Guidelines For Designing Teaching Material

Guidelines For Designing Teaching Material

1. Howard, J., & Major, J. (2012). Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Material

   • Teaching materials form an important part of most English teaching programmes. From textbooks, videotapes and pictures to the Internet, teachers rely heavily on a diverse range of materials to support their teaching and their students’ learning, We consider why teachers might want to design their own teaching materials and look at some of the advantages and disadvantages. We examine six factors that teachers need to take into account when considering designing their own materials; and finally we present ten guidelines for designing effective English teaching materials.
     • Why English Language Teachers May Choose to Design their own Materials: Advantages and Disaadventages
       • Discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of teacher-designed materials usually centre on a comparison with using text or coursebooks. Rather than focusing on coursebooks, we have turned our focus to teacher-produced materials and consider that the disadvantages of coursebooks can become advantages for teacher-produced materials. An important advantage of teacher-produced materials is contextualisation. Another aspect of context is the resources available. Some teaching contexts will be rich in resources such as coursebooks, supplementary texts, readers, computers, audio-visual equipment and consumables such as paper, pens and so on.
         • A second area in which teacher-designed materials are an advantage is that of individual needs. Modern teaching methodology increasingly emphasises the importance of identifying and teaching to the individual needs of learners. English language classrooms are diverse places not only in terms of where they are situated, but also in terms of the individual learners within each context. Teacher-designed materials can be responsive to the heterogeneity inherent in the classroom. This approach encompasses the learners’ first languages and cultures, their learning needs and their experiences.
           • Personalisation is another advantage of teacher-designed materials. In his 1991 article, Block argues in favour of ‘home-made’ materials saying that they add a personal touch to teaching that students appreciate. Tapping into the interests and taking account of the learning styles of students is likely to increase motivation and engagement in learning. Podromou (2002) further suggests that there is also greater choice, freedom and scope for spontaneity when teachers develop their own materials. A further advantage of teacher-designed materials is timeliness (Block, 1991). Teachers designing their own materials can respond to local and international events with up-to-date, relevant and high interest topics and tasks. The teachable moment can be more readily seized. In conclusion, the advantages of teacher-designed materials can be summed up in the idea that they avoid the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach of most commercial materials.
             • DISADVENTAGES
               • There are a number of potential pitfalls for teachers who would be materials designers. These can be considered under three headings, the first of which is organisation. Coursebooks are usually organised around an identifiable principle and follow a discernible pattern throughout. A further aspect of organisation relates to the physical organisation and storage of materials. Without a clearly thought through and well-organised system, teacher-produced materials may be difficult to locate for ongoing use, or may end up damaged or with parts missing.
                 • Possibly the most common criticism levelled against teacher-made materials is to do with their quality. At the surface level, teacher-made materials may “seem ragged and unprofessional next to those produced by professionals.” (Block, 1991, p. 212, emphasis in original). They may contain errors, be poorly constructed, lack clarity in layout and print and lack durability.
                   • Another disadvantage of teacher-made materials, and perhaps the key factor inhibiting many teachers from producing their own teaching materials, is time. However passionately one may believe in the advantages of teacher-designed materials, the reality is that for many teachers, it is simply not viable – at least not all the time.
                     • Factors to Consider When Designing Materials
                       • The first and most important factor to be considered is the learners. If the point of teacher-created materials is relevance, interest, motivation and meeting specific individual needs, then clearly teachers must ensure they know their learners well. Any consideration of syllabus or materials design must begin with a needs analysis. This should reveal learning needs with regard to English language skills in listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary knowledge and grammar.
                         • The curriculum and the context are variables that will significantly impact on decisions about teaching materials. Many teachers are bound by a mandated curriculum defining the content, skills and values to be taught.
                           • The resources and facilities available to the teacher-designer are also mentioned above as an element of context. Clearly teachers must be realistic about what they can achieve in terms of materials design and production within the limitations of available resources and facilities. Access to resources such as computers (with or without Internet access), a video player and TV, radio, cassette recorder, CD player, photocopier, language lab., digital camera, whiteboard, OHP, scissors, cardboard, laminator etc will impact on decisions in materials design.
                             • Personal confidence and competence are factors that will determine an individual teacher’s willingness to embark on materials development. This will be influenced by the teacher’s level of teaching experience and his or her perceived creativity or artistic skills and overall understanding of the principles of materials design and production.
                               • Guidelines for Designing Effective English Teaching Materials
                                 • Teacher designed materials may range from one-off, single use items to extensive programmes of work where the tasks and activities build on each other to create a coherent progression of skills, concepts and language items.
                                   • Conclusion
                                     • In the end, teachers must weigh up the benefits and costs of designing their own teaching materials and make their own decision as to whether it is worth the time and effort. As Harmer (2001) puts it, “The good DIY teacher, with time on his or her hands, with unlimited resources, and the confidence to marshal those resources into a clear and coherent language program, is probably about as good as it gets for the average language learner” (p. 9) Inevitably there will be numerous constraints on any materials designer and compromises will be necessary.
       • ADVANTAGES

