In the third session of ELT Materials, we broached the topic of materials evaluation. To some extent this is what we as teachers are required to do every day as we choose which materials (books, games, videos or whatever form they may come in) we’re going to use with our students. Often these are decisions based on intuition, which in turn is based on experience of using the materials or similar previously in our careers, recommendations from colleagues. Like many of my coursemates, and many other EFL teachers I am prescribed coursebooks by my institution. Although the coursebooks were produced by teachers and writers within the company and with our specific students in mind (which should mean that they are tailored to our students’ needs as well as those of the teachers), the feeling within the department is that they aren’t really fit for purpose. The topics covered sometimes  over-complicate the language point or skill being taught, and the teachers’ notes are frequently unhelpful. These books are used across the company and it seems that our department isn’t the only one that has doubts over their effectiveness. I don’t know if an in-house formal evaluation of the coursebooks has ever been done, but if not it’s a real shame. It is quite surprising when it seems so obvious to me that materials evaluation is a tremendously important part of teaching; a view that seems to be shared by many of my colleagues and coursemates.

This week, after researching the topic of materials evaluation and evaluation frameworks, Jade, Abdullah and I created our own, used it to evaluate English Unlimited B1+ Intermediate and presented our approach and findings to the class. Coming from vastly different teaching contexts, we decided to see how far a universal framework was possible. Although the research we read about suggested that a universal framework was not possible or useful, we were really interested in identifying evaluation criteria we all thought were important, independent of our different contexts. That is not to say that we failed to recognise the importance of context on such exercises. Our recognition of the importance of context is found in the formulation of the framework itself and its requirement for more qualitative responses from evaluators. Check out the presentation of our framework in the video below (2 parts).

References

Johnson, K., et al. (2008) A step forward: investigating expertise in materials evaluation. ELT Journal 62 (2): pp.157-163.

McDonough, J. and Shaw, C. (1993) Materials and Methods in ELT: a Teacher’s Guide. Oxford: Blackwell.

McGrath, I. (2013) Teaching Materials and the Roles of EFL/ESL Teachers: Practice and Theory. London: Bloomsbury.

Roberts, J. T. (1996) Demystifying materials evaluation. System 24 (3): pp. 375-389.

Tomlinson, B. (2012) Materials development for language learning and teaching. Language Teaching 45 (02): pp. 143-179.

Tomlinson, B. (2013) Materials evaluation. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Developing Materials for Language Teaching. (2nd ed) London: Bloomsbury. pp.21-48.

In my first post (Materials Now – Why am I here?’) I mentioned that I’ve been designing materials since the very start of my career, it was almost entirely down to the necessity to

• better cater for my students’ needs
• allow for the fact that students only have an hour and a half of class a week, ie to reduce them to the essentials or to make them suitable for self-study
• fit the language point or skill to my students’ specialism(s)
• further exploit the material ie by additionally focussing on a language point or vocabulary
• personalise the topic
• provide authentic material
• provide up-to-date material (particularly at the Political Studies Institute where the focus was largely on current affairs).

In some cases, when starting a course from scratch with little to no resources, it was a case of creating materials to actually have materials.

In my current context, the reasons behind my adaptation and supplementation of materials aren’t as extreme in need but have been similar, with the addition of having to make the coursebook work. Since students are required to buy the book, we are required to use it. This has involved making different sections of the coursebook work together in order to fully cover a point. Fortunately our module coordinators provide an overview with a list of carefully selected pages from the book, but then we have to figure out how to make it work together. Although this can be done quite successfully, on more than one occasion, the book has failed to present the point in a clear enough manner, or with concrete enough examples and practice for the point to be made sufficiently (a flaw which likely arises from the very tight deadlines the writers had to work under). This has led to some on-the-spot adaptation and some reworking of the content. I’d say that the main difficulty in using this coursebook is that there is simply too much stuff to go at. It needs to be simplified and presented in a way that is more manageable for the students and the teachers. This is what I did in my post on Adapting and Supplementing Materials 2.

Here are some thoughts from the class as to how and why we adapt and supplement materials.

