Month: February 2018
Face2Face evaluation and an interesting interview
For this week’s session we had to work in groups and evaluate a course book, face to face for Advanced by Cambridge University Press. Following last week’s session it was interesting to see how all of us, individually and as a group, evaluate materials and how we determined the criteria for evaluation. I worked with Constantine, Emily, and Oscar.
We had a long discussion about what we had read and our personal views on the evaluation criteria for materials before we actually ended up with our final questionnaire. This could be partly because of our different teaching backgrounds. We based our evaluation on the following: impressions (flick test’), the publisher’s mission statements, CEFR C1 criteria, and our own evaluation. The actual questionnaire constitutes of two sections; the first one is the ‘flick’ test to which we gave a total score and the second one was the analysis of a unit. For the analysis of a unit we evaluated four different features of it such as: appearance and design, content and context, practice, and methodology. Each one of these four features was given a mean score and we used the ‘Likert scale’ (1-5, 1: strongly disagree, 5: strongly agree) for both sections of the questionnaire. At the end of the questionnaire we had an ‘additional comments’ section which we all used to write our final comments and evaluations on the book.
Here’s a copy of the questionnaire:
And here’s a copy of my results:
One thing my group and I picked up on was the presentation of grammar in the book. More specifically, we thought that the book’s grammar boxes included a lot of meta-language, explicit presentations and not real-life practice of the grammatical phenomena presented. We thought that this could be problematic for both students and teachers, especially novice ones and therefore not very familiar with meta-language. Additionally, we thought that the way grammar was presented did not allow for much adaptation from the teacher.
Finally, we created a PowerPoint presentation with our criteria and our results. What was interesting, was that even though our teaching backgrounds differ, our results were very similar.
Here’s the presentation:
face2face-Evaluation-presentation
A discussion with Theresa Clementson
Later on, we had the opportunity to have a conversation with one of the authors of the book, Theresa Clementson. Everything she said about the writing of face to face and ELT writing was really interesting. I think getting insights into materials writing from a person who has actually done it several times is particularly useful for our future development.
My main concern and our question as a group was about face to face being very densely-written. I personally find this a little off-putting, speaking from both the perspective of a teacher and an L2 student, which I have been in the past. I think that having too much going on on a page can be a little scary at times. Theresa’s reply to that was that different audiences have different expectations from a course book. Some respond negatively but others found this particular feature of the book extremely valuable. My impression is that students and teachers from different teaching contexts value aspects of books differently and that’s quite interesting on its own.
All in all, this session was really beneficial. Not only did we come up with our own evaluation criteria but we were also given the opportunity to discuss our concerns with one of its writers. I think I’m definitely going to be using these criteria when I create my own materials on the course and after the end of it. I think it would also be useful to share this list of criteria with colleagues and management at our school so we can then choose books which have the potential to maximise students’ learning.
References
Cunningham, G., Bell, J. & Clementson, T. with Redston, C. (2014) Advanced face2face, (2nd ed.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Unit 7.
McGrath, I. (2013) Teaching Materials and the Roles of EFL/ESL Teachers: Practice and Theory. London: Bloomsbury. (See section 3 Materials selection of chapter 3 The Professional Literature pp.52-59, and chapter 5 How teachers evaluate coursebooks.
Speaking of criteria…
‘What is the set of criteria that will determine how we evaluate materials? And most importantly, what are the criteria we need to make use of if we want to create our own materials?’. This is how I ended my previous post after our first session with Paul. In our second session these questions were brought up again and we had to work in groups to decide on the set of our own criteria in terms of materials and how we evaluate them. I instantly thought: ‘That’s great! Time for some answers!’.
We first had to write down our own views on what materials should/shouldn’t/must/mustn’t be. I thought this was a difficult thing to do, but at the same time it made me reflect and connect everything to my teaching practice. What do I want to achieve with the materials I use? Why am I using various materials instead of others? Then I thought that as teachers, we all make numerous decisions every day and these decisions have a direct impact on our learners and their needs, so, my next thought was: ‘They’d better be good ones!’
One thing that has influenced what I do in class and what materials I use is student autonomy. Especially after our methodology module, my reflective essay, and my first observation this is something that has really triggered my interest and made me realise that the ultimate goal of teaching is probably the idea of helping learners to become more independent. How about materials who help teachers reach this aim then?
Another thing that came to mind almost straight away was the idea of real-life communication. Bearing my learning background in mind as well as how I was taught English, I can probably say that the materials I used as a learner didn’t necessarily promote real-life communication. What they definitely did was make me more aware of the formalities of the language; Here comes another list of vocabulary and a lot of grammar tables! What I appreciate now, as a teacher of English, is that I have the power to change that, I can choose to guide my students towards the direction of effective communication and the materials I use should do so as well.
After we all had some ideas on paper, we got into groups and had to narrow them down to fifteen. That was a bit hard but it was also interesting to see what other teachers thought and how our beliefs were aligned with each other or not. I’m glad that we all seemed to be on the same wavelength and agreed on most of our ideas! One thing someone wrote that caught my attention was that ‘materials should not have mistakes in them’. How true! How many times I’ve come across teacher’s books or even student’s books with inaccurate explanations/instructions. When we create our own materials, this is something I will definitely not forget!
