For this task I got together with Clare. As we both use slightly different contexts and have different teacher styles we had to compromise on a coursebook choice. We chose Move Advanced. Clare has used this book in the past and I have used a book of the same title but lower lever about three summers back. I was always rather fond of it simply because it was one of the first books I had to use after my Trinity TESOL. I remembered the resource book having some good activities in it and it being quite colourful.

After a quick flick test I noticed that aside from bold pictures the rest of the page content was rather visually bland. Having done a fair bit of reading on visuals couple of weeks ago I was also curious whether images used here did indeed serve an actual purpose here. Sadly, I came to a conclusion that only the first set of photographs was actually accompanied by a task. And to further annoyance, based on experience, the above selection chosen as a lead-in would leave most of my learners confused. Given this was supposed to be a teen title the first two photographs wouldn’t be recognised by anyone younger than forty!

Following some discussions on readings we did we both felt rather confused about a framework we should follow. We used adapted a format mentioned in Ellis (1998) in order to structure our evaluation. Principles we referred to where from our session on ‘Materials should…’

Task evaluation Clare and Aleks

Going through the whole unit was pretty hard work. What we struggled with most was terminology of task types and then matching them up with our principles. This made me think about our session on principles where we all came up with extremely valid points yet could not actually picture material which has ever combined them all. Another issue was trying to imagine learners getting on with the task and the setting up it involved. Both Clare and I were thinking of our respective contexts and teaching styles and therefore not always seen eye to eye on effectiveness of a particular task. Hours and 3 pages of text later we realised that we should have probably included a scale of sorts which would summarise our thoughts. Aside from failing to assign numerical values to each task I also had the impression that some, if not all, of our comments on what a task is and how successful it would be seem rather detached from actual teaching. Though I could see how several of our principles were met in several tasks I struggled to picture my learners engaging in it. Still, I felt that an evaluation of tasks was a rather tedious chore as some task could take a whole different shape depending on a set of instructions or teacher’s style. However, finding that task types were often repeated also made us think that those lend themselves more to being skipped or adapted. As mentioned before in my Materials Evaluation blog, a whole new different light could be shed on this book and individual tasks within it following a post-use feedback.

Despite our evaluation showing a variety of tasks used and principles met, I feel the book coud have benefited far more for taking on Prabhu’s controversial proposal of semi- or flexi-materials (in Maley 2011) . This would enable the teacher to tailor the input and carefully select procedured and tasks to best suit learner’s needs. I strongly believe that giving teacher’s this freedom within an array of material would benefit both parties. As Jolly & Bolitho (2011) conclude:

Further away the author  is from the learners, the less effective the material is likely to be. (…) Most effective materials are those which are based on a thorough understanding on learner’s needs, that is their language difficulties, their learning objectives, their styles of learning, the stage of their conceptual development etc.

References

Ellis, R. (1998) The evaluation of communicative tasks. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press. pp.217-238.

Jolly, D. & Bolitho, R. (2011) A framework for materials writing. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd ed)  Cambridge University Press. pp.107- 134

Maley, A. (2011) Squaring the circle – reconciling materials as constraint with materials as empowerment. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd edn) Cambridge University Press. pp.379-402