch it with Korean subtitles first and then he would watch it with English subtitles and then he would watch it with no subtitles. But once again, like you said, it's important to start with maybe the shorter parts and what's important. I would add another level to that. Watch it first in your language, with your language subtitles to enjoy the entertainment of it. So the first time just watch it as a, you know, understand it in your language. To appreciate the humor. Be entertained by it. You got a good structure of what's happening there. Okay, once the entertainment's gone, now it's study time. I'll watch it with the subtitles. You can read out loud, you can just practice reading and then eventually you get to no subtitles. So it depends on the student, each student has their way of learning, but certainly I would agree Friends is a good piece to start studying English with. Yeah, great advice. I really enjoyed doing that. Yeah, it's so nice to work with someone, you know, because you always pick up something new and that's why I like this live stream because I learned so much. I've got a different type of question here. Oh, so Amy asked, Robin, what's the name of your channel? Robin's channel is, what is this channel called? This channel is called Learn English Live. I only do live streams on this channel. Right, so Learn English Live and then his other channel is called Shore Online English. But we've got an interesting question. It's not about, it's not about English. It's actually Habib says here, thank you for being a great inspiration. My question is, I opened up a language school to teach English in Morocco, but I'm struggling to find students. What do you think I should focus on when it comes to marketing? What are your best marketing strategies I can follow? Now, this is an interesting question to me because I've never had this question and it kind of forces us to think about, you know, how would you go about marketing something? Do you have any ideas or? Yes, I do. I, in 2016, I opened up a language school with a Korean partner of mine and we had the same problem. How do we get students? What I did, the first thing I did was I did volunteer, I volunteered at the community center. There's a local community center. I volunteered there to teach English. So I only went there once a week and I taught, the school I opened was teaching kids. At the volunteer center, I was teaching adults. I was teaching the moms, the grandparents, and then they brought their children and they know me, they liked me, they felt comfortable with me, they started to bring to my school. And then another thing I offered was because I was teaching kids, I offered a morning, free morning class for the moms. Free, so every day for that class was 45 minutes. The moms would come to the school, I would teach them for free and then of course they know me, they trust me and then they would bring their kids and that worked well. I had to close that school for other reasons but offering some free service to the community really helped make me known, trusted. So of course we had the traditional ways of advertisements and sending out advertisements to thousands of houses, but that wasn't very effective. The offering some sort of free service to the community really brought in the kids. I think it's so important when I look at successful language schools, they've been integrated into the community. So the parents know the teachers and they know the owner and the owner knows all the kids and it's really important to establish yourself within that community. And I think that's what you did with your school by getting to know the parents and offering to help for free. So yeah, if you're not well known in the area already, you've got to create those connections and earn their trust and know who you are. So that's a great tip. Do you tell your students about your YouTube channel? Yeah, but it's kind of weird, you know? It's, I don't like self-promoting with my students. So, but you know, I don't want them to find out or be surprised by it and feel like I didn't tell them on purpose. So what I tell them usually is like, oh, guys, by the way, I've got this channel but it's very boring because it's for teachers. So it's there if you want to see it, but it's not, it's going to be very boring. So that's what I usually tell mine. Yeah, for me, I don't tell them. On the first, in the first class I'll mention, I also do YouTube and, but I don't promote it to my students, but some of them find me. So those are the students I like because they decided to search and sometimes they say hi in the live stream. I could see none of them are saying hi in my live stream today. Oh, that's nice. Well, we've got a good English question, actually. Sorry for taking up all the questions. Oh, wait, your audience goes next. I don't want to take up all the time. Hardboiling English. Do students in Korea use YouTube to supplement their learning? My students love YouTube, but I think they just use it mainly for entertainment, not learning. Yeah, there are other channels that they use for learning. So actually I don't, it's so difficult for me to edit videos and to work. So I go to this study room. I pay for a study room once a month and I go in and many students are in there. And the way that they study is