Understanding Language Teaching Materials Development PRESENTED BY YUSNITA

Understanding Language Teaching Materials Development PRESENTED BY: YUSNITA, PURWATI AND RATNA

Teaching Learning Materials can be: Informative (informing the learner about the target language) Instructional (guiding the learner in practising the language) Experiential (providing the learner with experience of the language in use) Eliciting (encouraging the learner to use the language) Exploratory (helping the learner to make discoveries about the language).

Examples of materials: �Videos �DVDs �Emails �You. Tube �Dictionaries �Grammar books �Readers �Newspaper �Teacher’s instruction

What does ‘Materials development’ mean? � ‘Materials development’ refers to all the processes made use of by practitioners who produce and/or use materials for language learning, including materials evaluation, their adaptation, design, production, exploitation and research. Ideally, all of these processes should be given consideration and should interact in the making of language-learning materials. � Materials development is both a field of study and a practical undertaking. As a field it studies the principles and procedures of the design, implementation and evaluation of language teaching materials

Frameworks for materials development § Richards (1995: 102 -103) describes frameworks as the process of designing a “design or frame for a unit in a textbook” which can “serve as a formulae which the author can use in writing the book” § Flores (1995: 60 -62) also describes frameworks that outline a lesson format with the following basic stage:

Key components in lesson format �Starter �Input �General information �Language focus �Tasks

Basic stages in outlining a lesson format Listening with Understanding Using Grammar in Oral Interaction Reading for Understanding Writing Literature

Jolly and Bolitho (1998: 97 -98) have an interestingly different approach to frameworks and focus not on a unit frameworks but on a framework for developing materials, which involves the following procedures: v Identification of need for materials v Exploration of need v Contextual realization of materials v Pedagogical realization of materials v Productions of materials v Student use of materials v Evaluation of materials against agreed objectives

The basic principles of SLA relevant to the development of materials for the teaching of languages 1. Materials should achieve impact 2. Materials should help learners to feel at ease �Novelty � Most learners feel more �Variety �Attractive presentation �Appealing content �Achievable challange comfortable with written materials with lots of white space � Learners are more at ease with texts and illustration that they can relate to their own culture � Learners are more relaxed with materials which are obviously trying to help them to learn

The basic principles of SLA relevant to the development of materials for the teaching of languages 3. Materials should help learners to develop confidence �Relaxed and self- confident learners learn faster (Dulay, Burt and Krashen in Tomlinson, 2011: 10) 4. What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful �By relating teaching points to interesting and challenging classroom tasks and by presenting them in ways which could facilitate achievement of the task outcomes desired by the learners.

The basic principles of SLA relevant to the development of materials for the teaching of languages 5. Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment �By providing learners with choices of focus and activities �Involving the learners in mini-projects �Involving learners in finding supplementary materials for particular units in a book 6. Learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught � By materials which create situations requiring the use of variational features not previously taught � By materials which ensure that the learners have gained sufficient mastery over the developmental features of the previous stage before teaching a new one � By materials which get learners to focus attention on features of the target language

The basic principles of SLA relevant to the development of materials for the teaching of languages 7. Materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use �The advice they give �The instructions for their activities �The spoken and written texts they include �The activities they suggest 8. The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input � It is important to understand that learners need to pay attention to linguistic features of authentic input � The important thing is that the learners become aware of a gap between the interlanguage and the equivalent feature in the target language

The basic principles of SLA relevant to the development of materials for the teaching of languages 9. Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use target language to achieve communicative purposes � Information or opinion gap activities which require learners to communicate � Post-listening and post-reading activities which require the learners to use information from the text � Creative writing and creative speaking activities (writing a story) � Formal instruction given in the target language either on the langugae itself 10. Materials should take into account that the positive effects of instruction are usually delayed �To facilitate the gradual process of acquisition, it is important for materials to recycle instruction and to provide frequent

The basic principles of SLA relevant to the development of materials for the teaching of languages 11. Materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles 12. Materials should take into account that learners different in affective attitude � Styles which need to be One implication is to diversify language instructions. Ways of doing this: � Providing choices of different text and types of activities � Providing optional extras for the more positive and motivated learners; and variety � Including units in which the value of learning English is a topic for discussion, involve the learners in discussion � Being aware of the cultural sensitivies � Specific advice to respond to negative learners catered: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, studial, experiential, analytic, global, dependent, independent. � The important point for materials developers is that they are aware of and cater for different of preferred learning styles in their materials.

