IBCA Coaches Blog

Table Topic 4

What is Korea’s biggest challenge in the future?

Same format as before

Intro: my opinion + why
Body: examples & stories
Conclusion: my opinion

By this time the student should be comfortable with the format. I push them to expand the body section of their answer by either requiring them to cover all the WH questions (who, what, where, when, why, how) or citing one news story that they saw.

Table Topic 3

Describe a product that has made huge impact on your life.

Same format as before

Intro: my opinion + why
Body: examples & stories
Conclusion: my opinion

By this time the student should be comfortable with the format. I push them to expand the body section of their answer by either requiring them to cover all the WH questions (who, what, where, when, why, how) or citing one news story that they saw.

Table Topic 2

What is better, working together or competing against each other?

Here’s the structure they use and an example:

Intro: My opinion + Why (because…)
Body: Examples from personal experience or news articles
Conclusion: restatement of opinion.

I think that working together is better because when people work together they are more efficient, they are happier, and they produce more.

For example, last year my team leader decided to make my co-workers compete against each other. He compared the number of sales each sales person got and gave the person with the highest number of sales an award. This incentive was supposed to make us work harder and get more sales. So we all worked really hard and at the end of the month, everyone’s sales had gone down because everyone was too stressed about winning the award! (Continue the story… Please notice that I used the past tense to tell the story!)

So, I think that if people work together they are happier, more efficient and more productive.

Table Topic 1

1) At what age do people usually begin working in Korea?
2) What are your career/retirement plans?

With most table topic questions I start out with a set format and then ask furthur questions to either get more information from the student or lengthen the discussion. The format is usually like this,

Intro: My opinion + Why (because…)
Body: Examples from personal experience or news articles
Conclusion: restatement of opinion.