they've, they've got video lessons on other platforms. So I don't think they actually, they use YouTube strictly for entertainment, I feel like. You know, the mukbangs and the gaming videos. I might be wrong, but I see them on different platforms. I think there's many companies, education companies that have their own video platforms. And they're very successful at marketing. Very professional, yeah. But YouTube itself, they don't watch my videos for to learn English. My audience is about 2%, Korean. So for my, both my channels actually, although I'm in Korea, my audience is not Korean. How about your audience? Do you know the numbers on? Yeah, Korea is probably just me watching my own videos. No, most of my audience, it's 15% USA, 15% India. And then, yeah, then it's kind of spread out over South America and the Middle East and also some in the Philippines and places like that. So, yeah, not many in Korea. Yeah, so Koreans don't really like our channels, I guess. We should, we should start a mukbang or a gaming channel. Here's a question by Nelson and he said, how to deal with a bunch of vocabulary when reading a book? Is it appropriate to have a good dictionary? Yeah, I think reading is key to learning English. And, you know, when you're answering these questions, it's important to know like how old you are. You know, there's a big difference if a 10 year old starts reading English and a 40 year old starts trying to pick up the language. The younger you are, the easier it'll be to pick up the language and start reading. And then, you know, when you encounter new vocabulary, it depends on the student. I try to train students to not go to the dictionary unless they absolutely need to. So I want them to practice figuring out the words or guessing the words by context as much as possible and not stop the flow of reading. So, you know, you could read, you hit a word, okay, you go into the dictionary and writing it in your notebook, you're kind of stopping the flow of reading. So, yeah, sometimes you have to check the dictionary. I understand that, but I usually tell my students, if you don't understand the word, you know, try to guess, is it essential that I go to the dictionary right now? And if it's not, please just keep going, try to get that flow, keep reading. And it's very important to read at your level. So again, if a student says, I'm having difficulty reading these Harry Potter books, I'm like, stop right now, that's not your level. So I usually tell students, you should, when choosing some reading material, you should definitely understand more than 90% of the page. And I would say closer to 95% of the page giving just one or two new vocabulary a page, and that will help you increase your reading speed, guessing. You're not gonna be overwhelmed by always going to the dictionary. And I stress reading quantity over quality. So it's not important that you understand 100% of all vocabulary on every page. I think it's more important to read a lot. And by reading a lot, you will get better at guessing and learning the words and vocabulary without going to the dictionary. Yeah, I think it's so important what you mentioned about being level appropriate, because if a student has to read something and they don't understand that they're not gonna enjoy it, and they're also going to feel dumb and they don't want to continue reading. So if it's something that they can understand easily and they enjoy it, they feel very good about that. Hi, Robin and Eric. What is the secret to learn faster English? I wish I could put that in a bottle, how to learn English quickly and just I'd make a lot of money. I usually tell my students, no, there's no such thing as fast. It's to learn a language requires hard work, wherever you are, wherever you are in the world, whatever language you gotta put in the time, effort. No quick fix. The quicker you understand that it's a lot of work, the faster you'll learn the language. If you're always trying to take these shortcuts, you could spend years trying to learn a language. So the quicker you learn, hey, I have to give this language time. I have to study a lot. The quicker you'll learn it. Yeah, I think, you know, accepting that there's no quick fix. You're not just gonna get it. I think in today's environments, a lot of people are promising you things that are easy and quick and it doesn't hurt. But if you want to get good at something, you're going to have to invest the time. But I do want to say that there's also a way of doing it, understanding how to improve. So having a game plan, how much are you going to read? What type of topics are you interested in? How will you improve your vocabulary? Because a lot of people perhaps they try to learn something, but not in the best possible way. So your question might be, well, guys, what is the best way to learn English? And that might be difficult too. That is our role. Our role, because you're teaching teachers, I'm teaching students, our role is to point. They come to us and we say, go take a look at this. Or go do this. We're pointing, giving the advice. That's our role. So if we're the guides, and if we're good teachers, we're good guides, and if we're greedy teachers, we're advertising you can learn English in 30 days. But we're not that way. But our role is to point. So