Materials Development

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Dissertation Diary 2

I’ve decided to use my blog as a reflective tool while doing my dissertation project – the final component of my M.A. in ELT –  hypothesising that this will make it an even more effective learning experience for me, by mapping it, enabling me to look back on my thought processes and decisions and see what effect these have on the project development. (Other posts in this series can be found here) Once I get to the end (13th September is D-Day!), as well as looking back over the experience of doing the project, I plan to try and evaluate the effect of these reflective blog posts on it.

Delta module 1 exam is over, all semester 2 assignments are in: time to focus on this dissertation now. My next meeting with H is on Wednesday (assuming I’m ready), so I’m in the process of responding to everything that was raised for consideration in the first meeting. As well as getting my head around all those questions that emerged, I need to prepare a possible framework for my materials. So, here goes…

So far, since my last dissertation meeting, I’ve read (in order):

Nault, D. (2006) Going Global: Rethinking Culture Teaching in ELT Contexts  in Language, Culture and Curriculum vol. 19/3.

Ellis, R. (2009) Task-based language teaching: sorting out the misunderstandings in International Journal of Applied Linguistics vol 19/3. Blackwell Publishing.

Svalberg, A. (2007) Language awareness and language learning in Language Teaching vol. 40/4. (Abstract: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261444807004491) Cambridge Journals.

Bolitho et al. (2003) Ten questions about language awareness in ELTJ vol. 57/3. Oxford University Press.

Next on my list to read: 

Van den Branden, Bygate and Norris ed. (2009) Task-Based Language Teaching: A reader John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Ellis, R. (2003) Task-based Language Learning and Teaching Oxford University Press.

My context:

Private language school in Leeds

Upper intermediate learners

Multilingual classes

Continuous enrolment (students arriving and leaving regularly, some stay for a number of months, others as little as a week or two)

Big mixture of learning goals (some want to study in the U.K., some want to improve their English because it will help in their job back home, some are on holiday and want to improve their English at the same time, for some it’s a hobby).

They study General English in the morning and in the afternoon the sessions are more skills-focused and for those that want it there is the possibility of joining an IELTS preparation class or having one to one tuition.

Students can also use the self-access room, which has a suite of computers, some graded readers and other resources. This is supervised on a daily basis by different members of staff, for 2hrs on a Monday and an hr Tuesday to Thursday, who are on hand to help the students find something suited to their needs/wants.

The majority of the students particularly want to improve their speaking and listening, but there are some whose speaking/listening are already pretty good and whose writing lets them down. These tend to be the students who want to study in the U.K. and choose the IELTS afternoon classes. Students also tend to have learnt English at school in their home countries, usually with a heavy grammar focus.

I want to make materials for the morning classes, so systems and skills needs to be integrated and content suited to General English learners.

The teachers at this school are all pretty experienced and used to preparing weekly schemes of work based on the course books in use. There are also regular CPD sessions. They do, however, make good use of teachers books in their planning – whether or not they then elect to adhere to what the teachers book says. So, a good set of teachers notes to accompany my materials will be a must. Ideally, these notes will have a lot of flexibility built in, rather than being didactic.

Theory:

Having (re)read the articles listed above, I think a well-designed set of TBLL materials, using elements of the Language Awareness approach would work well for this context:

  • Although usually associated with speaking tasks, Ellis (2009) points out that tasks can be input-based too. Apparently in a book of his, he has a chapter on the use of listening tasks in TBL – I will be reading that! I believe it should therefore be possible to design materials, using this approach, that ensure focus on all 4 skills, as well as grammar/vocabulary/pronunciation – Ellis (2009) explains that focus on form is not limited to grammatical form and cites studies that show focus on vocabulary and pronunciation. So it’s possible, the challenge will be designing materials that promote and enable this.
  • Tasks can be focused or unfocused. A task-based syllabus can be purely focused, purely unfocused, or a mixture. I would go for a mixture, as I can see benefits for both task types.
  • Language Awareness can be deductive or inductive, but inductive is most common. According to Borg, cited in Svalberg (2007), there are five main features of an LA methodology:

  1. It involves an ONGOING INVESTIGATION of language as a dynamic phenomenon rather than awareness of a fixed body of established facts.