The basic principles of SLA relevant to the development of materials for the teaching of languages 13. Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction � It is extremely valuable to delay L 2 speaking for beginners until they have gained sufficient exposure � Possible ways include: - Starting the course with TPR - Starting with listening comprehension approach - Permitting to respond by using first language or through drawings or gestures 14. Materials should maximize learning potential � It is done by encouraging intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional involvement which stimulates both right and left brain activities � It is important that the content is not trivial or banal to lead to deeper and more durable learning. � The maximisation of the brain’s learning potential is fundamental as in suggestopedia: enabling learners to receive information through cerebral process

The basic principles of SLA relevant to the development of materials for the teaching of languages 15. Materials should not rely too much on controlled practice 16. Materials should provide opportunities for outcome feedback � Ellis (1990; 192): controlled � If the language that the practice has little long term effect on accuracy and fluency � Dominance is still shown in some low level course books, resulting in many students and teachers wasting their time for drills, listening to and repeating dialogues learner produces is evaluated in relation to the purpose for which it is used, that language can become a powerful and informative source of information about the language use. � It is very important for materials developers yo make sure that language production activities have intended outcome other than just practising language

Principles in Materials Development �Most writers on the process of the materials development focus on needs analysis as starting point. And some writers report starting by articulating their principles. �Bell and Gower (1998: 122 -125) started by articulating principles which they wanted to guide their writing:

v Flexibility v From text to language v Engaging content v Natural language v Analytic approaches v Emphasis on review v Personalized practice v Integrated skills v Balance of approaches v Learner development v Professional respect

§ Tomlinson (1999 b) describes a principled and flexible framework designed to help teachers to develop materials efficiently and effectively. § Penaflorida (1995: 172 -179) reports her use of the six principles of materials design identified by Nunan (1988): a. Materials should be clearly linked to the curriculum they serve. b. Materials should be authentic in terms of text and task

c. Materials should stimulate interaction d. Materials should allow learners to focus on formal aspects of the language e. Materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills, and skills in learning f. Materials should encourage learners to apply their developing skills to the world beyond the classroom.

A Text-driven Approach to Materials Development �Tomlinson’s own preference is the text-driven approach, in which an engaging written or spoken text drives a unit of materials in which readiness activities activate the learners’ minds in relation to the text, initial response activities stimulate engagement whilst experiencing the text, intake response activities encourage articulation of personal responses, input response activities invite exploration of features of the text and development activities encourage learner production (Tomlinson 2003 c).

Table of a summary of the text-driven framework Stage Procedure Principles Objectives Text Collection Find or create potentially engaging texts (written or spoken) Affective engagement is a prerequisite for durable learning To build a library of text with the potential for engaging learners Text Selection Select a text Texts need to be suitable in level matched with and theme for your learners target learners To find a text with the potential for useful engagement for the target learners Text Experience Read or listen to the text experientially To start from an experience which you can try to help the learners to approximate. Apprehension should come before comprehension

Readiness Activities Devise activities which could help the learners achieve mental readiness for experiencing the text Inner speech and the establishment of affective and cognitive connections Multidimensional way they would automatically use when experiencing an L 1 text. Experiential Activities Devise whilstreading or listening activities which will help the learners to process the text in an experiential way L 2 learners tend to process a text in a studies way in an insecure attempt to achieve total comprehension To help the learners to move away from their tendency to study texts so that they can engage with the text instead experientially

Intake Response Activities Devise activities which help learners to articulate and develop their mental representation of the text Learning is facilitated by starting positively from what the learners do know and understand To encourage learners to process their representation of a text rather than the text itself and to encourage them to be relaxed and confident in their response to texts. Development Activities Devise activities which help the learners to use their representation of the text as a basis for language production activities Mental connections To help learners facilitate learning express themselves in the target language intelligently and creatively

Input Response Activities Devise activities which help the learners to go back to the text and to discover patterns and regularities of language use in the text A good time to analyze a text is just after an enjoyable multidimensional experience of it, Helping learners to make discoveries for themselves can be an effective way of promoting longterm learning To get the learners to develop their analytical skills and their ability to make discoveries about the use of the target language for themselves. Trialling Try out the materials with a typical target class Matching materials to learners needs and wants is an ongoing, dynamic process To find out how usable and motivating the materials are

Evaluation Use questionnaires, interviews and analysis of the learners’ work to find out what effect the materials had on the learners Giving learners a chance to evaluate their learning process can not only provide useful information but can also motivate and stimulate learners To show learners they are respected and to find out what effect the materials had on them Revision Produce an improved Materials developers To match the version of the and teachers needs and wants materials constantly to improve of the learners their materials to achieve a closer match with learners need and wants

Although the framework above is primarily text-driven it can be adapted to become an activity-driven framework with the text to base the activities on being chosen by the learners from a library of texts either provided for them or built up over a period of time by themselves. Materials can be based on units of the text genres (e. g, advertisement, reports, jokes, announcements, stories, etc) and the learners can be asked to find an appropriate and engaging text from the internet.

Conclusion �Tomlinson’s argument is that the activities in a course should match with learner needs and wants and with principles of language learning, and that they should be developed in ways which provide flexibility of use as well as coherence of connection. �Consideration: target context of use for the materials and principles; experience of the writers; developing a flexible framework. �The writing process will start with the learner as the focus and with principles in mind.

REFERENCES � Tomlinson, Brian. (2011). Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. �Tomlinson, Brian (Ed. ). (2003). Developing Materials for Language Teaching. New York: Cromwell Press.

THANK YOU