2. Hughes. J, (2009). Section1 – Getting Started.Teachers’ Aids on Creating Content for Learning Environments

   • Principles and Procedures of Materials Development for Language Learning
     • L2 language learners can benefit from using those mental resources which they typically utilise when acquiring and using their L1.
       • In L1 learning and use learners typically make use of mental imaging (e.g. seeing pictures in their mind), of inner speech, of emotional responses, of connections with their own lives, of evaluations, of predictions, of personal interpretations. In L2 learning and use learners typically focus narrowly on linguistic decoding and encoding. Multidimensional representation of language experienced and used can enrich the learning process in ways which promote durable acquisition,See Tomlinson and Avila (2007) for example, for principled suggestions as to how making use of multidimensional mental representation can help L2 learners.
         • Principles of Materials Development
           • 1 Make use of activities which get learners to visualise and/or use inner speech before during and after experiencing a written or spoken text. 2 Make use of activities which get learners to visualise and/or use inner speech before during and after using language themselves. 3 Make use of activities which help the learners to reflect on their mental activity during a task and then to try to make more use of mental strategies in a similar task.
             • Language learners can benefit from noticing salient features of the input.
               • If learners notice for themselves how a particular language item or feature is used, they are more likely to develop their language awareness (Bolitho et al 2003) and they are also more likely to achieve readiness for acquisition. This is likely to lead to the learner paying more attention to similar uses of that item or feature in subsequent inputs and to increase its potential for eventual acquisition.
                 • Principles of Materials Development
                   • 1 Use an experiential approach in which the learners are first of all provided with an experience which engages them holistically. From this experience they learn implicitly without focusing conscious attention on any particular features of the experience. 2 Rather than drawing the learners’ attention to a particular feature of a text and then providing explicit information about its use it is much more powerful to help the learners (preferably in collaboration) to make discoveries for themselves.
                     • Examples of Materials
                       • I use a lot of language awareness materials in which the students experience a potentially engaging text, respond to it personally and then focus on a particular feature of the text in order to make discoveries about it. For example, the students read about a student whose parents gave him a graduation party. They then discussed the reasons why the parents gave him the party and the reasons he was reluctant to attend it .
                         • Learners need opportunities to use language to try to achieve communicative purposes.
                           • When using language in this way they are gaining feedback on the hypotheses they have developed as a result of generalising on the language in their intake and on their ability to make use of them effectively. If they are participating in interaction, they are also being pushed to clarify and elaborate and they are also likely to elicit meaningful and comprehensible input from their interlocutors
                             • Principles of Materials Development
                               • 1 Provide many opportunities for the learners to produce language in order to achieve intended outcomes. 2 Make sure that these output activities are designed so that the learners are using language rather than just practising specified features of it. 3 Design output activities so that they help learners to develop their ability to communicate fluently, accurately, appropriately and effectively. 4 Make sure that the output activities are fully contextualised in that the learners are responding to an authentic stimulus (e.g. a text, a need, a viewpoint, an event), that they have specific addressees and that they have a clear intended outcome in mind. 5 Try to ensure that opportunities for feedback are built into output activities.
                                 • Conclusion
                                   • It seems that most classroom materials are written though for teachers and students to follow. It also seems that many of them not driven or even informed by principles of language acquisition and development. Some of them manage to help learners to acquire language because their writers have been effective teachers and are intuitively applying principles of teaching.