Our group’s thoughts

As with previous discussions, the amount of overlap in our ideas is notable. This almost begs the question as to why – if we’re all adapting our materials in similar ways – aren’t materials being created and supplied that way? I say ‘almost’ simply because I doubt that our ways of doing each of these things or produces similar final products. And if one requirement of materials we use is for them to be flexible (as I mentioned in my post on Principles and Frameworks), wouldn’t that flexibility be almost entirely removed if coursebooks did everything for us? Similarly, if the materials really were all singing and all dancing, wouldn’t they be self-study materials?

I guess that this might be the way things are heading since adaptive learning is a major focus of educational technology.  I do wonder though whether it will be successful only when used alongside a teacher.  The aim of adapting and supplementing resources is to provide the best, most appropriate materials for our students, and an app is only capable of seeing data, not what might be going on in the real classroom or real world (assuming that the app isn’t the only form of input).  It will be interesting to see whether tech is capable of recognising students’ needs to the same extent as an experienced teacher.  For now our jobs appear to be safe: most apps purporting to involve adaptive learning seem to apply it predominantly in how frequently language is recycled; and if there’s no motivation to learn, whatever the fancy app can do is insignificant.

I was teaching an intermediate-level Preparatory English class today (before students start on a foundation or pre-masters programme) and found myself wishing I had a set cuisenaire rods!

Narrative tenses are notoriously difficult for students to get their heads around, but having looked though the coursebook, prepared my timelines to help explain it to them, along with some extra personalised examples that would help, I thought it would be ok. It’s a really small class, they’re diligent and hard working, they’ll take the time to listen and to read through explanations, they’re not too afraid to ask questions, experiment or give it a go, but it just wasn’t working. I could have killed for cuisenaire rods.

This is what I came up with in the spur of the moment:

Starting to put the actions on the timeline

It’s just scraps of paper with the verbs from the text used to introduce narrative tenses (Speak Out Intermediate). I got the students to identify and colour code the tenses (matching traditional timelines and examples on the board) was being used on the scraps and in a large photocopy of the text. They then read the story and arranged the scraps in the order the events happened.

With some guidance, they were able to identify the sequence of events, and with extra questioning how the events related to each other (past continuous for background/interrupted action, past simple for interrupting action/sequential actions, past perfect for actions further in the past). By the end of the lesson we were all quite happy that they better understanding of the target language.

Almost finished! You can see how the actions are being grouped together.

Honestly, it was hard going for a moment and I wasn’t sure how we’d come out of it on the other side! For such a relatively simple, spur of the moment idea, it worked quite well. I’d definitely use it again, but this time from the start of the lesson, and with a story that was more familiar to the students.

I have to admit that I’ve never previously sat down to consider the principles I follow/refer to/put into practice when I’m creating materials, or how I (would) do it. Although many coursebook writers describe the creative process as being

• intuitive
• based on experience
• inspiration
• chaotic
• recursive
• ad hoc
• spontaneous

(and I would tend to agree with them on some of those points), Jill Hadfield (2014) finds that experienced materials writers have “a ‘tacit’ framework of principles underlying their design decisions which can be called into play at any moment, depending on the demands of the task.”

Though I wouldn’t wish to equate myself to the experienced writers Hadfield refers to or in  Johnson’s study (2003), I see some similarities with my own process:

• the first stage is painful – thinking of an initial idea is hard!
• sometimes it just doesn’t work and you have to start again from scratch. I find this quite frustrating so I wouldn’t however describe this as ‘easy abandonment capacity’ just yet, but at the end of the day you want materials that work well and achieve their aims – what’s the point in keeping something that isn’t useful even if you have spent hours on it?

I also find myself asking some of the same questions Hadfield (2014) describes as her own tacit principles:

• Does the activity achieve the aim in the best possible way?
• Is the staging in the best logical sequence?
• Does staging scaffold the students by providing achievable steps? – I find this one to be especially in EAP as activities often involve integrating an approach to a task that students would later be required to complete on their own, so thinking this part through carefully means that the lesson can be a 2-for-1 deal on content/language and exam/skill technique.
• Is there variety and balance of interaction?

