In the field of English Language teaching, there are numerous resources offered by successful education publishing companies. However, are course books topics often relevant and engaging enough for students to learn a specific linguistic feature? Such question obliges us to reconsider the group of learners we are teaching in order to gather a thorough understanding of the sociocultural context where teaching takes place and the culture (s) interacting in the classroom. All that information will help teachers make well- informed decisions to design materials.
Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials
As future educators, it is necessary to bear in mind a number of aspects to design them effectively.The authors Howard and Major (2005) offer some help by outlining a set of guidelines regarding factors to take into account when designing materials. Here, we will focus on three of them:
- Not only should materials be contextualised to the objectives of school curriculum but to the students' backgrounds (previous knowledge, experiences and their mother tongue).In our opinion, teachers will be able to make a profitable and effective use of materials once they address and analyse such demands.
- All material should be aimed at achieving real communicative purposes, which means giving learners the opportunity to engage in interactive tasks that replicate real life situations. In this sense, learning will be the result of working with others by using the language as a vehicle to fulfil a certain goal.
- For material use to be effective, instructions should be clear for both teachers and learners. Even though the material we design may be visually attractive and appealing to students, it may fail to guide and support the teacher and learners if instructions are ambiguous or inappropriate in terms of target language.
References:
- Howard, J; Major, J. (2005).Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials. Retrieved from http://www.paaljapan.org/resources/proceedings/PAAL9/pdf/Howard.pdf
