Materials in teaching curriculum

Okay guys, today I want to give to you some materials in the elements of curriculum. I want to talk about “Materials”

INTRODUCTION

Materials will be defined here as any systematic description of the techniques and exercises to be used in class room teaching. Such a definition is broad enough to encompass lesson plans and yet can accommodate books, packets of audiovisual aids, games, or any of the other myriad types of activities that go on in the language classroom. The key in developing sound materials is to ensure that they are described and organized well enough so that teachers can use them with no confusion and with a mini- mum of preparation time. The surest test of the viability of a set of materials is for a teacher to be able to implement them without any aid from their original creator. If that
teacher is successful, the chances are that the materials are systematically and clearly described. Before beginning any materials project, it may be useful to stop and take stock of what has been learned about the program thus far. If steps similar to those outlined in the previous four chapters have been followed, the curriculum developers should have a clear understanding of the program's theoretical positions (the approaches and syllabuses), as well as its more practical orientations (techniques and exercises)

 FRAMEWORK FOR MATERIALS DESIGN

Before actually adopting, developing, or adapting materials, the language program's overall orientation must be considered in terms of approaches and syllabuses, as well as in terms of how the orientation will influence the choices that must be made in the development and implementation of materials.  As I just mentioned, 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 too involved in actual materials development processes. 

1. Approach

The one point about the most language curriculum developers would like to agree is that there must be some sort of theoretical motivation underlying any curriculum development (for instance.  In this book, such motivations have been labeled approaches and interpreted as ways of defining what the needs need to learn based on assumptions and theoretical positions drawn from disciplines as diverse as linguistics, psychology, and education.  Though these approaches can be viewed as his torical developments that happened roughly in the order listed, all of these approaches continue in use in classrooms throughout the world today.  Moreover, this list is incomplete because the approaches I have named represent only those around which considerable consensus is developed, and because other approaches will have no doubt surface in the coming years. 

Running Example: Approaches

In order to exemplify how approaches, syllabuses, techniques, and exercises fit together, let's use one approach, the communicative approach, as the basis for discussion. This running example will serve as a model to illustrate the process of fitting syllabuses, techniques, and exercises to any approach, or combination of approaches. In other words, though the example approach is communicative similar connections can and should be made with an approaches that are pervasive in a particular program.

2. Syllabuses

Syllabuses are predominantly linked with the choices necessary to organize the language content of a course or program.  The procedures involved in developing a syllabus should eventually include examining instructional objectives, arranging them in terms of priori ties, 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 shapes that the objectives will eventually take For example, if the needs analysts favor the communicative approach, the units of analysis will tend to be  the speech acts, functions, interactional moves, and turns familiar to practitioners of discourse and text analysis.  Moreover, the needs that are perceived will quite naturally tend to be shaped into these units, which in turn will be used as elements of the objectives.  However, as I indicated in Chapters Two and Three, the process of getting from perceived needs to objectives is not easy, nor can we expect a one-to-one correspondence between units of analysis and the objectives that eventually surface.  To review briefly, some listed in chapter one were as follows:

a. Structural (organized around grammatical structures)

b. Situational (organized around various settings in which the learners are likely to use the language, such as at the bank, at the supermarkets, at a restaurant, and so forth).

c. Topical  (organized around themes or topics, such as health, food, clothing, and so forth) Functional (organized around communicative functions.

Running Example: Syllabuses

The example courses in speaking and writing, both of which are based on the communicative approach, might at first seem to require organizations around a functional syllabus.  However, as I have already pointed out, there are seven alter- native organizing principles that could be employed: structural, situational, topical, functional, notional, skill, and task.  These alternatives should all be considered as potentially useful ways to organize the materials.  However, let's assume that, based on the needs analysis and objectives that resulted, the curriculum designers in consultation with the teachers have decided that the communicative curriculum for the example speaking course will be organized around functions. 

3. Techniques

Language can be presented to students in many ways, but the 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 types of activities and learning experiences that the program will use and the criteria that will be employed for selecting those activities and experiences.  How much weight will be assigned to each activity type per lesson?  And what configurations of teachers and learners will activities involve?  These are questions that materials developers will have to answer within any program before deciding on detailed specifications for the activities that will go on in the daily classes. 

Running Example: Techniques

Assuming that the example program has been decided that the organization for the speaking and writing courses will be provided by the syllabuses, the decision has been made that the teachers will be left alone to plan the  techniques that they feel will be most effective in helping their students to meet those objectives.  As a result, one teacher's class period in the speaking course might center around the first part of the second function, reporting (by describing), that was listed in the syllabus and might include the following teaching activities. Obviously, on other days, the activities might be entirely different depending on which objectives are being addressed.  As I will show in the "Exercises" section, these techniques can then be reinforced by exercises that encourage the students to practice what they have observed, that is, to actually speak instead of just listen.  One writing class on the same day might involve entirely different activities: Demonstration of an example text (teacher to learners)

a. Analysis of models of good writing (learner to group)

b. Blackboard writing (five learners at a time to class) and

c. Discussion (teacher to learners).  In this case, the criteria for selecting techniques are related to the idea that it is useful to provide opportunities for students to develop their writing skills in contexts and on the basis of models of teacher and student writing.