  2. It involves learners in TALKING ANALYTICALLY about language, often to each other.

  3. It considers essential the INVOLVEMENT of learners in exploration and discovery.

  4. It aims to develop not only the learners’ knowledge about and understanding of language but also their LEARNING SKILLS, thus promoting learner independence.

  5. The aim is to involve learners on both a COGNITIVE and AFFECTIVE level.

(Svalberg, 2007:291, emphasis here as per the article)

  • (Continuing from the above bullet point) As is mentioned in this article, there is a crossover here between LA and Ellis’s Consciousness-Raising approach to grammar, which he believes is compatible with his TBLT framework. I’m inclined to agree with Ellis on this one, I think his TBLT framework and elements of the LA approach could complement each other nicely. I would add a further metacognitive element, so that learners are helped to understand this non-traditional approach and not feel threatened by it.
  • Combining the two approaches would enable a greater variety of learning styles to be catered for: LA is very analytical BUT, as cited above, aims to involve learners affectively too. Affective engagement could come, for example,  through use of engaging texts, to which learners respond, in input-based tasks as well as through use of input or output-based tasks which draw on learners’ experiences and backgrounds.
  • Using tasks which generate written output would enable learners who are keen to improve their writing the chance to do this, while those learners who are most interested in speaking would still benefit from the task process, which would involve collaboration and therefore the opportunity to speak. Speaking skill development, meanwhile, could come through form focus in speaking tasks, by focusing on features of spoken discourse. In keeping with the LA approach, awareness of how and why these features are used, and to what effect, would need to be incorporated.

Other features that my materials will include:

Development of intercultural awareness

This, I believe, would be helpful for learners, whether they stay long term in the (multicultural) UK, e.g. to study, or whether they return to their own countries and use English as a language of wider communication. Nault (2006:323) recommends that more attention be focused on “issues such as cultural misunderstandings, cross-cultural pragmatics, stereotypes, non-verbal communication and culture shock”. Of course, the question is quite how to go about this. I think one immediate resource would be the diversity of learner backgrounds within classes in my context. Another interesting resource would be recordings of learners’ own interactions with each other during tasks. These could be compiled into a corpus and learners could look for patterns. (This needs further thought with regards to how it would work on a practical level!)

Use of the English-Speaking Environment

This is a valuable resource for these learners, so it would be beneficial for materials to exploit it. I think this would work well as a project thread. So it could be that tasks prepare learners to undertake the project, then scaffold them through the process of undertaking it, after which it could be used as a basis for further tasks. Then the cycle would begin anew. For this element, I am also considering use of a wiki. The non-linguistic goal of the wiki would be to create a resource for incoming learners to access, which would help them better understand and negotiate the ESE of Leeds. In terms of dealing with the constant flow of new learners, new learners would join existing groups (as these lost members) and existing group members would then explain what they have been doing and what they intend to do. New learners would also access the resource, once established, and begin to participate, helped by their group.

The school/context has a social programme, which learners can take part in. This would be a resource that could be tapped in the course of these projects. Additionally, learners stay in residences with other non-native speakers or in host families. This, too, could be exploited by the materials. For example, activities could include surveys and interviews about what people do for fun in Leeds or the types of films they like and why. Learners are keen to interact with people in their environment, so giving them a purpose and scaffolding the process through use of pre-, during- and post-project tasks would be helpful for them and may also motivate and help those who are keen but uncertain about how to go about it or perhaps shy. The collaborative element would provide additional support.

Information gathered, e.g. what people do for fun in Leeds, could be compared with learners’ own countries/cultures, but also in terms of different-subcultures, such as different ages, different social backgrounds etc. A task could be used to scaffold this process, the outcome of which could also go on the wiki. Thus, as well as information about Leeds and the people who live in it, either temporarily or permanently, there would also be information about how this compares with other countries in the world. Newcomers to the class could add their perspective to such tasks at any time, if their country wasn’t represented in a particular task, or they wanted to add to the representation of their country, as well as participating in whatever the current project was.

