TEMA 23 - OPOSICIONES DE EDUCACIN PRIMARIA - ESPECIALIDAD DE

INGLS

OPOSICIONES A LA ESPECIALIDAD DE "INGLS"

EDUCACIN PRIMARIA

TEMA 23

LA ELABORACIN DE MATERIALES CURRICULARES PARA LA CLASE DE

INGLS.
CRITERIOS PARA LA SELECCIN Y USO DE LOS LIBROS DE TEXTO.
DOCUMENTOS AUTNTICOS Y DOCUMENTOS ADAPTADOS: LIMITACIONES
DE USO. LA
COLABORACIN DE LOS ALUMNOS EN EL DISEO DE LOS MATERIALES.

0. INTRODUCTION.
1. PRODUCING ENGLISH LESSONS CURRICULAR MATERIALS.
2 CRITERIA FOR THE CHOOSING AND USE OF COURSEBOOKS.

1.1 Choosing a course book.

2.2. Using a course book.

3 AUTHENTIC, SIMULATED-AUTHENTIC AND NON-AUTHENTIC TEXTS: USE

CONSTRAINTS.
4 INOVOLVING THE CHILDREN IN MATERIAL DESIGN.
5 BIBLIOGRAPHY.

0. - INTRODUCTION
There is an abundance of English language teaching materials on the
market. At various times of our professional life we will be involved
in the selection of materials for our pupils, and, if we do not find
any materials which response to our pupils' needs we will have to
design them.
Before attempting to evaluate published materials or to design our own,
we must come to some conclusions about our pupils and what their needs
are.
The following profile of pupils needs has been taken from "Harmer" and
has three major components:
- description of pupils
- description of pupils' needs
- conclusions

DESCRIPTION OF PUPILS

1. Age:
2. Number of boys and girls:
3. Familiar background:
4. Parents' occupation:
5. Motivation/Attitude:
6. Knowledge of the world:
7. Knowledge of English:
8. Interests:
9. Pupils with special needs:
10. Pupils with discipline problems:
11. Based on the above, what conclusions can we draw about the
kind of materials that would be suitable for our pupils?

Once we have an idea of our pupils' personal characteristics we must

come to some kind of conclusion about what their needs are. Most of
them are legally marked (general objectives, assessment criteria.)

DESCRIPTION OF PUPILS' NEEDS

1 . To reach communicative competence we need to study the four

skills:
- Reading
- Listening
- Writing
- Speaking
2 . Is there any pupil with special needs? What shall we
do about them?

Now we have a clearer idea bout our pupils and their needs. It is time
to move to some conclusions about the type of materials we want to
select and design. We will now study the selection and production of
materials separately.

1. PRODUCING ENGLISH LESSON CURRICULAR MATERIALS.

Producing our own materials is a time-consuming process, so it is not
very often that teachers decide to produce all the materials they need
for a whole cycle. Most teachers, however, produce supplementary
materials which are finely tuned to their pupils' needs.
(Brewster gives some reasons for producing our own supplementary
materials, even if we have a course book:
1 - We may feel that our course book does not provide enough
practice on a problematic point for our pupils and we must prepare some
extra activities.
2 - Some of the materials in our course book are not appropriate
for our class, either because their lack of interest or because they do
not answer our pupils' needs.
3 - We want to foster a different methodology which is not the
one used by the course book authors, eg. We want to provide our pupils
with a selection of different activities so that they can choose and
work more autonomously.
4 - If the course book uses the same approach one and again we
may want to add some activities for the sake of variety.

In any of these cases we can see we are dealing with the production of
materials such as

Worksheets, flashcards

Worksheets can be exercises which are drawn, written or sheet of paper

then photocopied so that each pupil in the class could have one. They
are clear; simple and attractive with the instructions in very simple
English or in Spanish (especially with our youngest pupils). The
activities we normally use last a few minutes and practise one
particular language point involving our pupils in different skills.
We can use worksheets to organize both oral and written work,
individually or in pairs or groups. If we want to use them more than
once it is a good idea to cover them in plastic. If we do not, our
pupils can personalize the worksheets with labels, colours and so on.

When designing worksheets, we must think about how our pupils

will use them. It is important to know whether they will need written
instructions, either in simple English or in Spanish, or only oral
ones. It is always a good idea to try the worksheet ourselves to see if
there is really enough room to write our pupils' names and the
responses demanded in the activities.
Worksheets can be used with information gap activities. For
example we can tell our pupils they are going to work in pairs. We give
them a worksheet and tell them they cannot show each other their
worksheet. They have to share the information in order to complete the
worksheet.
We can also make a picture dictation where our pupils will give
us a non-verbal response. The worksheet consists of a simple drawing of
a naked, bald boy. We dictate his description and our pupils must add
the new elements to the drawing.
Other activities will include Time dictation, where our pupils
as us the time and draw it on the clockfaces drawn in the worksheet or
True or False where our pupils must compare the information they have
in the worksheet with the information we give them orally.