4. Exercises

Once the approaches, syllabuses, and techniques have been tentatively set, the category of teaching activities called exercises must be considered.  In Chapter One, I defined this set of activities as ways of having students practice the language points they have been presented.  Language can be practiced in many ways, but typically such practices centers on students using the language in some interactions 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 practices that will rein force learning.  Materials developers must make early decisions about the types of exercises that will be most appropriate for the program in question, 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. 

Running Example: Exercises

The teaching techniques I described in the running example in the previous section might best be reinforced by selecting exercises that afford students the opportunity to practice what they had learned.  The line between techniques and exercises is becoming increasingly blurred because, in communicative approaches, teaching techniques often consist of setting up opportunities for learning to use using the language For example, in the example speaking course, the teacher might want to set up practice opportunities  for conversational interaction and draw on some or all of the following exercises: Dialogue work (learner to learner) Teacher-student interaction (The teacher circulates around the room to each student, identifying objects that she has in mind without naming them. students must guess the object.) (teacher to student) Peer feedback sessions (learner to group) Pair work (learner to learner) Free conversation (teacher to learners / learner to learner).

5. Materials Blueprint

It is not as difficult as it might seem to keep track of teachers' preferences for approaches and syllabuses in a given program, nor is their influence on the choices of techniques and exercises likely to be a mystery.  Once it becomes clear that these categories are useful for purposes of discussing curriculum issues, the categories are likely to pop up in every teachers meeting, and the point of view of the various teachers is likely to surface rather quickly.  The trick is to channel these various points of view into a set of guidelines that represent a consensus reached among all members of the program administration and faculty.  To this end, the curriculum developers, whoever they might be, would be well advised to form a blueprint material that represented the kind of language program that they were proposing based on all the information obtained in the needs analysis, objectives setting, and testing  stages of program development.  This blueprint might at first be very unclear and tentative, yet as time passes and even more information becomes available, its outlines will become increasingly discernable and precise.  Such a blueprint might eventually 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. Notice the types of information included in the Center for Applied Linguistics outline and how useful some of them would be to developers materials.  Whatever form such a blueprint material 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 specific conditions relating 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.

6. 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 hours of instruction), the syllabus should be thought out in terms of units of analysis and then in terms of curriculum scope and sequence.  The syllabus itself is not a learning program, but it can be turned into one.  For example, a syllabus for a beginning conversation course might specify that greetings and introductions are among the functions to be covered.  Will they be taught together or separately?  How much time will be spent on these two items as opposed to other items in the syllabus?  How often will they appear in the course?  Now consider how different a reading course might be.  Let's say the purpose of the reading course is to teach a variety of reading skills, including skimming,

WHERE DO MATERIALS COME FROM? 

In one way, it is easy for a teacher to simply adopt a textbook, open page one and begin teaching systematically through the prepared materials.  Using this strategy, a teacher needs not to invest too much thought or effort in the process.  On the other hand, the teachers that I have known almost always say that they can't find a textbook that really matches their classroom needs.  This section will suggest ways that materials can be put into place that do match the blueprint materials and therefore are likely to meet the needs of the students.  Three strategies will be suggested: adopting, developing, or adapting.  One or all of these strategies should help in settling materials for any language program.  Working from the program goals and objectives, the teacher must address the essential questions of what the content will be and how it will be sequenced.  The needs analysis, objectives, and tests should provide information that will suffice for answering the first of these questions.  Adopting, developing, or adapting materials that match that content is the next logical step. 

1. Adopting Materials

Adopting materials in a rational 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 review / evaluation procedures must be set up to pare this list down to only those materials that should be seriously considered so that the 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 don't become irrelevant to the needs of the students and the changing conditions in the program. 

Deciding on Types of Materials

the broad definition of materials provided at the beginning of this chapter shows that they can come in many different forms.  Materials can also be based on many different approaches and can be organized around a number of different syllabuses. Materials can also be presented on a number of media and take many forms on any one of those media.  Thus, many options must be considered long before any decisions can be made as to what specific materials to adopt.  The following list of possible media for materials may help with these deliberations:

books                                       teachers books

workbooks                              magazines

journals                                    pictures

Notice that the further down the list is the medium, the more equipment and technology is involved.  Since technology is generally expensive, making choices regarding items on this list may create a tension between what teachers would like to use and what the program can afford. 