they come to our channels and we say, look at this video, look at the content. This is going to help you become a teacher or a better student. That's our role. And I think both of us help very well students who listen to us. Yeah, my job, I feel exactly like you said, the more I've been teaching, the more I realize it's not just about me teaching, it's about me getting the students to interact with the language and to enjoy it. And just for me to speak less and do more pointing, getting them to practice with each other. And then obviously, I know certain mistakes that students are bound to make and how to fix it. You get that with experience, but the more I teach the less I actually speak or instruct. When I have a class, I have them at the university, I have them for 15 weeks. But I don't, I look at the big picture, they're going to be learning English long after they leave my class. So I have to give them a positive experience, teach them, okay, it's not something that's impossible. And you can do a lot by yourself. So yeah, I don't have enough time to individually fix their English. I do what I can and give them tips. But a large portion of what I do is, okay, this is how you can start writing. And if you're interested in writing, here are some other resources outside the class. Here is how you can start speaking. And yeah, I don't have enough time to speak with every student, but here are some resources or clubs or other things you could do to continue. Some students look where you're pointing and some students are looking at their phone. Is the phone a problem in your class? No, I feel like I've, with my students, I've gained an understanding of it. And I understand, you know, with their phones, I give them a short break in between class to check their phone quickly and to go to the loo. You know, I've got very long classes. It's about a hundred minutes long. So we take a break. And you know, I also believe as a teacher, it's your job to have your students engaged so that they don't feel like they need to look at their phone. Actually, for a lot of them, it's therapy being without their phone. You know, they're so connected to it all the time. So when I tell them, I actually use the phone in class. So when I start my classes, I often tell my students, okay, guys, I want you to find a photo from your weekend and you have to share it with your group. And I put them into groups so they can use their phone as long as they pay attention while I'm speaking or they're friend speaking. And because the other thing I do as a teacher is I'm constantly checking in with them and asking them questions, you know, not just for understanding, but they know that at any moments, I'm going to ask them to perform so they've got to pay attention. So I think it's also up to us as teachers and students to learn, you know, how to get our students to be excited about the class. How many students are in your class usually? Now 16 to 20. So it's not a very large class. I'm dealing with 35 to 45. Okay, that's a different one. We will have different experiences what's happens in the classroom. A couple of questions here. What do you think about? What do you tell students? All right, I guess they're sick of English. Motivation. I'm sick of English. I don't see the reason why I need to study English. Teacher, what should I do? Yeah, we get that. I actually, what I like doing on my live stream is if I made a video about this topic, I would usually just take it and then paste it in the chat. And I did a video on motivation. And there are many different ways that we could motivate our students to participate in class and also to enjoy English. And I think the most important thing for me when I talk to my students is that they're not just learning English, they're learning a new way to share more about themselves and to learn about the world. So I don't just see English as a language. I try and get them to interact with it and to learn new things and to enjoy it too and learn new skills too. So yeah, short answer is to get them to enjoy the content I'm teaching or make it more interesting to them. And also I mentioned it in class but also some of the external values, the value that English has as when they travel or when they want to watch a movie or when they want to interact with new people outside of their environments. So there are lots of practical users to English but I think internally that they've got to be motivated to. And does that advice also extend to teachers? If they say, I'm sick of teaching. The funny thing is I go on to Reddit because I'm always trying to kind of see what's going on in the world with teaching and maybe I read something interesting. But 90% of it is just teachers complaining about difficult things in life. And I'm not saying that it's not true. It's just, it's very difficult when you're in that negative mindset. It's important to enjoy your job. But it can be difficult. Teaching is a tough job. It is tough and frustrating and stressful. Do you have any questions on your end? Yeah, Ileana asks, I think somebody else also asked. Teacher Taikun says, I'm dealing with 72 students. That's a lot. That's a big class. I did a video on big classes too by the way. But Ileana asks, do you need to use L1 sometimes in your classes? Do you use the students