This will be where the “originality” of my materials comes in: Because they are designed specifically for the E.S.E. rather than as a global course book, they will scaffold the use of this environment as a learning tool. (In fact, Tomlinson, 2008, complains that “none of the books [that he reviewed for this volume] seem to really help learners to make use of the English which is in the out of school environment everywhere”.)

Use of multimedia

As well as the wiki/project element, it would be useful to scaffold learners’ use of the self-access centre computer suite, to enable them to benefit more fully from this resource. In order to do that, tasks could be used which require grouped learners to use the suite initially during class time and then outside of class time, with subsequent in-class discussion/reporting/presenting/reflecting/evaluating based on this.

And now it’s time for me to go away, get more books out of the library and work on a unit framework and an organisational framework within which units will sit. For it to be task-based, the task needs to be the unit of organisation, but also to consider is the task-as-plan vs task-as-process, sequencing of tasks to maximise their yield for learners, and how this will fit together with the ESE project and intercultural awareness threads…

References:

Ellis, R. (2009) Task-based language teaching: sorting out the misunderstandings in International Journal of Applied Linguistics vol 19/3. Blackwell Publishing.

Nault, D. (2006) Going Global: Rethinking Culture Teaching in ELT Contexts  in Language, Culture and Curriculum vol. 19/3.

Svalberg, A. (2007) Language awareness and language learning in Language Teaching vol. 40/4. (Abstract: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261444807004491) Cambridge Journals.

Tomlinson B. and Masuhara H (2008)  Materials used in the U.K. in Tomlinson, B. (ed.) English Language Learning Materials: a critical review. Continuum. London.

Hopefully progress is being made…  However, I would be interested to hear anybody’s thoughts on what I have explored in this post – be as critical as you like! 🙂

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Dissertation Diary 1

I’ve decided to use my blog as a reflective tool while doing my dissertation project – the final part of my M.A. in ELT – hypothesising that this will make it an even more effective learning experience for me, by mapping it, enabling me to look back on my thought processes and decisions and see what effect these have on the project development. Once I get to the end (13th September is D-Day!), as well as looking back over the experience of doing the project, I plan to try and evaluate the effect of these reflective blog posts on it.

 My dissertation project will involve creating 20hrs worth of learning materials and a 5000-word rationale for these. The other option was to do a traditional research project of 10, 000 words, so electing a route to take was the first major decision. I’ve opted for materials development, not because I didn’t want to do research (au contraire, I think it would have been really cool to do a research project!), but because doing this reasonably substantial materials project under the guidance of a highly skilled, experienced supervisor should be a great opportunity to further develop those skills that I started to develop during my materials development module and that I hope to use in my post-course professional life.

I had my first post-proposal submission meeting with my supervisor (H) on Friday. When I went in, my thoughts regarding my project were very woolly. Truth be told, they are still pretty woolly but I now have a list of things I need to consider, a bunch of reading I need to do and a clearer idea of how to go about marshalling said woolly thoughts. So, quite a lot of progress for one meeting!

The first thing was to decide whether to do English for Academic Purposes (EAP) materials or General English (GE) materials, as initially I had decided on GE materials but then, since submitting my proposal, had the idea that making EAP materials might be beneficial in terms of compensating slightly for a lack of EAP teaching experience when I come to apply for EAP jobs (my goal…). We discussed the advantages of doing each and through that I came to the decision that perhaps making good quality, principled materials is the main thing, regardless of type. If I’m able to do that, then when I’ve got some EAP experience, I should be able to transfer that skill to making EAP materials if the need/opportunity arises. Meanwhile, I will read up on EAP and learn what I can about it. H also suggested observing a few classes, which I will definitely look into the possibility of doing. Of course, a major benefit of making GE materials is that, as I will be teaching GE part-time over the summer, there may be the opportunity to pilot what I create, which would be very useful.

