Chungdahm Institute

We have officially started the new term. This means that we get new students, new material, and that we finally get to be on the same schedule! Ian and I were hoping to get the weekends off, but it turned out that our branch is at capacity, so we were given more hours than expected. That was both good and bad news. It just means that we will have to explore the rest of Korea later in the year. With this post we mainly want to explain our jobs and to let everyone know exactly what we will be doing here for the next year!

Our employer is called Chungdahm Institute (usually shortened to CDI). CDI is a private english institute and has branches throughout Korea. In fact it is the most popular English institute in Korea. Fortunately, Ian and I work at a franchise. This means that our boss bought a branch of CDI, making it so we teach CDI material and have CDI regulations, but she owns and runs the company herself. We have been told that franchises are the best situation because instructors don't have to deal with the nuances of headquarters.

There are several class levels that CDI offers. They include:

EC2, EC3, EC4, MM, MG, MT, Bridge, Par, Birdie, Eagle, Albetrose, Masters

As you can probably guess EC2 is the lowest level and Masters is the highest. Fortunately, Ian and I were given pretty good classes this term. For being newbies we were very suprised! We are teaching:

Ian - EC3, EC4, Par (Reading & Listening)

Me - EC2, EC4, Par (Reading & Listening)

We each teach a total of 7 classes, so that about 80 students to remember!



Our schedules basically consist of half younger students (11 years old and younger) and half older students (12 and older). The material in EC consists of reading a few pages of a storybook, answers reading comprehension questions, playing some games, and completing a project or two. Par, on the other hand, is extremely fast paced. The students either have to listen to several story passages and complete questions, or have to read passages and complete the questions. Teaching par expects us to teach how to analyze a passage, find the topic, main idea, and details. We then discuss the topic and outline the ideas on the board. This week we read about stem cell research and the history of media. Even though it's a lot of work for the students, they keep up!


While our classes have been great so far, we are extremely busy! We are working 6 days a week, so we will be working over 40 hours a week. This week we had so many new classes to prep and seminars to attend that we arrived to work around 1:30 and left about 10:15 every day. We are absolutely exhausted, but it's definately worth it!

Even though we are busy, we can't even compare to our students. The younger students go to regular school all day and then attend CDI from 4pm-7pm (two days a week). The students usually attend other institutes, including history, math, chinese, or music. The older students attend school all day and then attend CDI from 7pm-10pm. They are lucky if they get home by 10:30pm. Korean students are constantly either attending school or a private institute, studying, or practicing an instrument! They have very little down time. Despite being ridiculously busy, most students are willing and even excited to be at CDI.
This doesn't explain everything about our jobs but it should give a little insight into our lives here in Korea. Pictures to come on Sunday!