I also tend to imagine how it’s going to play out in the classroom, how I’m going to introduce the activities, manage the students or offer them extra support etc. This also involves completing the activity myself normally a day or 2 after creating the materials so I can see them with fresh eyes (that is if it isn’t a last minute job of course!). I also find talking through my plan with a colleague (dialoguing) really helpful – getting another perspective is great when you might be trapped in your own head, and can’t take enough of a step back to see a major flaw in the design or an small addition or different application/interpretation that would make the materials even better.

I’m not sure how useful I’d find sitting with a checklist during this process. I’m fairly certain I’d hate it and find it restrictive. Although frameworks offer useful guidance as to considerations during the creative process, I wonder whether the checks described above (more of an evaluation) are more helpful and easier to implement. Perhaps by bearing these thoughts and principles in mind when creating materials, it has the same or similar effect.

Our principles

It was interesting to discover that a lot of the principles I hold as a teacher are shared with my classmates. Perhaps this isn’t particularly surprising since we’ve all chosen to further our knowledge of our profession by taking the course, but considering we’re from wide-ranging backgrounds around the world (with home countries of Italy, Argentina, Japan, Kuwait, Angola, the UK, plus experiences living and working in other countries) it’s interesting to note this overlap.

Our group’s principles – look at how many similarities there are even though we’d written them on our own!

Materials should (my ideas in 5 mins):

• have flexibility
• have a purpose
• be fit for purpose
• stretch and challenge the learner
• not be so boring/dry that they dissuade learners from learning
• be relevant to learners
• be well laid out and clear

Additionally based on our discussions, materials should:

• be digitally available – perhaps I take this for granted? Yes, we have coursebooks, but we also have a wealth of digital in house materials on file.
• be culturally acceptable – I think this one is a little more open for me than for some of my coursemates teaching abroad in terms of topics that can be covered because students also have to integrate British society and because I have mixed-nationality classes. Obviously they are introduced in as objective a manner as possible so as not to offend, and with focus more on making students (more) aware. I guess my favourite question is ‘Is this the same in your country?’ to promote cultural awareness.
• be up to date – yes! I can’t believe I didn’t think of this one myself. In EAP and skills teaching ‘up to date’ might not mean the same as it does in EFL – fortunately I don’t come across the problem of having to explain what a cassette is to my class before teaching a lesson on ‘new technologies’ very often. I think the main issue related to this is that our coursebooks no longer fully reflect the assessments our students are going to take because of changes made to the curriculum.
• have instructions – yes and no. One criticisms of our in house coursebook is that the teachers’ notes are unhelpful, but when I make my own materials, I have it clear in my mind how they are going to be used so I don’t tend to write many instructions on the sheet given to students. A little hypocritical perhaps!
• Recycle – yes! Always a good idea.
• Be real world – yes please!  This is fairly standard in EAP because there’s a very definite setting in which to base our lessons.
• Encourage creativity – this is a difficult one for EAP as there are so many academic conventions that need to be taught, understood and ultimately respected
• Be varied – yep.

Corpora are an example of technology that is widely used in EAP, but perhaps not to its full potential.  This was the subject I wrote about in the Methodology module last term, but I thought it was equally relevant here.

The Lexical Approach and Use of Corpora in EAP

Identification

In the fourth workshop of the Methodology module, each group gave a presentation on an extension or alternative to CLT, with Lucinda, Victoria and I being assigned the lexical approach to introduce. I must admit that it was an approach that I had not really heard of before. While researching it, however, it made a lot of sense to me. This is partly because in my teaching, as well as in learning languages myself, I have unwittingly been applying some of the principles of the lexical approach.

• Teaching or learning vocabulary in chunks, not just as lone words
• Contextualising the presentation of words and grammar points, and grouping according to function/context
• Getting students to notice real language and its co-text in authentic materials – not how language can be used, but how it is

The main emphasis of the approach is to recognise the importance of lexis for communicative competency – as opposed to grammatical accuracy – with the idea of language being ‘grammaticalised lexis’ (Lewis 1993).

It was great to read about the theory and application of some of the practices I had already been using Lewis (1993, 1997). The approach’s compatibility with other ELT methodologies and CLT make it particularly appealing to me. Following my presentation of a few ideas to make coursebook-based syllabuses fit better with the lexical approach, I started to think about it with greater focus on my own context: English for Academic Purposes (EAP). For the purpose of this SOR, I have included the points that have made me reflect most upon my own teaching and on how I could integrate use of corpora into my writing lessons.

