Writing your own materials – plusses and pitfalls Lucy Palmer ELT Editor IATEFL Glasgow Thursday...

Writing your own materials– plusses and pitfalls

Lucy PalmerELT Editor

IATEFL GlasgowThursday 22nd March 2012

www.teachitworld.com

© www.teachitworld.com 2012

Why write your own materials?

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• The materials will be tailored to my student(s) in terms of:

• level

• topic

• context

• learning objectives

• I enjoy writing my own materials.

• revision needs.

but …

• It’s very time-consuming!© www.teachitworld.com 2012

Points to consider1. How easy did you find the task?

2. How interesting did you find it?

3. What are the good points of the task?

4. What are the weaknesses? How could you improve on them?

5. Is there anything missing?


Group A: Task 1 VocabularyStrengths

• Vocabulary – one of the main barriers to understanding a text

• Matching – cognitively quite easy

• Learning styles – could be done with cut-out cards

Weaknesses • No real lead-in – nothing to get students thinking about the topic

• No context – definitions are hard to guess without reading the text

• Problematic definitions - words with several meanings, e.g. rail - no collocations, e.g. rail against - definitions are harder than target words, e.g. do away with = dispense with

• No space to write the answers

• Focuses on failure – unknown words© www.teachitworld.com 2012

Group A: Task 1 VocabularySuggested improvements• Use pictures to get learners thinking about the topic and make the worksheet engaging.

• Task 2 – do the vocabulary-matching task after a first reading.

• Cut the words and definitions into cards for learners to match.

• Do it as a ‘jigsaw’ – split learners into three groups for reading and vocabulary-matching.

Reworked version of task


Group B: Task 1 QuizStrengths• Visual – makes it engaging

• Leads in to topic – gets learners thinking about the topic of the text

• Competitive element makes it motivating

• Gives support for reading – learners scan to identify key words from quiz and skim to understand gist of sections

Weaknesses

• Competitive element may discourage learners if they don’t know the answers

• Only introduces certain aspects of the text – doesn’t check learners’ knowledge about Christianity

Suggested improvements

Use more pictures and ask learners to work out the connection.


Group C: Task 1 SpeakingStrengths• Personalisation – makes it relevant

• Leads in to topic – scientists more likely to need help with religious concepts and vocabulary than with scientific ones

Weaknesses• Controversial – learners may not want to discuss religion, particularly with colleagues

• All the same nationality – intercultural

element won’t generate much discussion

Suggested improvements

• Either: deal with the religious concepts in the vocabulary-matching task, not as a discussion• or: add a factual question about Genesis to the quiz• or: just use the four pictures as a lead-in.


A checklist

Testing• Are the activities engaging?• Are they varied enough?• How long do they take?• Do the instructions make sense?• Can you answer the questions?!

Planning• What are the learners’ needs and objectives? Will my lesson idea further them?• Which vocabulary is needed to understand the text?• Which vocabulary is useful in other contexts and is therefore worth learning to use ?• Does the text illustrate the language point you’re using it to teach?

Checking• Are all the facts correct?• Are there any spelling mistakes?

And finally …

Some quotes to discuss

Get your materials published


All groups: What next?

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Suggestions

1. Get learners to write their own questions about parts of the text that they don’t understand.

2. Write gapped sentences using words from the text which could be useful in a business context, and have learners fill in the gaps.

3. Have learners do internet research on ‘intelligent design’ then prepare and hold a debate: ‘The theory of intelligent design should be taught in schools, as well as the theory of evolution.’


On reading

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‘every act of comprehension involves one’s knowledge of the world as well’– R.C. Anderson et al. (1977, p. 369)

‘a linguistic threshold exists which must be crossed before first-language reading ability can transfer to the second-language reading context’– J.C. Alderson (2000, pp. 38-9)

… and vocabulary

‘The proportion of difficult words in text is the single most powerful predictor of text difficulty, and a reader’s general vocabulary knowledge is the single best predictor of how well that reader can understand text’– W. Nagy (2003, p. 1), summarising R.C. Anderson & P. Freebody (1981)


On vocabulary

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‘if you are choosing which words to work on in class, or highlighting words in passages, you should think about focusing on the high-frequency words first’– A. Coxhead (2006, p. 3)

‘collocation is the most powerful force in the … comprehension of all naturally-occurring text’– J. Hill, in M. Lewis (2000, p. 49)

‘most vocabulary is learned from context’, but ‘what that claim does not imply is that teaching specific vocabulary using context is the most effective … way of teaching that vocabulary’– J.S. Sternberg (1987, p. 89)


On writing

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‘Usually the writer has to imagine a reader, but co-operative writing provides each writer with a reader and makes the writing task more realistic and more interactive’– L. Hamp-Lyons & B. Heasley (1987, pp. 2-3)

‘models can be useful to learners, but only if they are used in association with a critical framework which informs students what genre a particular text is a model of, and what features are distinctive of that genre’– C. Tribble (1996, p. 78)


On quotation

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‘Sentences in Scripture, like hair in horsetails, concur in one root of beauty and strength; but being plucked out one by one, serve only for springes and snares.’– J. Donne, in I.A. Richards (1936, p.75)


References

15Tribble, C. (1996). Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hamp-Lyons, L. & Heasley, B. (1987). Study Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Anderson, R.C., Reynolds, R.E., Schallert, D.L. & Goetz, E.T. (1997). Frameworks for comprehending discourse. American Educational Research Journal, 41, 367-381.

Alderson, J.C. (2000). Assessing Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nagy, W. (2003). Teaching vocabulary to improve reading comprehension. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Anderson, R.C. & Freebody, P. (1981). Vocabulary knowledge. In J. Guthrie (Ed.) Comprehension and teaching: research reviews, pp.77-117. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Sternberg, J.S. (1997). Most vocabulary is learned from context. In M.C. McKeown and M.E. Curtis (Eds.) The Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition, pp.89-105. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Coxhead, A. (2006). Essentials of Teaching Academic Vocabulary. Boston, MA: Thomson Heinle.

Hill, J. (2000). Revisiting priorities: from grammatical failure to collocational success. In Lewis, M. (Ed.) Teaching collocation: further developments in the lexical approach. Hove: Thomson Heinle.

Gairns, R. & Redman, S. (1986). Working with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thornbury, S. (2002). How to Teach Vocabulary. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Longman.

Richards, I.A. (1936). The Philosophy of Rhetoric. London & New York: Oxford University Press.

Get your materials published

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• Humanising Language Teaching (www.hltmag.co.uk)

• English Teaching Professional (www.etprofessional.com).

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Writing your own materials – plusses and pitfalls Lucy Palmer ELT Editor IATEFL Glasgow Thursday...

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