Hey guys,

I am at a high school and have taught 5 classes so far. 3 were okay, the 4th one had a really low ability level and the last was also low but were not engaged at all! My co-teacher saved me in the end by just coming in and playing some videos which weren't really relevant to english at all.

My co-teacher told me that they are a lost cause and that all I should do is play videos in their class. What do people have to say about this? I want to give them the same lesson as other classes but if they literally do not care at all then what else can I do? Seriously, no motivation to learn English at all! And they're all 17/18.

Ouch that's rough

Try using competitive games, things like bomb games, charades, taboo, the price is right (all of which you can find on this site) never seem to fail.
Try making simple lessons for them for the first 10 -15 minutes of class, then a fun and competitive game for prizes. When their attention starts to wain than maybe play the videos.

Or tell them to complete the lesson, or at least listen to your presentation in order to watch the videos.
Also positive reinforcement is a wonderful tool, maybe no one has really given the students a chance before.

It might be more work for you, but you could make really simple basic lessons for them so they don't feel overwhelmed.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

Maybe "lost cause" is too strong of an expression, but I feel like I'm in sort of a similar situation at my visiting school. They really don't seem to care, their English level seems really low (although I assume some of them are pretending to know less than they do) and there's no grade for my class. It's a tech school so I don't think they have to pass any important English exams. It was like pulling teeth just to get them to say "Hello my name is ____." This was 3rd year HS.

I had them make name tags but a lot of them wrote their name in normal handwriting so it's way too small to read. I tried to tell them to write bigger but either they didn't understand or didn't care. A lot of them didn't have anything to write with.

One thing that I found helped a bit was after making the first student participate, that student gets to choose the next student who has to participate. They get a kick out of making their friends stand up and participate.

I think I've got to establish the class rules next week. Anyone have any advise? I'm thinking that if they break the rules they'll have to stand for the rest of class time (so 40 minutes at the maximum).

Heres what my introductory class goes like:
1. Hand out piece of paper folded into 3. Ask them to write Korean name in Hangeul, Korean name in English and English nickname if they have one. Give them 3-4 minutes to do this
2. Do short ppt about myself - interests (showed them a short video of rugby as most of them hadn't heard of it!)
3. Ask them to talk to the person they are sat next to and ask questions about each other. Give them 5/6 mins to do this. When time is up I give a piece of candy to one student. They have to tell class what they know about the person next to them and then when they finish they pass on the candy to anyone else they want to in the class
4. Continue ppt by telling them what the UK is famous for. Also tell them that I love Korea and show them why (I always seem to get giggles when I tell them my favourite drink is Soju!)
5. Organise them into groups of 4. Then get them to pick a piece of paper out of a cup. The paper has a number on it. Whatever number they have equals the number of facts which they have to state about Korea (ie. they get the number 5 = 5 things about Korea). Give them 7 minutes to do this. When time is up go through each group and ask them to tell me what they have written.
6. If I have time at the end, just refer back to the ppt and ask them stuff like 'what sports do I like?' and' what is the UK famous for?'

Does this seem ok? It's not the most interesting lesson but I guess it eases the tension and enables me to see what kind of level they are at. Also the ppt does seem to interest most of them. When I say I have been to India and Egypt most classes seem to go 'oooooooooh!'

My High school classes are VERY low, motivation even lower.

Co-teacher will not be in the classroom for the entire year.

Previous teacher told me she eventually broke towards the end of the year and just showed movies/tv shows all class.

Question.

What is very  popular in Korea (sports, music, tv, movie, etc.) so that I can at least build the games around something that will somewhat spark interest. In other words, almost the same as the OP.

EDIT: You know what? Screw it. I will just try to make my class the coolest one of their day. I'll show lots of videos of lots of things they would find interesting or cool, and try to find any words or sentences that relate for a bare-minimum English relevance. At least maybe I could eventually build up enough interest so there might be more intrinsic motivation on their part.

I am teaching 4 vocational classes tomorrow and they all have a very low level of english (or so I've been told). Can anyone give me an idea of what I should do for my first ever lesson with them? I was thinking for the first 5-10 mins or so just throwing a ball around and then each person who catches it has to tell me their name and 1 thing they like. Clueless about the other 40 mins though!

That sounds good! Although I will have to hope that my co-teacher can explain the rules well to them in Korean as apparently their language level really is that low! (or so the teachers think!)

The thing is will this really motivate them to do anything? With one of my other classes they just sit there looking fed up. I've never taught students until this week so will doing a simple game like this actually get them more excited?

I see my lowest-level, least-interested high-school class four times a week. The only thing that's engaged them so far is playing card games, so I've tried to integrate that as much as possible. E.g. playing "higher or lower" but changing the opposite adjectives every round ("taller"/"shorter" etc.). Two don't speak a word of English. My co-teacher suggests using worksheets, which is not great speaking practice. If they keep talking about soju or "sexy girls", integrate that into teaching phrases like "please give me a soju, how much is it?" or "would you like to go on a date with me?". But yeah, it's pretty tough.