native language in your classes? No, I have a very strict policy of only English, whether it's in my class or on YouTube. Even my live stream now, people are asking about how well you guys speak Korean. I don't address that. It's never a topic I address. In the classroom, I tell them I don't speak Korean. And if you speak Korean, I will not understand, because the moment they know I can understand Korean, I'm gonna be getting messages and phone calls in Korean. It's like, I just play dumb. I don't know. And they will try to speak English. Not every teacher does that, but I am very strict about that. I found that a lot of people or that teach have that same rule, no L1. I watch this documentary on the Mormons and basically they have to learn a language in two weeks or three weeks. And in those classes, and I know in many other types of learning environments, they say no L1. I think I've gotten very soft in the past with younger learners. I've had that rule. But with my students right now, I'm very relaxed. I tell them as long as, sometimes I use some L1 just to quickly explain a concept to them or a grammar point. Or sometimes I like to surprise the students and say, just to wake them up, oh, what is this word in Korean? And then like, wait, what is it? What is meditation in Korean? Myeongsang. And then you see some of the students that they're like, oh, that's what it is. And it's quite interesting to them. So it depends what your relationship with the students is. I may encourage them to use a dictionary and you know they will go to neighbor. But for me as a source. And I had experience when I took Korean class, I took Korean class at a private school in Seoul. And I did the first three months I had a Korean teacher, she only spoke Korean. And then the second three months started and this male teacher came in, I don't think male is important. But he started teaching using English. And I hated him. I was like, no, I got used to three months of just learning in Korean and it worked very well. And the moment he wanted to bring in English, I quit the school. I said, no, it's not helping me. And did you ever take the KIPPS program? No, I'm planning to, I was actually talking to a friend. They'll start you whatever level. You'll take the language test, but they only use Korean. Even if you're level zero, they only use Korean. They will not use English. So I think it's very effective. Yeah, I think, I also think it's effective. I've taken Korean classes, but I don't mind them using English where I can quickly understand it. It depends, I think with my students, for example, where they've had, they've done, they've studied English since they were in kindergarten and they get to university, but still their speaking skills are so low, because I'm teaching beginner, almost beginner classes to students, adults. And so they've had years and years of learning English, but still they walk into university and they can't have a decent conversation. So my goal with them is just to give them a comfortable environment, give them enough practice and set them a new year. So, but in most situations- Yeah, I'm not gonna give it the rule that every teacher should follow. I understand every teacher has their philosophy on that and I don't disagree with that. Well, in most cases, I think your way is the better way. I'm just saying in this one way that I'm doing it, this is how I'm doing it- As you know, there's no blanket answer to any of these questions. It depends on the class, the age of the class, how many students are in the class, there's so many variables that you can consider. And yeah, I've used Korean in the class at times I thought I needed to. Or when it's funny. Well, yeah. If you speak Korean in the class, you'll get a laugh. And sometimes you need that laugh. But I will speak Korean if a student comes to me with a very serious problem. Oh, we have to address this problem and we have to communicate in Korean. I will do that. But if they're coming to me and they wanna, you know, they're trying to express what they did on the weekend. English. It's useful for me. A lot of mistakes that they make with pronunciation is because they've got the romanization, well, they've got the Korean for it. So restaurant, instead of saying restaurant, they say restaurant. Or sometimes with some of the rules in Korean where they, oh, what is that one? Anyway, so then I explained to them, okay guys, you know, genre. They say it in a Korean way. And then I say, listen, the reason that you're saying it is this is actually Konglish. This is how it's written in Korean. Or there are some rules where it actually changes. I can't think of the example right now. But then I can actually point it out to them and they understand, oh, okay, well, this is something I have to look out for. But in most cases, I think less or 0% L1 is better. Well, I have a question here. What mistakes do you find most annoying that students make? Very easy. I tell my students that it's okay to make mistakes. You know, I want them to feel comfortable. I want them to be confident. And, you know, I want them to just speak so that they can improve their speaking and enjoy the language. But if there's one mistake, I'm going to constantly, you know, point it out to them. It's when it's singular and it's, and they