Having settled on GE, a whole new set of considerations and decisions to make emerge:

  • Will my materials integrate all four skills, like a standard coursebook, or focus on specific skills?
  • What type of teachers are the materials being made for? This will influence what goes into the teachers’ book and how ‘adventurous’ the materials themselves are – as the more adventurous they are, the more experience might perhaps be required of the teacher in using them. (An important factor to think about in designing materials.)
  • What approaches will I use in the materials? Using two approaches, would I go with using both at slight separate times in the unit, depending on the language point or stage in the unit, or combine them? Will combining them work? Will I take a particular approach and select certain aspects but not others? What would be my rationale for these decisions?

I need to be clear about what the approaches are saying and then what my approach to those things is going to be – I don’t necessarily have to go along with every single element of a given approach in my materials. I can synthesize, adapt and change things, but I must think about what it is I am changing and why, and be able justify those decisions in the rationale.

H suggested that a good place to start could be to look at the approaches, have a really good think about each one that I might possibly want to use in my materials, (re)read up on them and decide which to use. From a practical point of view, I need to be selective: The more approaches I try to combine, the more unwieldy it becomes, the more difficult to give each one enough focus, and the more there is to justify in the 5000 word rationale. Not impossible, but it is more straightforward to choose fewer.

I need to think about the theory but then in the back of my mind also be thinking about the project and about how it’s going to work with my context, and which of the theories are going to be workable in the kind of materials that I want to develop.

More questions that were raised and that I need to answer:

  • What is going to be original about my materials?
  • Will the materials be the basis for the main bit of teaching in the day (G.E.), which case all systems and skills will need to be addressed (unless the rationale contains a very good reason for why not!), or the ‘afternoon slot’ i.e. materials for a more specialist focus e.g. pronunciation or speaking.
  • Intercultural skills: will it be comparison between one culture and another or developing intercultural communicative competence? If culture is going to be a feature of my materials, I need to do some reading around culture and decide where I stand on the various different questions around what we do with culture. Everything is potentially offensive: including content about different cultures can offend people or seem stereotypical. But then it’s needed to get interesting content and it’s an important thing to help learners with.
  • Criticality: Why would I want to develop criticality on a G.E. course? More usual for academic courses. If doing it on a G.E. course, need a rationale for it.
  • What sort of format will the multimedia take?  (There’s no obligation to use any particular format.)

To do for next meeting (before the end of June):

  • Start by doing some reading
  • Put together an outline of the rationale. (Headings and notes) that can be used for the basis of discussion in the next meeting.
  • At the same time, develop a skeleton framework for the materials – framework of a unit, a list of what it will constitute – then the two can be looked at in conjunction. It would help if they relate… 😉

Aim: ideas for rationale and materials need to be more firmed up.

So, all in all, I have a lot of reading to do, a lot to think about and a lot of decisions to make. But that will start to happen post-5th June (Delta Module 1 exam, preceded by final semester 2 deadline on the 3rd). Until then, all of these questions and thoughts will just keep percolating away in the back of my head…

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Bringing Metacognition into the Classroom

Towards the end of the 9p.m. #ELTchat discussion on Twitter yesterday, @Sandymillin asked for ideas of how to develop skills, rather than just practicing them, at intermediate level – as a means of helping learners get off the intermediate plateau. I piped up with the suggestion of using metacognition. Sandy recommended that I blog about what I meant by this, so here it is…

I’ve spent the past 8 weeks or so developing a set of materials for the assessment (finally submitted on Monday!) of the materials development module on my M.A. in ELT at Leeds Met, and one of the threads of this set was the development of metacognition. As such, it’s been uppermost in my mind for some time now! As far as developing listening skills goes, I would highly recommend reading Vandergrift and Goh (2012): Teaching and learning Second Language Listening, which lays out the theory behind the development of metacognitive awareness, a pedagogical framework for bringing it into the classroom and example activities which demonstrate the practical application of it all. Very inspiring. I do believe, however, that this approach can be useful not only for listening but for development in all four language skills and that if our materials do not reflect this (my assessment materials did attempt to!), then we, as teachers, can compensate for this in how we use these materials in the classroom.