Locating Materials

Three sources of information immediately spring to mind that can help in finding existing materials that might be suitable: publishers 'catalogs, "Books Received" sections of journals, and teachers' shelves.  

Publishers' catalogs are usually free for the asking.  Addresses for some of the most prominent publishers of ESL materials are listed in the appendix.  Many of these publishers also produce materials for other languages, so this list should provide at least a starting point for any language teacher looking for published materials.  Naturally, these organizations will be happy to send a catalog upon request.  Such catalogs are usually very well organized, including at least lists of relevant publications and brief descriptions of each one with its price.  An order form is usually provided to facilitate ordering. 

To make even a short list of candidates for materials that might be adopted, a hands-on examination is necessary.  Most publishers are happy to send teachers desk copies of their materials.  A desk copy is a textbook, manual, workbook, or other form of material sent free of charge for consideration by teachers who might adopt the material in their courses.  The teacher may usually keep a desk copy even if the student copies are not subsequently ordered.  Since each publisher has a different policy toward desk copies, it will be necessary to examine each catalog for the description of that policy.  Typically, publishers who send desk copies will only send them to bona fide teachers who make requests on official

Evaluating Materials

Whether materials are found in publishers 'catalogs, "Books Received" sections of journals, or teachers' shelves, firsthand examinations will eventually be disposed to determine the suitability of materials for a particular program.  This process might safely be called materials evaluation.  If teachers individually select the materials that are to be adopted and ordered for their courses, they should be given as much information as possible to draw on making those decisions.  If all the teaching faculties a given course make collective decisions, they will the decisions about which materials to select and have input into the process, they will probably be much more willing to use the chosen materials even if they did not fully agree that the selected materials were the best of all possibilities.  Moreover, evaluating materials, like much else in curriculum development, should call on the teachers' expertise because teachers represent a large labor pool to help in the selection process and because they represent potential political forces within the program.

Ongoing Review of Materials

Even after a set of materials is in place for each course, the materials evaluation process must continue while they are being used, as well as after each implementation period. Teachers can keep notes on their reactions to the materials as they use them.  Such notes can be as simple as scribblings in the margins of the teacher's edition, or as formal as typed reviews of materials in question Once the term or year is finished, time should be set aside for a comprehensive review of all materials.

2. Developing Materials

The primary thrust of this book has been the systematic design of the curriculum within that framework, needs assessment, goals and objectives, and tests have already been discussed at great length.  If the tentative needs, objectives, and tests do indeed describe a program, and if all efforts to adopt materials for teaching of those objectives fail to uncover suitable materials, it may be necessary to consider developing them from scratch.  I treat this option as a simple option not because it is an undesirable alternative, but because it represents a tremendous amount of work.  Nevertheless, with the help and ideas of a number of people within a program, especially the teachers, materials can be developed that will create the best possible match between materials and the curriculum in question. 

3. Adapting Materials

Conventional wisdom in language teaching suggests that there is no such thing as a perfect textbook.  This is likely to be true whether the materials in question were commercially produced or created within a given program.  Moreover, the task of completely reinventing the materials for all the courses in a program on a continuous basis is a staggering undertaking.  One viable solution to both of these problems is to use what is of value in an existing set of materials, while adapting it to the needs, or changing needs, of the program.  This process of adapting involves all of the steps listed above for finding and evaluating materials plus several distinctive features.  These new features include analyzing, classifying, filling the gaps, and reorganizing. The first stage in adapting materials is to find and evaluate materials that might serve at least some of the students' needs and help to meet at least some of the course objectives.  This process is virtually the same as the one described in the previous section for adopting materials. However, as the materials are being evaluated, teachers should also analyze the degrees to each set of existing materials matches the course objectives, as well as the degree of mis-match.  In this case, the ultimate goal of the analysis is to decide which of the potential sets of materials contains the highest percentage of matches. This will, in turn, determine the percentage of objectives that will need to be supported from outside these materials.  In the end, a decision must be made as to which sets, or sets, of materials will be adapted.  Once usable / revisable materials have been identified, it may prove useful to think of grouping the useful elements of the materials in a way that is different from how they were grouped in the original so that the resulting adaptations will more closely match the groupings and order sings  in the course objectives.  For future references, while doing this, a list should be compiled of all of the places in the materials where each of the objectives is addressed.  In any such list, be sure to also list and group those objectives that are not covered by the materials. Obviously, these blanks will indicate areas in which supplemental materials will be needed.

REFERENCES

Block, D. 1998. Tale of a language learner. Language Teaching Research 2(2): 148-   

      176.

Brindley, G. 1989. Accessing achievements in the learner-centred curriculum.     

     Sydney: National centre for English Language Teaching and Research.

Mohan, B. 1986. Language and content. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesle.