I have a keen interest in developing materials for language teaching, which was further fuelled by doing a module in materials development at Leeds Metropolitan University, as part of my M.A. in ELT. In May 2014, I won a British Council Elton (Macmillan Award for New Talent in Writing) for the materials that I created as my dissertation project during my M.A. [Edit: You can now find these materials on Macmillan’s Onestopenglish.com website! Click here to have a look…] Since then, I have also worked with Richmond ELT, contributing 3 worksheets at A1 level to the Skills Boost series of worksheets now available in the Teachers section of their website.

On this page, you can find links to a small sample of my work. If you use these materials, please acknowledge me (it’s good manners!) and also, please do let me how how it went by commenting on this page or emailing  me on lizzie.pinard@gmail.com.

If you would like me to do some materials writing for you, please do not hesitate to get in touch using the above-mentioned email address. I am always keen to get involved in new projects.

1. Materials I created as part of my M.A. in Materials Development at Leeds Met.

I designed a unit of materials using Task-Based Learning (Ellis 2003, Willis and Willis, 2007) Text-driven (Tomlinson, 2003) and Metacognitive (Vandergrift and Goh, 2012) frameworks in combination, catering for both experiential and analytical learners and so addressing Tomlinson’s (2008) concerns that materials heavily favour analytical learners and are still very discrete grammar forms-focused despite the lack of support for this in SLA theory.

The topic of this unit is education and there are an initial speaking section, a reading section, a listening section, a pronunciation section, a further speaking section and a reflection/evaluation section. I’m uploading the unit in sections (to make it more easily digestible – and to make my own job easier!) as and when I have time to devote to this.

Theories used in this unit of materials; ideas for implementation:

• Teacher’s book: notes on theories used in these materials (referred to in procedural notes)
• Teacher’s book: ideas for recycling vocabulary and using Demand High Teaching (referred to in procedural notes)

Speaking (Section 1)

• Student book: first speaking section
• Teacher’s book: notes for first speaking section

Reading (Section 2)

• Student book: second section – reading and language work.
• Teacher’s book: notes for second section – reading and language work. 

NB: Reading text taken from Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man, Chapter 14 pages 20-23 from “All right the bell has rung.” to “Just take the story and feel sorry for the kid and the mother with her countenance and, maybe, the dad, and not analyse it to  death.” (Blank space in the SB since I do not have copyright for using the text…)

Listening (Section 3) and Pronunciation (Section 4)

I have uploaded sections 3 and four in a single instalment, as they both draw on the listening recording, “Laila’s Story”. The listening activities are based on Vandergrift and Goh’s (2012) metacognitive pedagogical sequence (See “theories used in this unit of materials” above).

• Student book: third section – listening, language work and pronunciation
• Teacher’s book: notes for third section – listening, language work and pronunciation (NB: these notes make reference to the “notes of theories used in these materials” pages linked to above)
• Audio recording of Laila’s story (for personal use with learners only, not for commercial reuse in other materials or websites)
  
• Pronunciation recording 

More coming soon… 

References: 

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

Tomlinson B. (2003) Developing Materials for Language Teaching Continuum International Language Group

Willis D. and Willis J. (2007) Doing Task-based Teaching Oxford University Press, Oxford

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

2. IATEFL Global SIG Food Issues Month materials

I made some materials for my low level teens, as a means of participating in the Global SIG Food Issues Month event. (See here for my blog post which describes their background and my experience of using them…)

• Chocolate quiz powerpoint
• Student handout
• Teachers’ notes

3. “Itchy Feet” 

This is a set of materials designed for upper intermediate learners, on the topic of moving to a foreign country to work, inspired by a blogpost published by Sandy Millin. The listening recording on which these materials are based can be found embedded in the above blogpost. Learners define “itchy feet” and then discuss travelling, differentiating between holiday travel and long-term work/study related travel. This, as well as the powerpoint quiz about Sevastopol, prepares them for the listening sequence, followed by a speaking and writing task. For more information about these materials, see this blogpost.

• Student handout
• Teachers’ notes
• Sevastopol powerpoint quiz
• Transcript of Sandy’s recording

4. Using Quizlet

I wanted to help my learners use Quizlet independently, so created some materials (step-by-step instructions and screenshots) to guide them through doing this. Here is a link to my blogpost in which these materials can be found:

• Quizlet for learners: a step-by-step guide

5. Using Wordandphrase.info

Much as with Quizlet, I wanted to help my learners use wordandphrase.info independently, so created some self-access materials (a guided discovery of the website, using screenshots and tasks, with a key at the end) to enable them to do this. Here is a link to my blogpost in which these materials can be found:

• Helping language learners become language researchers: wordandphrase.info