After this stage Paul handed out new statements about materials based on books and bibliography on materials. We had to add these to ours and decide which twenty-one we wanted to keep. A lot of our ideas were similar to the ones in the bibliography, so I guess that’s good thing! I completely agree with the statement that ‘materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purpose’ and the one about materials taking ‘into account that learners differ in learning styles.’ (Tomlinson, 2011). I would also like to add something to the latter statement: materials should also take into account students’ different needs. Student-senteredness and autonomy were present in our final selection as well and I was delighted to see that other colleagues value independent learning as much as I do. We then went around the room and had a look at what other people had picked. Everyone seemed to have great ideas most of which will stay with me throughout my teaching journey.
All in all, I think this was an interesting session most importantly because I had the opportunity to see what other teachers from different backgrounds thought about materials. Especially in a world where some of us will go on to create our own materials, I think this is something to always keep in mind.
References
Tomlinson, B. (2011) Introduction: principles and procedures of materials development. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.1-31. (Principles drawn from second language acquisition research.)
So many things to expect from this module!
Right before the second year of the TESOL Diploma had kicked in, I remember myself trying to find some information about the modules I’d attend this year. Around the end of October 2017, I came across the description of the ‘Materials’ module. My first reaction to it had two different dimensions: I felt excited about all the things I would learn, the idea of having my own portfolio and materials, but at the same time I felt scared: ‘How am I going to do this?’, ‘How am I going to have a presentation on materials? And even more so, my own materials?!’. Then, I thought to myself: ‘Well, that’s probably why you ‘re on this course’.
As a teacher, I’ve always liked adapting materials. I’ve never been an avid fan of just using the course book and going from exercise to exercise and then another. I even wonder why I sometimes like to make things more ‘complicated’ or ‘difficult’ when I could just use a ready-made exercise. I’ve now realised that this probably stems from the time when I was a non-native learner of English myself. Back in Greece, about 20 years ago, we all learnt the language from a course book and long lists of vocabulary that we had to memorise. The idea of games and communicative activities was completely unknown to almost everyone. Even to this day, a lot of students learn the language by just doing exercises or memorising words without engaging into real-life conversations.
One thing I kept from our first seminar with Paul, and one that will definitely follow me to the end of this module, is, indeed, the idea of adapting materials. To my mind, this is what makes teachers and students stand out. What we should be able to do is help each and every individual in our classes to make the most of their learning experience and evaluate which tasks and activities work for different students of various nationalities and cultures. Unfortunately, not all course books have managed to do this so far. I also want my students to stand out. I want them to be able to communicate effectively, not just by sticking to the formality of course books. That’s what adapting materials means to me: Being able to take a worksheet or a page from a book and choose what I’m going to do with it and how I’m going to use it so as to create the maximum positive effect for my students.
While I was reading Tomlinson’s article for our first seminar, one of the points he made about CLT and PPP made me think: ‘This is so right!’. The idea of Communicative Language Teaching and the PPP method were mentioned as well as to what extent course books promote the one or the other. What course books have undoubtedly tried to do is base their content on the CLT approach. What I think, however, is that some of them are far from being communicative, and this is probably the reason why adapting materials is so important, a point which was also mentioned by our group when we presented our poster of what we expect from this module. Lastly, I ‘d like to think the idea of adapting materials as the missing piece of a puzzle which, once found and used, can make everything else fall into place!
What is even more interesting and was mentioned by the majority of the students in our seminar was the idea of creating our own materials. I personally find this part of this module both scary and fascinating. At the moment, I have no idea how I could possibly get there but I’m sure everything will have fallen into place by the end of the course. Creating something that is entirely yours, something you ‘ve put a lot of effort into -always keeping learners and their needs in mind- that’s what fascinates me. This also correlates with something Paul mentioned which, at the time, made me feel a bit worried: the fact that technology is highly praised to the extent that some companies/corporations believe it will completely replace the role of the teacher. I do not want to think that this will ever happen. I want to think that teachers who love what they do are the ones who will turn our profession into one that means more than merely doing exercises or completing worksheets. Teachers are far from being just that. They are facilitators, educators, and, in my opinion, they play a major role in helping learners achieve their goals by constantly motivating them and leading them to autonomy. No machine can do that. These teachers are ‘excellent teachers’, as Paul mentioned, and, I believe, they are the ones who also create their own materials and show that they care for what they do more than technological advancements ever will.
Last but not least, two questions that I hope to have found the answers to by the end of the module: ‘What is the set of criteria that will determine how we evaluate materials? And most importantly, what are the criteria we need to make use of if we want to create our own materials?’. These two questions are stuck in my head, and I think they could also be a great reason for further research.
One thing I can say without doubt: I’m ready for this journey into the world of ELT materials. Let’s see where it’ll take me and all of us on this course!
References
Tomlinson, B. (2012). ‘Materials development for language learning and teaching’. 45/2: pp.143-179.
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