The idea behind developing metacognitive awareness in listening is that if learners are more self-aware, task-aware and strategy-aware, they will be able to help themselves listen better when the teacher is not there to do this for them. Many course materials provide listening practice – you have your readiness activities, your listening text, various activities based on the text, form focus etc, and if you’re lucky, then you’re using a coursebook that does this effectively or you’re free to pick and choose the materials you use, in which case you sequence your choice of materials and activities in the manner you believe to be most conducive to learning. However, what about the learners in all this? They dutifully do the activities, and we, as teachers, often assume our purpose of using them is crystal clear. The reality, though, is that if you ask them why they think you have requested that they do a particular activity or sequence of activities, they will probably reply (as did the group of IELTS learners I put this question to yesterday during a class I covered, in the context of a vocabulary activity) with a mixture of blank expressions or “to help us improve our English, teacher” –type responses combined with a quizzical look that appears to wonder why such a clearly obvious thing would be questioned. If you think about it, learners are not generally encouraged to question materials. Some materials, promoting critical thinking, encourage questioning of the texts therein – for example in terms of writer’s purpose, choice of language and how it affects the reader/listener and so on – but very rarely are they required to question the activities themselves or the approach behind these. Materials are usually the authority, they know best.

I think this is a pity because a lot of time and effort goes into developing learning materials and they strive to combine activities that will promote most effective language learning, and we as teachers put a lot of time and effort into deciding how we can exploit them most usefully. We try to include a varied diet of activities, so as to meet as wide a variety of learner preferences and needs as we can. We know that any given activity will be more useful to some learners than others and vice versa. Different learners are engaged by, enjoy, struggle with, find useful, are challenged by and are bored by very different activities. There is a lot that learners could learn from all this. Perhaps, then, as well as attempting to meet all these different needs and styles within a lesson, we can go a step further: We can encourage learners to think about why they are doing/have done a particular activity, what they have got out of doing it, why they found it useful/challenging/boring/difficult. It could be that if they are convinced enough by the purpose, then they will try harder next time to overcome the negative response they felt towards it this time round, perhaps developing a style of working that isn’t their first choice but may benefit them in the long run. As their understanding of the different activities found in their materials increases, they may be better able to apply the principles behind these to their encounters with language outside of the classroom. Taking this a step further, we could encourage learners to collaborate and create their own activities, based on authentic materials (“the language produced by a real speaker/writer for a real audience, conveying a real message” – Gilmore, 2007. Note there is no mention of the native speaker here, so this can apply to texts produced by any user of English) of their choice, for use by their colleagues. (For any who may be interested, creation of own materials for learning comes under level 4 out of 5 of Nunan’s (1997) levels of implementation [I’m glad I noticed that Word auto-changed implementation – presumably with a typo – to implantation! That could have sounded a bit dodgy!] of autonomy and level five is the highest level, where the learners connect their learning with their language use in the real world). This would, of course require some guidance. Vandergrift and Goh (2012) provide a useful example task scaffolding this process of learner production of materials for use with listening texts.

Ok, now that I’ve bored you with my rationale, if you’ve got this far I will reward you with a few practical ideas for use in the classroom:

  • Start building critical reflection into your lessons gradually. So for example, you could start by using a Demand High technique, mentioned by Jim Scrivener in his Classroom Management Techniques book: At the end of the lesson, instead of just bringing the final activity to a close and sending your learners off home, ask them what three things they found most useful in that lesson and, all-importantly, why. Give them time to discuss in pairs and/or groups. Encourage them to appreciate everybody else’s responses and reasoning, which will no doubt be influenced by previous learning experiences and current learning habits.
  • Start encouraging learners to think about the purposes behind the activities you are using, to question their utility. It’s ok for them to think an activity is useless – as long as they can justify it! However, it would be useful to encourage them to think about how it could be useful. Or how it could be adapted to become more useful to them. (If you then in a future lesson, when you have a similar activity planned, allow them to adapt it, then you will be letting them operate on level 3 of Nunan’s levels of implementation of autonomy)
  • Subvert your course book (they tend to follow a predictable pattern so breaking it can spice things up). Or your usual approach to sequencing activities. Skip an activity/a stage that you would usually use to help the learners. (But be nice about it – explain that today you are going to do things a bit differently before launching into a different game plan: get them on board and ready to spot the differences!) Build in time for discussion following your atypical choice of activities/sequencing and get learners to think in what ways the lesson was different, and what impact this had on how easy/difficult they found the (reading text/listening text/speaking task/writing activity etc.). In this way, learners will become more aware of the value of different activities for them, in approaching texts or tasks.
  • Use a listening text as a basis for a text reconstruction activity, then encourage learners to compare their reconstruction with the transcript. Give learners a list of potential difficulties they might have had understanding the text. Have them circle words/phrases in the transcript that they had difficulty with and identify what it was that caused them difficulty. This helps raise their awareness of what they struggle with, enabling them to target these elements in any out of class listening work they do. You could also target difficulties that are common to the majority of learners, for example doing some receptive pronunciation work to overcome difficulties in handling the elisions/assimilations etc. associated with connected speech. (This idea, I must attribute to Vandergrift and Goh, 2012!)
  • At the end of a course book unit, build in a reflection and evaluation phase, where learners look back over the unit and identify what they have learnt, what activities they found most useful and why.
  • At the beginning of a course book section, get the learners to look at the sequence of activities and interrogate the choice/sequencing of activities, to consider whether adding an activity in anywhere, or omitting/substituting an activity might help them.
  • Get learners to work in groups, give each group a reading text and have them create an activity, or sequence of activities, based on this for use by one of the other groups. They will, of course, find this easier if they have a better understanding of the activities used with texts in their course book or provided by you.

As with anything, don’t try and do it all at once – the learners might think you’ve completely lost the plot and run away. Do it gradually, bit by bit. Experiment. Make sure the learners understand why you are asking them to do things they may not be accustomed to doing – like thinking for themselves and critiquing their learning materials/teacher’s activity choices. Don’t over-do it, anything over-done goes stale! Finally, be supportive and open to feedback from them, so that you can also learn from the process.

And let me know how it goes! 🙂

References:

Gilmore, A. (2007) Authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning. In Language Teaching vol. 40. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.

Nunan, D. (1997) Designing and Adapting Materials to encourage Learner Autonomy in Autonomy and Independence in Language Learning. Benson and Voller (ed). Pearson Education. Harlow.

Scrivener, J. (2012) Classroom Management Techniques. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.

Vandergrift L. and Goh, C (2012) Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening. Routledge. Oxon.

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Materials Development – What is it that makes learning materials better than good?

This subject is uppermost on my mind at the moment, as the final lesson of my materials development module will be this Friday. Next Friday, we will be doing “Dragon’s Den” presentations, where we have to speak persuasively for 12 minutes justifying and “selling” the materials we have been designing for the module assessment. Hopefully our materials will be principled, workable, suited to the chosen context and we will show evidence of the application of theory to practice – with a splash of creativity thrown in!

The materials I designed are aimed at upper intermediate students studying at private language schools in the U.K. It’s been an interesting and rewarding experience developing them from random sparks of ideas into a coherent 6-8 hour unit. I do like the idea of the module assessment being something which is not only practical and will be useful in the long run but also generates learning rather than simply testing it. The group has had 3hrs a week of input for the module this semester, in which we’ve systematically worked through different aspects of materials design from picking out theories of language, learning, acquisition and teaching,  principles in existing materials and identifying what theories and principles we believe in, to evaluating and adapting materials for a particular context, and looking at things like visual impact, clarity of instructions, how to integrate effective systems and skills development into materials, as well as issues such as how to develop intercultural competence. I expect I’ve probably left something out, but I’m sure you get the general idea.

Anyway, my question for anybody out there who happens to find this page is this:

What, in your opinion, separates the wheat from the chaff as far as materials are concerned?

What principles/theories etc influence your materials writing or teaching the most? 

And finally, How important do you think enjoyment is to language learning and why?

I shall post my presentation/powerpoint on here after I’ve delivered it, which will provide a good idea of my own views, but meanwhile what about all of yours? I’d be very interested to hear.

Feel free to answer as few or as many of the questions as you like – any and all responses are welcome!