Flashcards for young learners are often made using pictures and
some words. The pictures must be clearly recognisable and the letters,
large, clear and black. Flashcards must
be large enough for the whole class to see: they must convey the
meaning clearly, especially when they refer to actions our pupils must
follow.
Flashcards must be used to introduce and practise vocabulary
related to our pupils' fields of interest. For example: What's
this? It's a monkey

To introduce and practise "yes/no questions" or "wh-questions".

For example: Do you like (Showing marmalade flashcard)? Yes, I do/
No, I don't
To introduce and practise talking about possessions, about uses
of modal verbs,
There is/ there are.
Both flashcards and worksheets can be made by ourselves or by our
pupils, as we will see in the last section.

2 . CRITERIA FOR THE CHOOSING AND USE OF COURSE BOOKS.

In the introduction we studied our pupils and their needs. Now that we
know them we can start to evaluate materials, above all our course book.

2.1 Choosing a course book.

Choosing a course book is extremely difficult. In some case, we cannot

get a good picture of the suitability of a book till we have been
working through it for some time. However, we can prepare a course
book evaluation form which is based on "Harmer". According to him, any
course book evaluation form should be based on the following criteria.

CRITERIA FOR SELECTING COURSE BOOKS ( Nunan )

1 - The course book makes clear the link between the classroom
and the wider word.
2 - The course book fosters independent learning.
3 - The course book focuses our pupils on their learning process.
4 - The course book is readily available.
5 - The course book accords with our pupils' needs.
6 - The course book can be used at more than one level of
difficulty (heterogeneity)
7 - The pedagogical objectives of the materials are clear.

Harmer's material evaluation form has seven parts. Each part is

considered through a set of questions which may be answered "yes/no
with an additional comment. The seven parts are:

- practical considerations
- layout and design
- activities
- skills
- language type
- subject and content
- guidance

To these we must add the final conclusions.

Under practical considerations we must decide if the price of

the materials is suitable for our pupils. We must also be sure about
the availability of the different parts of the course such as tapes,
workbooks.
We must also judge whether the course book layout and design is
attractive for our pupils.

We must also study our selected course books to see that there is a
balance of activities. In particular, there should be a substantial
amount of aural language input and a wide variety of communicative
activities. The presentation of new language should take place in
realistic contexts.

In the skills part we must see whether the course book balance
of skills is appropriate for Primary Education. We must see that the
aural component is more important than the written one, and that
receptive skills are more important than the productive ones.

In language type, we must consider whether the language is

realistic:
- authentic
- simulated authentic
We must also consider whether it is of the right type
(relevant to our pupils' needs); and finally, if the progression is
adequate for the cognitive stage of development of our pupils.
In subject and content we analyze what topics are included in
the course book and whether they match up to our pupils' personalities,
backgrounds and needs. Subject and content should be relevant,
realistic, interesting and varied.

We must also consider if there is sufficient guidance, not only

for us, but for our pupils. As far as we are concerned, we need to have
clear explanations of how the material should be used to take the
maximum advantage out of it. As far as our pupils are concerned, we
have to consider whether the materials are clear, easy to follow and
have well-defined objectives that the whole class can understand.

Finally, we must come to conclusions about the adoption of the

proposed course book once the form has finally been completed.
The whole Course Book evaluation form will take the following
form:

COURSE BOOK EVALUATION FORM:

1. Name of the course book under consideration:

2. Author or authors:
3. Publisher:
4. Level:
5. Price:

1 . Practical considerations.
1.1. Is the price of the materials appropriate for our pupils?
YES / NO Comment
1.2. Are the integral parts of the course available now (course
books, tapes, teacher's books, tapes.) ? YES / NO Comment:

2 . Layout and design.

2.1 Is the layout and design of the materials appropriate for our
pupils? YES / NO Comment:

3. Activities.
3.1. Do the materials provide a balance of activities that is
appropriate for your pupils?
YES / NO Comment:
3.2. Is there a sufficient amount of communication output in
the course book under consideration? YES / NO Comment:
3.3. Do the course book provide enough roughly-tuned input for our
pupils?
YES / NO Comment
3.4. Is new language introduced in motivating and realistic
contexts? YES / NO Comment:
4. A source of practical teaching ideas.
5. Work that our pupils can do on their own so that we do not need
to be centre stage all the time.
6. A basis for homework if that is required.