Reflection – Corpora in EAP

I have been teaching EAP in higher education for over six years now, so when I initially read about the lexical approach’s emphasis on observing real language and that corpora are a valuable tool for this (Lewis 1993, 2000), I immediately thought of the Academic Word List (AWL, Coxhead 2000). I have used the AWL previously to focus vocabulary teaching, but have not used – and was to some extent unaware of – the full potential of corpus analysis tools. From my reading this seems to be the case for a lot of practitioners (see Thompson 2006).

Although the frequency of language being used (the organising principle for corpus-based word lists) is important, engaging directly with corpus data can tell us – teachers and students alike – much more than that. Word lists in general fail to recognise the importance of collocation, which is key to the lexical approach. Corpus-based word lists alone do not show the word in context or represent the frequency of different senses of the word. I seem to have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how corpora can be useful to all language teaching, not just EAP. Concordance lines can be used to learn about

• differences in words used in speaking and writing, and in different contexts
• the likely phraseology (collocation and colligation) used with certain words
• a word’s function in organising and managing discourse (McCarten 2007).

If corpora are to be used to learn vocabulary in the lexical approach, all of these, along with the likely semantic prosody of a word should be taken into account (Hoey 2000). Looking at concordance lines in data-driven learning (DDL) activities, may shorten the vocabulary-learning process (O’Keeffe et al 2007, p24) of collecting mental concordance data as described by Hoey (2000, p240). It is this noticing of these chunks and patterns that aids fluency, cohesion and coherence in students’ own production.

So far corpus data has influenced reference works much more than it has directly influenced what happens in the classroom (Stubbs 2004 cited in Flowerdew 2015). In particular, EAP and ESP have been the focus of the majority of classroom-based research in ELT thus far (Flowerdew 2015; O’Keeffe et al 2007). O’Keeffe et al (2007, p24) suggests that the volume of DDL materials available attests to its popularity among language teachers. Flowerdew (2015, p108) describes the concern that DDL activities at lower levels may be problematic, but suggests that corpus data be used hands-on with students at different levels, for example by limiting the number of samples given.

DDL appears to have positive effects for learners (Flowerdew 2015). However, there is significant debate as to whether a core academic vocabulary spanning different disciplines exists (ibid.). Research has found that even high-frequency academic words show semantic variation and different phraseological tendencies dependent on discipline (ibid; Hyland and Tse 2007; O’Keeffe et al 2007). It is clear that failing to use discipline specific corpora would fail to fully prepare EAP students for their future studies.

Lewis’ recommendation that awareness raising involves having students compare their own work with some norm (1993, p150) begs the question ‘which norm?’ What should be the basis of the corpus?

• Journal articles and books written by academics
• What the students are likely to read
• Native-students’ work (MICUSP and BAWE corpus)
• Non-native learners’ work – these corpora provide valuable insight into the difficulties L2 learners have with academic English (see Gilquin et al 2007).

Development

Short Term

• Get students to highlight high-frequency words in subject specific texts, and use DDL based on AWL and academic corpora to highlight register, and discipline specific corpora with groups that are predominantly separated by subject. This will help students identify patterns, gain fluency in their productive skills, and better prepare them for their university studies.
• With mixed groups, encourage students to compare use of AWL words in their specific subjects. This will promote learner autonomy.

Long Term

• Make a corpus of my students’ work to
  • help to identify error patterns/difficulties and target DDL activities accordingly
  • use to compare learners’ language with lexical chunks commonly used by native speakers of English at different levels using the BAWE corpus.

I will try to involve students and subject teachers in the selection of materials for the corpus to increase student engagement and ensure that the types of text included are relevant to their future studies.

References

Coxhead, A., 2000, A new academic word list, TESOL Quarterly, 34, pp213-238.

Flowerdew, L., 2015, Corpus-based research and pedagogy in EAP: From lexis to genre, in Language Teaching, 48, pp99-116.

Gillet, A., (2015). Using English for Academic Purpose, Available from <http://www.uefap.net/index.php/vocabulary/vocabulary-selecting/435-vocabulary-selecting-specific-subjects>, accessed on 29 October 2015.