say, he drive. I always say add the S or when it's plural and they don't add the S. So that's with Korean students, especially, I push them to add the S. I tell them, I'm not going to stop you. I want you to become more fluent. But when I don't hear that S, that bugs me. So I always fix it. I have to deal with that issue on a weekly basis. And I think if I had to generalize Korean students, of course, forgive me. I don't mean to generalize all Korean students. There's a lot of great students. But I think compared to other countries, they are quite shy and not, you know, because of cultural, you know, in Korean culture, younger people are kind of taught to be quiet when older people are talking. So in the classroom, and especially because of COVID, human to human contact is difficult for my students. They're very quiet these days. If I, I don't enter the classroom very much, but when I do, they are shy, they are quiet. And I think it's getting worse. I don't know about your students, but my students are just shy and quiet. They don't even talk to each other these days. They're so quiet. Yeah, it's difficult. It's now it's part of our jobs is to get them to socialize better, especially, you know, usually they've got ways to meet each other with MT, you know, what is with MT and these group meetings, but now it's difficult to make friends for them. So we've got to socialize them too. How often do you give an F? I'm very kind of generous and I try and help my students as best as possible. Not often, if a student fails to come to class and if they, I think someone being truly horrible and I haven't failed them for missing too many classes, it's probably happened once or twice, but no, I'm quite. You're very nice. Great. I probably give more Fs. Generous. Do you have any questions on your end? Well, one of my members, Abigail, so she's one of the channel members, which is very important, it helps me out a lot. My channel too. She asked about, have you heard of eFuture? What can you say about their workbook, Smart Phonics, My First Grammar? I think a lot of hug ones in Korea use this. Actually, I have used Smart Phonics and My First Grammar and I actually enjoy them a lot. Abigail, if I can remember correctly, I actually enjoyed them. I think they're very useful, great programs, well-written and useful content for the students. Okay, one last question from teacher Taikoon. He says, I'm planning to start a grammar workshop for summer holidays with a very minimum fees just to help the students and to make them ready for next year. Any advice you would like to give me? So a grammar workshop. How's your grammar teaching? I think... Um... I'm not a grammar teacher. I side with more of reading as the key to acquiring grammar. So I know around the world, a lot of teachers will focus on the strong grammar background. That's a way, that's a way. That's just not what I do. I usually encourage my students to get away from the grammar book as quick as possible and start acquiring English through immersion in media or especially books. In my job, I have to teach grammar, but I lightly touch on it. It is part of the lesson, but I will make a speaking activity using that grammar. But really, I don't like teaching the meta language whereas subject, object, I don't like to break down anything I teach into the language that teachers need to know for grammar, the grammar language. So for him, you know, some parents, it depends if it's a business, it's what the parents want, right? So if you're for profit business and the parents want you to teach grammar, you teach grammar. When I had my school, the thing was vocabulary lists. The parents asked me to give a vocabulary list of 100 words for them to study every night. And I'm like, I want them to read that hour or two hours. I'd rather them just reading instead of just studying, but they're paying. And that's what they want. So I was kind of forced to do what the parents wanted. But so if parents are paying for a grammar course, give them a good grammar course. But try to win those parents over to a different way of learning. If you want. Yeah, I can see what you mean with that. I think for myself, the way I teach, I always preach, you know, engagement and getting the students to talk and to use the language, you know, especially in a way that it's useful to them and practical. So I try and do more of that. But I think why parents, the good thing about grammar and vocabulary is that it's measurable. What I mean with that is, so if you're teaching and you're teaching something with the grammar, once you're done with that, you can basically check it off. And in the future, if the students say, oh, you know what's, I don't know how to measure how much I've learned this semester or learn for the summer camp, you can say, okay, well, you did past, present, you did this. So, you know, you did all the different grammar and it's the same with vocabulary. So why the parents ask for it is because you've got that vocabulary that you can check off that you learned, you know? And so the students gain confidence from it and for the parents, they also feel like the learners are learning something that's provable, you know? Rather than saying, oh, you know what, I read some books. It's like, oh, well, what did you learn from those books? You're