7. A basis for discussion and comparison with other colleagues.

It also helps our pupils because it offers them:

1. A sense of purpose, progression and progress.

2. A sense of security

3. Scope for independent and autonomous learning

4. A reference for checking and revising.

However, we also find some things that we can do better, such as:
participating in oral interactions, adjusting level and quantity of
work to our pupils' needs; and encourage our pupils when they are not
motivated.

As we can see it is equally wrong not to deviate from the

course book at all as deviating for the sake of deviating. If we have
chosen the book properly, it is usually a good idea to use the book
very much as the author suggests for the first time, as a great deal of
thought has gone into its writing. This way we can see really see its
advantages and drawbacks and act accordingly. Any chosen text must be
adapted to the particular requirements of the class and it is not very
professional to adopt for our cycles the aims and objectives of the
course book, unless they are reasonably complementary.

However, whether we adapt the course book or we teach it

straight from beginning to end, we must decide on our pace of
progress. This is very important in Primary education where we have
170 teaching hours every year. This is plenty of time really (roughly
an hour a day) and so we must be able to produce plenty of additional
and varied practice of the same topic. To do this we can use authentic,
simulated authentic, or artificial materials.

3. AUTHENTIC, SIMULATED AUTHENTIC AND NONAUTHENTIC

MATERIALS: USE
CONSTRAINTS.

The main aim of all our teaching is to enable our pupils to reach
communicative competence. As the focus will be on assisting our pupils
to do in class what they will need to do outside, the materials we use
should reflect the world outside. In other words they should have a
degree of authenticity. This authenticity should relate to the text
sources as well as to the pupils' activities and tasks.

3. 1 - Authenticity. (Nunan)

Authenticity material are usually defined as those which have been

produced for other purposes than to teach language. They can be got
from many different sources: video clips, recordings of authentic
interactions, extracts from television, radio and schedules.
Despite the difficulties associated with the use of authentic
materials, they are easily justified on the grounds that specially
scripted texts are artificial.
Cardlin and Edelhoff suggest that there are at least four types
of authenticity which are important in our classrooms:
- authenticity of goal
- authenticity of environment
- authenticity of text
- authenticity of task

Nunan thinks that the most important type of authenticity is what he

called "learner authenticity". By this he means "the realisation
and acceptance by the learner of the authenticity of a given text,
task, set of materials or learning activity". If we want our pupils to
think that the materials we use are authentic they must fulfil two
conditions:

1 . They must be recognised by learners as having a legitimate place

in the language classroom.
2 . They must engage the interests of our pupils by relating to their
interests, background knowledge and experience, and through these,
stimulate genuine communication.

It is important to make our pupils realise that they are

learning something. This is especially easy with traditional
activities, such as drills or translations, but new, communicative
activities may seem to them a waste of time. In some activities we can
have, as Gavin Bolton said of drama a unique pedagogic situation, where
a teacher sees himself as teaching but our pupils do not see themselves
as learning.

The second condition is easily fulfilled if we take into

account our pupils characteristics and needs.

3. 2 . Simulated authentic and artificial.

A non-authentic text, in language teaching terms, " is one

that has been designed especially for language learners". (Harmer).
We can make a distinction here, however, between texts which have been
made to illustrate particular language points for presentation
(artificial) and those which appear to be authentic (simulated
authentic)

The justification for simulated authentic texts is clear in the

case of our pupils. Beginner pupils are able to handle genuinely
authentic texts, but they need to have practice in texts that look
authentic, even if they have been edited, and so there is a certain
degree of language control.
Manipulating and comprehending these texts will help our pupils to
acquire the necessary skills they will need when they come to handle
authentic material.

4. INVOLVING THE PUPILS IN MATERIAL DESIGN.

Our curriculum clearly advocates a communicative approach to language

teaching. This approach makes use of tasks that will be linked in
principle ways to the real-tasks our pupils are required to engage in
outside the classroom. The Communicative approach to language teaching
also suggests that classroom-based acquisition is fostered by
psycholinguistically - motivated learning tasks.

However, our curriculum also establishes a learner-centred

approach and one of the best ways to take account of our pupils needs
and characteristics is by making them participating of the material
design process.

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Brewster, J., Ellis, G. and Girard, D. The Primary English Teacher's

Guide Penguin. London 1992.

Brumfit, C.J., and Johnson K. (eds) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of

Language, CUP Cambridge

Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman, London,

1983

Halliwell, S. Teaching English in the Primary Classroom, Longman,

London, 1992. (There exists Spanish translation: La Enseanza del
Ingls en Educacin Primaria. Longman, London, 1993.)
Littlewood, W. Communicative Language Teaching. CUP. Cambridge, 1988.

Nunan, D. The Learner- Centred Curriculum. CUP, Cambridge, 1988.