Gilquin, G. Granger, S. and Paquot, M., (2007), Learner Corpora: The missing link in EAP pedagogy, in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6, pp319-335.

Hyland, K., and Tse, 2007, Is There an “Academic Vocabulary”?, in TESOL Quarterly, 41 (2), pp235-253.

Hoey, M., 2000, A world beyond collocation: new perspectives on vocabulary teaching in M. Lewis (ed), Teaching collocation: further developments in the lexical approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publications, pp224–43.

Kilgariff et al., 2015, BAWE (British Academic Written English) Corpus on Sketch Engine, Available from <https://the.sketchengine.co.uk/open/>, accessed on 29 October 2015.

Lewis, M., 1993, The lexical approach: the state of ELT and a way forward, Hove: Language Teaching Publications.

Lewis, M., 1997, Implementing the Lexical Approach: Putting Theory into Practice, Hove: Language Teaching Publications.

Lewis, M. (ed), 2000, Teaching collocation: further developments in the lexical approach, Hove: Language Teaching Publications.

McCarten, J. 2007, Teaching Vocabulary: Lessons from the Corpus, Lessons for the Classroom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

O’Keeffe, A. McCarthy, M. and Carter, R., 2007, From Corpus to Classroom: Language Use and Language Teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Römer, U. et al., 2010, MICUSP Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers, Available from <http://micusp.elicorpora.info/>, accessed on 31 October 2015.

Thompson, P., 2006, Assessing the contribution of corpora to EAP practice, Available from <http://www.reading.ac.uk/internal/appling/thompson_macedonia.pdf>, accessed on 30 October 2015.

What materials do I use?  How do I use them?

Over a few lessons I made notes of the materials I used, as well as how, when and why I used them, and how they worked.  Here’s what I found:

I was quite happy with the variety of materials that I’d used in the lessons – videos, coursebooks, additional worksheets, PowerPoint presentations. For the most part they worked well in the context, but were also useful in identifying areas for future lesson focus.  The table above also shows that I used a combination of materials from different sources: the prescribed coursebook, additional materials that I selected or created, and some from that library of resources that my colleagues have sourced and created over the years.

Compared to some of my classmates, there was greater use of technology.  Perhaps this is partly down to our notes only providing a snapshot of our teaching, teachers having to follow a strictly set programme or coursebook, or that facilities simply don’t allow for it.  Some of my classmates are rightly skeptical of using technology in the classroom.  Although I think that Ed Tech is an area that will become an increasing part of our day-to-day teaching, how we choose to implement it in the classroom must be with careful consideration.  It would be easy to become convinced that our students are ‘digital natives’ (Prensky, 2001) and so we have no choice but to integrate technology into our lessons, but I’m not (and neither is Prensky nowadays).  I find the idea of being called a ‘digital immigrant’ quite offensive and irreconcilable with my experience of technology, particularly in the classroom.  Use of new technologies should work alongside what we already do to improve it or add a new dimension, following and supporting ideas about second language learning and teaching methodologies.

I often find that though my students are attached to devices throughout the day, how they use the technology and their knowledge of how to use it best to their advantage leaves a lot to be desired.  Digital literacy is one of the main focuses this year in our college, and I think that it will/should be a key aspect in how we implement use of technology in the classroom.

I hope that following this course will mean that I have a stronger sense of how to implement Ed Tech with principles in mind, and give me more ideas for materials that I can experiment with.

We were playing around with cuisenaire rods in the session this week, something that I don’t think I’ve ever used in lessons as a teacher or learner. I remember them a little from my CELTA, but the session really made me want to get a set to use in class. There were some great ideas being shared around.

The great thing about cuisenaire rods is that they can add variety to traditional grammar lessons, adding both visual and kinaesthetic elements. What’s more, they can be used in a multitude of ways: the only real limitation is your imagination.

Here are a few of my favourites:

Grammar and Vocabulary

• as an alternative to a timeline on the board
• to illustrate active vs passive/question forms with auxiliaries
• to illustrate morphemes
• to practising prepositions – an information gap ‘tell and make’. Have SS arrange the rods and then describe to a partner who replicates it.
• to practise comparatives by describing the rods
• to illustrate pre-fixes/suffixes

Pronunciation

How do you do?

