I thought for my last post I would follow Scott Thornbury’s lead and compile an A-Z of ELT materials to illustrate all the new ideas I was introduced to on the module: A is for Augmented reality I missed PaulRead more…
Infographics
In his blog, Nik Peachey lists a number of benefits of using infographics in class: They are easy to find using sites such as Daily Infographic and Cool Infographics. The visual and statistic aspects help to convey meaning so theyRead more…
Task design and evaluation
The topic for this week was task design and evaluation. It makes sense to begin with a definition of task. In Materials Development in language teaching, Ellis (2011) offers the following definition: The focus of a task is on ‘meaning’.Read more…
Creating a worksheet
This week’s task involved creating a worksheet. Rather than use Jolly and Bolitho’s framework, I used the ideas from the methodology module to help plan the lesson. I will compare my materials to Jolly and Bolitho’s framework towards the endRead more…
Using video in the classroom
In Language learning with digital video, Ben Goldstein and Paul Driver provide a number of ways video can be used in the classroom. There are many reasons for using video in the classroom, which are similar to the reasons forRead more…
Images
In Images, Jamie Keddie (2009) lists a number of reasons why pictures can be a useful resource in the classroom: Combining words with images may help learners remember the language connected to the images. Images can also act as a stimulus for language and conversely,Read more…
Adapting and supplementing seminar
After looking at two different models of course design, the seminar looked at a study (presented by Ian McGrath in ELT Journal) of how teachers and learners view coursebooks. Those teachers who viewed coursebooks as a guide used metaphors suchRead more…
Omitting, adding, changing
In Brian Tomlinson’s Materials Development in Language Teaching, Malay (2011) explains that because coursebooks have to appeal to the largest possible number of students, teachers will need to adapt them for a specific learning context and to suit the needsRead more…
A framework for evaluating coursebooks
The pre-seminar task for week three involved organising ourselves into groups of three, choosing one of the selected readings and summarising it for the rest of the group. Based on our own experiences and the reading, we created a draftRead more…
Principles for materials seminar
The second seminar looked at how when professional material developers create materials the process is often chaotic, ad hoc and spontaneous. In his state-of-the-art article, Tomlinson (2012) mentions two studies that looked at how writers actually write materials. Many reported relyingRead more…