Teaching language curriculum: MATERIALS

MATERIALS

Introduction

Strategies will be discussed : adopting, developing, and adapting materials. materials involves deciding on the types of materials that are needed, locating as many different sets of those types as possible, evaluating the materials, putting them to use, and reviewing them on an ongoing basis. Developing materials will be discussed in terms of three phases: developing, teaching (field testing), and evaluating the materials. Adapting materials includes all of the steps necessary in adopting them, but must additionally incorporate phases that allow for ana lyzing what is worth keeping in the materials, classifying that remaining material, filling gaps from other sources, and reorganizing all of this to fit the program in question.

Framework for material design

Materials can be adopted, developed, or adapted, or some combination of the three. However, the choice of overall strategy will depend on the program's overall orientation. Hence the overall strategy must be considered before becoming to involved in actual materials development processes.

Approach

The one point about which most language curriculum developers would probably agree is that there must be some sort of theoretical motivation underlying any curriculum development (for instance, see Anthony 1963; Richards & Rogers 1982; McKay 1978; and Chapter One). In this book, such motivations have been labeled approaches and interpreted as ways of defining what the stu dents need to learn based on assumptions and theoretical positions drawn from disciplines as diverse as linguistics, psychology, and education. Chapter One reviewed some of these: approaches including the classical approach, the gram- mar-translation approach, the direct approach, the audio-lingual approach, and the communicative approach. Though these approaches can be viewed as historical developments that happened roughly in the order listed, all of these approaches continue in use in classrooms throughout the world today.

Syllabuses

The procedures involved in developing a syllabus should eventually include examining instructional objectives, arranging them in terms of priorities, and then determining what kinds of techniques and exercises are required in order to attain those objectives. The information gathered in the course of conducting a language needs analysis will help to determine the direction that a particular syllabus planning project will go since the same units of analysis used in the needs analysis will tend to be used in the objectives that result. Thus a program's approach affects the units of analysis in the needs analysis, and-at least in part-predetermines the shape that the objectives will eventually take.

Techniques

Technique can be defined as ways of presenting language point to the students. Language can be presented to students in many ways, but presentation typically includes various combinations of interactions between teacher and student, student and student cassette player and student, and so forth. The teacher selects and uses these learning experiences to help bring about learning. Materials developers must make decisions early in the process about the principal kinds of activities and learning experiences that the program will use and the criteria that will be employed for selecting those activities and experiences.

Exercises

Exercise can be defined set of activities as ways of having the students practice the language points they have been presented. Language can be practiced in many ways, but typtcally such practice centers on the student using the language in some interaction such as learner to learner, learner to self, learner to teacher, learner to group, learner to cassette player, learner to class, and so forth. These learning experiences are selected and facilitated by the teacher to help bring about practice that will rein- force learning. Materials developers must make early decisions about the principal kinds of exercises that will be most appropriate for the program in quest.on, as well as decisions about the criteria that will be used for selecting exercises. The primary questions concern the weight that will be assigned to each activity per lesson or unit and the configurations of teacher/learner/group/class that will be used. These issues must be addressed within the program before deciding on detailed specifications for the exercises that will go on in the daily classes.

Materials blueprint

Blueprint might form part of a teacher's manual that can be used to describe the program and its curriculum or to orient new teachers to the program in question. As I will argue in the next chapter, such a teacher's manual can also contain information that will support instructors in their teaching efforts.

Whatever form such a materials blueprint eventually takes, it should account for all the relevant information learned in the initial curriculum development stages and include all factors judged to be potentially important influences on the program and its future curriculum. To review briefly, situation factors might include implications from the broader political, social, and educational contexts in which the program will operate, as well as the particular circumstances relacing to the kind of institution or setting in which the curriculum will be carried out. Other important factors might include the characteristics of the teachers, learners, and administrators; the resources found in the particular situation; and, of course, the language needs of the students

Units of analysis

Units of Analysis

            Conceptions of the nature syllabus are related to the approaches to language and language learning processes to which the curriculum designers and program participants subscribe. Under the influence of prescriptive, grammar-based approaches to language learning, syllabuses are traditionally expressed in terms of grammar, sentence patterns, and vocabulary. As a result of the more recent movement toward communicative theories of language and language learning, syllabuses have to tended to be expressed in more communicative terms.

Scope and Sequence Charts

            Closely related to syllabus design is the question of deciding what kind of organizational framework to adopt for developing materials. Given a certain time frame (often expressed in terms of the number of the number of hours of instruction), the syllabus should be thought out in terms of unit of the analysis and then in terms of curriculum scope and sequences. The syllabus itself is not a learning program, but it can be turned into one. Example, a syllabus for a beginning conversation course might specify that greeting and introductions are among the function to be covered.

Gantt diagrams

            Gantt diagram is a two axis figure with time divisions labeled across the horizontal axis and task divisions down the vertical axis. 

WHERE DO MATERIALS COME FROM?

Adopting materials

            Adopting materials in a manner is not as easy as it might at first appear. First, it is necessary to decide what types of materials are desirable. Second, all available materials of these types should be located just in case they might prove useful. Third, some form of preview / evaluation procedures must be set up to pare, this list down to only those materials that should be seriously considered so that final choices can be made. Fourth, some strategies for the regular review of these adopted materials must be set up to make sure that they do not become irrelevant to the needs of the students and the changing conditions in the program.

Developing materials

Checklist for developing materials from scratch

1. Overall curriculum

1.      Approach

-          Theoretical bases

-          Revise

2.      Syllabus

-          Organizational principals

-          Revise

2. Needs

1.      Define

2.      Revise

3. Goals and objectives

1.      Define

2.      Revise

4. Tests

1.      Proficiency or placement – get a fix on overall level

2.      Diagnostic or achievement – get a fix on appropriateness of objectives

5. Creating

1.      Find teachers willing to work as materials developers

2.      Ensure that all materials developers have copies of relevant documents

3.      Divide the labor

4.      Work individually or in teams to create the materials

5.      Establish a resource file

6.      Consider working modularly in materials packets

6. Teaching

1.      Pilot materials

2.      Discuss their effectiveness

3.      Revise

7. Evaluating

1.      Evaluate your own materials

2.      Revise materials

3.      Produce materials in a relative way durable format

4.      Consider publishing the materials

5.      Remember that materials are never finished

Steps for adopting materials

a.       Finding evaluating

b.      Analyzing

1.      Matches to current objectives

2.      Mismatches to current objectives

3.      Percent of objectives that need to be supplemented from outside these materials

4.      Percent of existing matches that will require revision

5.      Decide which set (s) of materials to adopt

c.       Classifying

1.      Use any logical classes of objectives to help you group them for analysis

2.      List places in materials where each objectives is addressed

3.      Leave blanks where supplemental materials are needed

d.      Fill in the gaps

1.      From other materials

2.      From created materials

3.      Teachers as resources

4.      Resource file

e.       Recognizing

1.      Complete the list

2.      Recognize

ADOPTING MATERIALS

The first stage in adapting materials is to find an evaluate materials that might serve at least some of the students’ needs and helps to meet at least some of the course objectives. Once usable / revisable materials have been identified it may prove useful to think of grouping the useful elements of materials in a way that is different from how they were grouped in the original so that the resulting adaptation will more closely match the groupings and orderings in the course objectives. Once decision have been made about which objectives are covered by which materials and which can be covered by supplementary materials, this list can be further analyze so that the materials can be recognize to better match the existing objectives and syllabus.