• to highlight long and short sounds
• to mark word stress and/or syllables

Creative

The story of my life

• to tell a story for example about your life, practising tense use (Earl Stevick’s Islamabad activity, 1980)
• to create a few different scenes, SS interpret them and tell a story.

I’ve been creating ELT materials since the very start of my career, pre-CELTA when I taught at a high school in France. It was ESP so it was really difficult to come by appropriate materials, and the school wasn’t particularly well-stocked. As the British Council Language Assistant I had to make some materials myself from time to time, which was a good experience. When I moved to the University of Bordeaux teaching Business, Economics and Law (CLIL); that was definitely a baptism by fire! I had no materials given to me whatsoever and had to create everything or source everything myself, mainly from the Internet. At this stage I guess I mainly relied on referring to my experience as a language learner (I studied French for many years), and what I perceived to be ‘standard’ ways of teaching and learning. I guess that post-CELTA this may have changed slightly, but then so did my context and the needs of my learners (Political Science students and some IELTS prep). I would say that obviously teachers – myself included – tend to repeat things that appear to ‘work’ in the classroom, based on experience, how learners react and whether they ‘seem to get it’.

In the first session, we were asked to make a few notes to answer the question ‘Why am I here?’. Here’s what I wrote:

• I’ve been teaching for 7 years now and find myself constantly amending materials. I sometimes feel like I’m stuck in a rut, running out of ideas or wonder why I am changing the work of experienced materials writers who have laboured over the course book for months or years. Who am I to want/be able to do that?
• I want to integrate more tech into my teaching…only if it’s actually going to help of course.
• I want to be/feel more principled in my choices when creating and adapting.
• I’ve been creating and adapting materials ever since I first started teaching. I don’t know if what I’m producing is any good (except for how I think it goes down in the classroom and the times other teachers have pinched things off me!) I guess that means I want to have more confidence in what I do and why I do it.

I’ll come back to this at the end of the course to see whether I get out of it what I hope.

Welcome to my blog accompanying the TE714 ELT Materials module for the Diploma in TESOL at the University of Brighton.

A bit about me:

My first experience teaching English to international students was on my university year abroad when I worked as a British Council Language Assistant at a high school in France. Having never previously considered a career in TESOL, I was surprised when I fell in love with the idea, and eventually decided to move to France permanently upon completing my degree to continue teaching. There, I taught English for Academic Purposes and Academic Skills in The University of Bordeaux’s business studies and law faculties, and in elite grandes écoles specialising in Economics, Law, Political Science, and Engineering. Having completed my CELTA in 2012 and taught for five years in Bordeaux, I decided to make TESOL part of my long-term career plan, returning to the UK in September 2014 in search of better career progression opportunities. Since then I have been working for Kaplan International Colleges at the University of Brighton’s International College and Roedean School, preparing international students for Undergraduate and Masters courses at the University of Brighton, and A-level studies at Roedean School.

During this time I have taught international students at all levels (A1-C2), including mixed-level classes, as part of Undergraduate and Masters programmes, as well as foundation, International Year One, and pre-sessional courses. I have focussed on the specific demands of each course group, as well as academic skills such as researching and referencing, essay writing, scientific report writing, debating and presenting. It is important for me to tailor my teaching and materials to the needs of the students. As such, I have developed and updated courses, and prepared students for IELTS and TOEIC tests, as well as internal written and oral exams that I have created, produced mark schemes for, and corrected with other members of the language department. I have produced mark schemes and course programmes to ensure standardised teaching, testing and marking of written and oral skills, independently and together with colleagues. While I feel that I have gained a lot of experience through my teaching, and knowledge through the CELTA and exchanges with colleagues, I know that I still have a lot to learn.

Being keen to improve on and learn new skills, I enjoy actively participating in best practice and skills workshops, professional development sessions, and attending conferences and workshops on English language teaching. I’m particularly interested in the use of technology in the classroom, and enjoy getting to grips with Virtual Learning Environments. I am excited about deepening my knowledge of the field, and progressing my career. I hope that the Diploma in TESOL will give me the opportunity to expand my knowledge and experience in the field.