like, oh, we know how important it is. I'm just saying that because for me, the speaking part is important and for you, reading is important and both of them are important. But I just think that with grammar and with vocabulary, it's a way to prove how much they've learned. Yes, but you know, learning English is not a subjective concept. It's objective, which means there's a lot of research going in to prefer, I'll use a safe word, preferred ways to learn. And of course, research always tends to go towards the acquiring side, not the direct studying side. So especially with children, if you're teaching children, teaching them grammar terms, you know, you can teach the basics like noun verb, but if you're teaching children subject object, you're doing something wrong. Children learn without knowing the names. We learned without knowing the names of the grammar points. I'm trying to move along here. I got a comment here from Farida, teacher Eric, I like your positivity. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. So many great teacher people here too. I just wanna mention, yeah, Yunmi says she's from Seoul and also K.H. Kim from Busan. So we have some viewers from Korea with us. Oh, you're lucky. I have no Korean viewers. When your students try to get you angry or irritated, how do you deal with them? That's interesting. I always tell teachers, you shouldn't get emotional with your students. A lot of them, they want to see you riled up. So try not to take it serious, but obviously we're human, we're going to get emotional. Well, I get, I try and stay neutral, but as soon as students cross some boundaries, then I switch on my strict side and give them a talking to. I've been teaching at the university level since 2004. In 2004, I would yell at the students, I'd kick them out. That was normal for that time. But over the years, that has become unacceptable now. So I've changed a lot since 2004 in the classroom. And the students have gotten worse. I would say, so, I think teachers around the world, their hands are tied in many ways these days. You can't really, well, any physical, I'd never physically punish a student and Korea used to do that a lot. I don't think they do that anymore. So physical punishment has gone. So you've got verbal scolding or yelling. Even that is kind of going away where you really can't yell at a student. Since about 2016, I've stopped telling students, sometimes I get really angry. When I want to yell, I stop that because the student will complain. They will complain to my boss. But in 2004, I could yell and kick them out. They would never complain. They would just be, yeah, okay, I was bad and they leave, but a little more sensitive now. So if a student is bad in my class, I usually don't tell them. I just make a note and then I will sometimes send them an email later on. Please stop doing this. But usually in the class in front of the students, I don't tell them. I see that it affected you. It's interesting, I was talking to another professor and he was telling me that he was getting bad evaluations and some students, so he said basically if a student comes to class without a pencil or something or without a book, he sends them out. And he gives them a talking to. And I thought, I've gotten way too soft. Obviously, maybe I'm just lucky, but I'm too soft. I would have asked the student, oh, does anybody have a pencil for him? Or I would have given him my own pencil. But I think it comes from when I was teaching in South Africa my first couple of years were really difficult. Very difficult teaching at schools where there was a lack of discipline and it was really tough. But when I came to Korea, it's a lot easier, I think, than what a lot of teachers have to deal with, so. Yeah, I'm more aligned with you. I'm pretty easy going if they don't have a pencil, okay. Maybe in 2004, I was a little more strict, but now I'm like, oh yeah, okay. Anyone have a pencil or here's a pencil? Yeah, well, I think it's important that we have to evolve and in the past, when we were at school, we would get punished. We would get hit with corporal punishment. And then when we started teaching, we need to learn new skills in classroom management. So I'm constantly reading books and trying to get more ideas and information about how to be better teachers and to do it without getting too upset and losing our minds. Okay, Eric, I have to finish this live stream or I'll finish the call with you and I'll talk to my audience directly. I think I'm going to finish mine here. Robin, thank you so much. It was so nice having you on. I'm sure that the teachers learned a lot from you. Yes, thank you. I guess it was very interesting. We kind of managed to get through this with no technical difficulties. It was a miracle, but I think it went well. There's so many topics we could have talked about. There was a lot of questions I didn't get to. Sorry to everyone if we did get to your question, but I'm sure we'll talk again in the future. Yeah, everyone, thank you so much for watching. Have a fantastic week. And next week, I'll just have a normal live stream, but this was great. It's we're breaking new ground. Everyone have a great week and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye, Robin. Okay, bye, take care. All right, so I will try to.