Richards, J.C. and Rodgers, T.S. Approaches and Methods in Language

Teaching, CUP. Cambridge,1986.

Platt, J., and Platt, H. Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied

Linguistics, Longman, London, 1992

Savignon, S. Communicative Competence: Teory and Classroom Practice,

Addison-Wesley. Reading, Mass., 1983

Widowson, H.G. Teaching Language as Communication. OUP. Oxford,

1978.

TEMA 23 - OPOSICIONES DE EDUCACIN PRIMARIA - ESPECIALIDAD DE

INGLS

ESQUEMA

LA ELABORACIN DE MATERIALES CURRICULARES PARA LA CLASE DE

INGLS.
CRITERIOS PARA LA SELECCIN Y USO DE LOS LIBROS DE TEXTO.
DOCUMENTOS
AUTNTICOS Y ADAPTADOS: LIMITACIONES DE SU USO. LA
COLABORACIN DE LOS
ALUMNOS EN EL DISEO DE LOS MATERIALES.

0 . INTRODUCCION

- Teacher's roles: - selection

- production

- Profile of pupils' needs: - description of pupils

- description of pupils'
needs
 - conclusions

1 . PRODUCING ENGLISH LESSONS - CURRICULAR MATERIALS:

* Reasons for producing our own materials:

1. Our course book does not provide enough practice.
2. Some of the materials in our course book are not appropriate
for our class.
3. We want to foster a methodology which is not the one used by
the course book authors.
4. To add some activities for the sake of variety.
- Worksheets: - practise one linguistic point
- oral and written
- pair and individual
- Flashcards: - information gap
- time dictation
- true or false

2. CRITERIA FOR THE CHOOSING AND USE OF THE COURSE BOOKS.

2.1 Choosing a course book:

* Criteria.
1. The course book makes clear the link between the classroom and
the wider word.
2. The course book fosters independent learning.
3. The course book focuses our pupils on their learning process.
4. The course book is readily available
5. The course book accords with our pupils' needs.
6. The course book can be used at more than one level of
difficulty (heterogeneity)
7. The pedagogical objectives of the materials are clear.
*Harmer's evaluation form: - practical
considerations - guidance
- layout
and design - conclusions
-
activities
- skills
- language
type
- subject
and content

TEMA 23 - OPOSICIONES DE EDUCACIN PRIMARIA - ESPECIALIDAD DE

INGLS

2.2. Using a course book:

* What the course book does well: - to the teacher
- to the pupils
* To the teacher.
1. A clearly thought out programme which is appropriately
sequenced and structured to include revision.
2. A wider range of material than we can collect individually.
3. Economy of preparation time.
4. A source of practical teaching ideas.
5. Work that our pupils can do on their own so that we do not need
to be centre stage all the time.
6. A basis for homework if that is required.
7. A basis for discussion and comparison with other colleagues.

* To our pupils
1. A sense of purpose, progression and progress.
2. A sense of security.
3. Scope for independent and autonomous learning
4. A reference for checking and revising.

* What the teacher does better: - oral exchange

- adjusting level and
quality of work
- encourage our pupils
* We must adapt course books to our pupils' needs.

3. AUTHENTIC, SIMULATED-AUTHENTIC AND NON- AUTHENTIC TEXTS.

USE
CONSTRAINTS.

* Main aim: to reach communicative competence

3.1 Authenticiy.

* Nunan's definition.
* Enabling out pupils to comprehend and manipulate real texts.
* Cadlin and Edelhoff: - authenticity of goal
- authenticity of environment
- authenticity of text
* Learner's authenticity.
* Authenticity conditions:
1. They must be recognised by learners as having a legitimate
place in the language classroom.
2. They must engage the interests of our pupils by relating to
their interests, background, knowledge and experience, and through
these, stimulate genuine communication.
TEMA 23 - OPOSICIONES DE EDUCACIN PRIMARIA - ESPECIALIDAD DE
INGLS

3.2 Simulated Authentic and artificial.

* Harmer's definition of non-authentic.

* Types of non- authentic texts. - artificial
- simulated authentic
* Simulated authentic texts: prepare for real texts.
* Materials we use: - authentic
- simulated authentic

4. INVOLVING THE CHILDREN IN MATERIAL DESIGN

* Communicative approach.
* Learner-centred approach
* Material design: Spanish or English class.
* Way to introduce it:
1. Tell the class to pay close attention to the features of one
activity in the course book.
2. Tell them to think of possible ways to make a similar activity
using the materials they normally have at home ( pencils, glue,
scissors, a dictionary, a word processor.)
3. Give them the outline of an activity. They will have to prepare
in pairs a flashcard or a worksheet to go with the activity.

5. BIBLIOGRAPHY.