26-01-2013 Mr SECK

MATERIALS IN ELT
OUTLINE
INTRODUCTION IIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIBRIEF OVERVIEW OF CLT PRINCIPLE OF CLT IMPLICATIONS IN TERMS OF MATERIALS WHAT IS A COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE? EVALUATION CRITERIA FOR COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITY WORKOUTS SAMPLES OF MATERIALS HANDS ON EXPERIENCE

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Breen, M.P. 1987, Contemporary Paradigms Design. Language Teaching 20: 3 157-174

in Syllabus

Eric Keller and Sylvia T Warner, 2002, Conversation gambits, Real English Conversation practice, Thompson Heinle Finnochiaro, M. and Brunfit, C. 1983, The Functional- Notional Approach, From Theory to Practice, New York: Oxford University Press Howard, J. and Major, J. Guidelines for designing effective English Language Materials. Seoul, South Korea: PAAL 9, Oct 2004. In Proceedings of the 9 th Conference of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics 101-109

48

http:// www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/paal9/pdf/howard.p df Jack C Richards, Communicative Language Teaching Today http: www.cambridge.org/otherfiles/downloads/esl/booklets/richards -communicative-language-language.pdf Littlewood, W. 1981: Communicative Language Teaching, CUP Nunan, D, 1988: Syllabus Design, CUP Willis, D. 1996: A framework of task-based learning. London. Longman GLOSSARY

Adapted: modified; usually refers to authentic materials that have been simplified for lower level students. ALM: it stands for Audio Lingual Method; a language teaching method emphasizing grammar, vocabulary, and sound pattern practice, presented in dialogue form. Authentic Material: Actual material from the real world, such as newspaper articles, leaflets, radio broadcast and students production. Background Knowledge (Schemata): Existing Knowledge that the language learner already has. Close Procedure: It is a reading or listening comprehension test technique that eliminates every nth word in your passage. Students then fill in blanks with the appropriate words. Collocations: The way words combine with other words in predictable ways. Pre-fabricated chunks of words. Ex: Leather Shoes/Cotton Shirt; Orange Juice/Three-Piece Suit; High-Heeled Shoes. Communicative Competence: The ability to recognize and produce correctly, idiomatically, fluently, and appropriately in a variety of communicative settings. The term includes grammatical competence, socio-linguistic competence,

48

discourse functions, and strategic competence, both orally and in writing. Contextualized: sounds, vocabulary and grammar presented within a meaningful context to facilitate learning. Cooperative Learning: learning that takes place when students of various abilities and backgrounds are placed together in pairs and small groups to work on task with teachers supervision and support.

MATERIALS IN ELT
INTRODUCTION Materials are central in ELT. They are decisive elements in the relationship between the teacher, the learner and the target language. They represent a real business regarding the tremendous amount of time and money spent on them by teachers, school institution, materials writers, publishers, parents and governments. In ELT, not only language and culture are at stake but also the underlying vision of a given society as expressed in the curricula which should encompass the background of the target audience. Globally made materials are too general to address the specific needs of particular local issues; teacher made materials when carefully designed have the advantage to adapt to and cater for the needs of learners. But teachers have to acquire the necessary skills in order to produce motivating, relevant and creative materials in accordance with the recommended methods. In resource-challenged areas it is a survival skill for the language teacher to be able to do or of the following of many more:

48

Find and use relevant texts, capture and use recordings (audio, video etc.), create activities, supplement book activities, design communicative activities, locate materials in internet, archive and retrieve materials. IBRIEF OVERVIEW OF CLT

A Theory of Language Language is a system for the expression of meaning; its primary function is for interaction and communication. A Theory of Learning Students should be presented with activities involving real communication; they should be carrying out meaningful tasks and using language which is meaningful thus promoting learning. Objectives Objectives will reflect the needs of the learner; they will indicate functional skills as well as linguistic objectives. IIIIIHANDOUTS IMPLICATIONS IN TERMS OF MATERIALS

Materials should be contextualized to: The syllabus they are intended to address (Nunan, 1988), so designers and materials developers should bear in mind the objective of the syllabus at the design phase. Experiences and realities of the target audience. Consequently designers and material developers should be aware of (socio-cultural appropriateness) (Jolly and Bolitho, 1988) and culture specific learning processes of the intended target audience, balance between enjoyable and more serious activities, establish between what learners already know, their language and culture. Materials should alert learners of cultural differences e.g. to throw a baby shower. ELT materials should stimulate interaction and be generative in terms of language. (Hall, 1995). Hall states that most people who learn to communicate fluently in a language which is not their language do so by spending a lot of time in situations where they have to use the language for some real communicative purposes.

48

Materials should provide activities that require interaction. Hall outlined three conditions to stimulate real communication: The need to have something to communicate. Someone to communicate with. Some interest in the outcome of the communication.

Nunan refers to these as Learning by Doing philosophy and suggests some procedures such as information gap, information transfer activities to ensure interaction. Materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills and strategies. Teachers cannot teach their learners all the language needed within a limited scope of a course.

The final goal of education is to make teachers redundant and the learners independent. To reach that goal, in addition to teaching valuable new language skills, it is essential that ELT materials also teach learners how to learn by helping them develop strategies: Word attack skills Guess Asking Look up (dictionary) Ignore morphology

Material should allow for a focus on form as well function. One initial motivation is to make activities more communicative, which is reaction to the artificial language use predominant in many books based on traditional approaches.

Well designed materials should alert learners to underline forms and provide opportunities for regulated practice in addition to independent and creative expression. ELT materials should offer opportunities for integrative language use. Some materials tend to focus on one or two skills which may be pervasive or dominant. Materials should give learners opportunities to integrate all the language skills in an authentic manner.

48

ELT materials should be authentic. It is imperative to target authentic text, not only written materials such as newspapers magazines. Materials writers should aim for authentic spoken and visual texts. Equally important is the provision of authentic tasks that learners are required to perform. ELT materials should link to each other to develop progression of skills, understanding and language items (one major shortcoming of teacher made materials is that they tend to be one-off, standalone productions). Clearly stated objectives will help assume that the resulting materials have coherence. ELT materials should be attractive because look and feels are important. So consider the density of the text, font size, type, cohesiveness, consistency of layout, illustration, physical appearance.

Materials must be professionally presented, user friendly, material should be attractive in terms of usability (enough space for learners to handwrite). Ability to be reproduced or duplicated, photocopy should be legible not blurred). ELT materials should have appropriate instructions. Instructions should be written in language that is appropriate for the target audience. ELT materials should be flexible.

Ref. Hall. D. (1985) Materials Production: Theory and Practice. In A.C. Hidalgo, D. Hall and CM. Jacobs (eds) Getting started: materials writers on materials writing. (pp. 8-14). Singapore: SEAMO Regional Language Center.

Jolly, D. and Bolitho, R. (1998). A Framework for materials writing in B. Temlinson (Eds.) Materials development in Language Teaching (pp. 279-294). Cambridge: Cambridge Language Teaching Library, CUP.

Nunan, D. (1988). Principles for designing language teaching materials, Guidelines 10 (2), 1-24.

48

48