- 26 February 2013
We met Theresa Clementson, one of the writers of English Unlimited (a coursebook by Cambridge) and had a joint session with the TESOL diploma students. We talked about coursebooks and producing materials. We also used the materials we had produced for session 4 to do some tasks in groups. With my partner we used the worksheet I had designed (non-gradable adjectives – on the previous post) and we wrote a mini lesson plan which turned out to be the following.
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a discussion task / personalised Qs
- a gist task
- examples of language
- guessing meaning from context
- focus on language forms / use
- language rules, info or tips
- practice (speaking)
- practice (writing)
As Clementson pointed out, ‘materials are lessons’ and ‘a piece of material works if it produces a good lesson’. I totally agree with her as I had stated in previous posts, I believe in the power of materials. And lately (thanks to my experiences as a CELTA trainee and a TESOL master’s student) I have started to believe in the power of variety as well. Both content and format matters a lot when it comes to materials. There is a need for variety in the classrooms and it is needed to fight boredom and grab attention.
As I am back to being a student, I see that the same type of materials, no matter how good and efficient they are, can lose their touch after some time. Therefore, I think we should always keep in mind to include various kinds of materials when planning and designing. By this I mean making use of coursebooks, texts, visuals (photos, pictures, cards), cartons and strips of paper (yes, old school is still good), audio, realia (weird, but effective), presentations (not only PowerPoint, try Prezi, something different), smartphones (and apps) the internet (blogs, social networking websites) and last but not least, videos!!! A combination of different tools can create variety…
To go back to our session with Ms Clementson, we put our heads together and discussed the advantages of using coursebooks and producing our own materials. For using coursebooks, we came up with the following;
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saves time (a classic)
- can be the syllabus
- includes recycling
However, for the advantages of producing our own materials, we came up with a longer list (surprised?).
- personalization
- culturally appropriate content
- gradable / user friendly
- flexibility
- up-to-date
- relevance
- different topics
- localization
- authenticity
Seems we all have positive feelings toward designing our own materials, but I wonder how many of us would be willing to do it regularly in a real teaching setting (by which I mean not a training course where you are constantly willing to impress), without extra pay or without being asked/forced to do so. Just for the sake of our students, the responsibility we feel towards our profession, simply, to deliver a ‘good lesson’…
To focus on coursebooks, I must start by saying that these things cause a lot of discussion and controversy in the world of ELT. In Celmentson’s session, we came up with the benefits I have written above and if we look at what bigger names wrote we can get a better idea. As stated in Part IV, Chapter 11 in Hall (2011) Richards suggests that coursebooks are the primary source of teaching ideas and materials for many teachers around the world. Hall lists the following benefits; providing input and exposure for teachers and learners / providing interesting and motivating material, organized in an appealing and logical manner / providing a written record of what has been studied / allowing for revision and continued study beyond the classroom / reducing the amount of time teachers require for preparation.
To look at the drawbacks in Hall, coursebooks may create a ‘dependency culture’ / as Swan states, they can absolve teachers of responsibility by minimizing day-to-day decision making / Richards suggests that teachers may become ‘de-skilled’ if their teaching decisions are dependent on coursebooks because it would prevent critical thinking and working independently / Meddings and Thornbury think coursebooks fail to cater for individual needs which lead to lessons that are material centred classes instead of person centred ones, that constrain creativity / Hall adds more to the list by saying they are commercial products that are innately conservative – they focus on native speaker lives, lifestyles and language varieties – they are not neutral because they reflect a particular view of society.
When all of these are considered designing materials which would be fit for individual contexts seems like a good solution. However this attempt can raise questions as well. How should materials be designed, what is required, who can be responsible? Can all teachers develop their own materials? Would these materials be effective? As Hall writes, Allwright believes that there is a difference between professional materials writers and teachers due to having different and complementary areas of expertise and this is called the ‘difference view’. According to this point of view, using coursebooks that are well-presented and professionally published help free teachers of having to deal with practical and fundamental issues in the fostering of language learning. As a young teacher who has used coursebooks, but also attempted to design materials, I must say that those who believe in themselves, that have confidence in their knowledge and enjoy creating materials should not be afraid to do so. After all, we know our contexts and students better, but we must be aware that this is a deep process which requires doing a lot of thinking and work.
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