Broadcasting Club

My school has an English broadcasting club. The Seongnam ABN channel, which seems to be a mix of PBS and public access, has a program where elementary school children get the chance to serve as the reporters on an English news show, although news is a bit of a misnomer - there's nothing ground breaking or even recent about the topics. The topics are usually related to school or English education and the students have a month to memorize their reports.

My school's club has five reporters: four girls and one boy, all 6th graders. My co-teacher Nicole is in charge of the broadcasting club, but I write the articles and run the practices. My students have given two reports so far: one in June and one last week. We started practicing for the latest report at the beginning of the semester in September. I wrote the five part article, my co-teacher helped the students translate it and the students came to my classroom during lunch to practice all month to worked on pronunciation and inflection, two things that are next to impossible to teach in a class of 30+ students. I have noticed, however, that I'm so used to Korean accented English that I don't always notice pronunciation mistakes, especially pronouncing the final 's' in plurals and possessives, something my students really struggle with.


Setting up the video camera during practice. From l → r: 임기연, 정정윤, co-teacher Nicole, 조혜령
The most recent report was about the summer English camp. The first section was an interview of the English teacher, me. 한솜, one of the girls, asked me my opinion on Korean food and Korean students. We recorded the interview and showed the tape at the beginning of the ABN broadcast. The other students explained how the camp was run and talked about my family's visit and the particularly interesting activities the different camps did. Of course, only one of the reports actually attended English camp. :) After practice, 기원, the lone boy in the broadcasting club who spends practice with the faintly disguised look of misery of a preteen boy stuck in a room with a gaggle of girls, would bolt, but the girls would stay and talk and talk and talk. I miss seeing them every day, now that this report is over, although I am enjoying having a lunch break again.


박한솜, my interviewer, while we waited for the camera to be set up.
The first week of November, the 6th graders will spend a week at the Seongnam English Village and the last report, which will be given on December 30th, will be about that experience. So far, I've written all the reports, but the students will be responsible for writing their own articles about the English Village. This will be the biggest writing assignment any of the kids have every undertaken, and I foresee a November full of hand holding and editing.


Girls goofing off during practice.