In our first seminar we were asked what we wanted to gain from the module and I wrote to understand materials better so that I can improve my teaching and my learners’ learning. I knew it was a broad, perhaps unsophisticated and general response but true nonetheless. In participating in this module I feel my understanding of materials, their design, use and evaluation has been positively transformed, my assumptions challenged and my eyes opened through the extensive reading, pre-seminar tasks and in-depth discussions in the weekly seminars.
The coursebook, which has been the focal material of the module has been scrutinised and I have developed a critical awareness of its design and use that has and will continue to impact my teaching practice. Each week I have learnt something new and my assumptions challenged. I feel that I have started my journey to becoming a reflective practitioner (Schon 1983) through this blog and feel that this process has been extremely useful and beneficial to my teaching.
In the first seminar we looked at language teaching materials, which are “anything that can be used to facilitate the learning of a language” (Tomlinson 2012 p.143) and should be employed to meet the learners’ needs. However, what became evident was the tripartite relationship between the materials, the teacher and the learner (Bolitho 1990, pp. 22-30), where the commercial coursebook writer is removed from the context and therefore presented the first issue with the coursebook: contextual realisation. In addition, what learners’ need and teachers’ want can be very different, where the wants are “distinguished from needs when there is preference, despite the fact that it may not be necessary, obligatory, encouraged or assumed” (Masuhara 2011, p.243).
The second seminar focussed on materials design principles and what became clear is that there is no universal set of principles that writers use. Instead they “follow their intuitions rather than an overt specification of objectives, principles and procedures” (Tomlinson 2011 p.5) and “replicating previous materials, adapting activity types that have worked for them before and relying upon creative inspiration” (Tomlinson 2012, p.152). There is no one size fits all framework for materials design because their users’ needs – both learners and teachers – are different depending on the context, course, etc. The act of defining a collaborative set of materials design principles in class was interesting and reflective of our values, beliefs and “implicit theories” (Richards 1998).
Evaluating materials was an extremely interesting topic and although absent from the seminar, spurred me on to re-evaluate my language coursebook. Creating my own evaluation framework that included the materials’ design principles from the previous week, I became aware and in agreement with Tomlinson that materials evaluation is “inevitably subjective and focuses on the users of materials” (2012, p. 148). Materials evaluation is context, teacher and learner specific and in this regard can only be fully carried out retrospectively, once the material has been used with the learners because. Teachers interpret materials and learners’ interpret instruction so that “teachers do not necessarily teach what materials writers write just as learners do not necessarily learn what teachers teach” (Luxon, 1994 in Crawford in Richards and Renandya 2002, p 82). Materials design is complex. That being said, having a principled materials’ evaluation is undeniably useful and practical for a teacher , with knowledge of her learners, to make educated and predictive judgements on the appropriacy of a coursebook.
The materials adaptation week reinforced this understanding of materials design, evaluation and use being all “inevitably subjective” (Tomlinson 2012, p. 148). In applying McGraths’ four-adaptation process to analyse how I adapt a coursebook for a class, I demonstrated my own subjectivity. In the seminar, through the reading and the task we were able to discuss not just what we did but “the thinking and reasoning which organise and motivate these external practices” (Freeman and Richards 1993, p.213), which was extremely valuable in furthering my critical awareness of my own practice and use of materials in class.
The seminar on video was extremely interesting and made me reflect on my personal limited use of video. Watching Jamie Keddie’s video “The Clumsy Bestman” made me realise the potential for using video as a vehicle for collaborative storytelling as well as exploiting the visual images of videos. Likewise, I discovered the potential of TedTalks, where used in a similar way, could encourage leaners to collaboratively work together to discover meaning and discuss themes, before watching the video. This in itself could help to reduce my learners’ affective filters (Krashen 1982) such as anxiety, stress and self-confidence when presented with listening comprehension activities and is an approach that I intend to try.
Designing a worksheet was a highly practical and useful week and made me appreciate the design process that goes into materials’ design. Although I create worksheets on a weekly basis I haven’t, up to this point, applied theory or a set of principles to them. This week made me realise just how long it can take. Applying Jolly & Bolitho (1998) A framework for materials writing supported the design process, as did applying my own principle framework and lessons learnt from the previous weeks, including the use of images and video. The worksheet actually led to an exceptionally good piece of homework being produced and highlighted the need to differentiate instruction not only in-class but for homework, to respond to leaner needs and actively engage them in their own learning.
My penultimate blog on task design and evaluation involved reading the article Over to you (Hughes 2006), which I wish I had read before designing my previous week’s worksheet because it contained really useful principles that can make the difference to a worksheet’s user-friendliness and effectiveness. Creating a taxonomy for task-types, to further re-valuate materials, using Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) and Gardners’ Multiple Intelligences (1983) as well as the course learning objectives for the unit was really challenging in its use and accuracy. However, I did find the process really interesting and enlightening in terms of my coursebook’s limited attempts to address the higher cognitive thinking skills and the diverse strengths of my learners.
I feel over the weeks I have developed a greater, critical understanding and awareness of materials design, use, adaptation and evaluation. I can honestly say that I have developed my understanding of materials’ design and use and that this development has and will continue to impact on my teaching. What has really been reinforced is the importance of putting learner needs first, at the centre of what I do.
As Hedge states: “learners in a class will learn different things at different rates from the input and practice” (2000, p.15), regardless of how we select, delete add and change the materials (McGrath 2016, p.164). This doesn’t make me feel that my efforts and intentions up until this point have been in vain but rather, has reinforced my belief in the need for differentiated instruction (Tomlinson 1999, Blaz 2006, Heacox 2012). Materials’ design is complex and equally reflects that learners are complex, as are the classrooms and the teachers. However, as the More Knowledgable Other(s) (Vygotsky 1978) we have the power to be responsive reflective practitioners by using this knowledge of our learners to select, use, adapt and design materials that respond to their actual needs.
References:
Blaz, D. (2006) Differentiated Instruction: A guide for foreign language teachers. Larchmont, NY: Eye On Education.
Bloom, B.S. (1956), Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals, Longman Group Ltd, London.
Freeman, D. & Richards, J. (1993), “Conceptions of teaching and the education of second language teachers”, TESOL Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 193-216.
Gardner, H. (1993), Frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences, 2nd with new introduction. edn, Fontana, London.
Heacox, D. (2012) Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom: How to Reach and Teach All Learners.
Hedge, T. (2000), Teaching and learning in the language classroom, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Jolly, D. & Bolitho, R. (2011) A framework for materials writing. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed) Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd edn) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 107-134.
Keddie, J. (2014) The Clumsy Best Man (video) available from: http://lessonstream.org/2011/05/12/videotelling/ [accessed 1603/17]
Keddie, J. (2014) Bringing online video into the classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Krashen, S.D. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition (PDF). Oxford: Pergamon.
Masuhara, H. (2011) What do teacher really want from course books? In: Tomlinson, B. (ed) Materials Development in language teaching. (2nd edn) Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. Pp.136-266
McGrath (2016) Materials evaluation and Design For language teaching. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pp. 69 – 78
Richards, J.C. & Renandya, W.A. 2002, Methodology in language teaching: an anthology of current practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Tomlinson, B (2012) Materials Development for language learning and teaching. Language teaching 45 (02): pp. 143 -179
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.