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When you look into an ELT classroom, you expect to see learners and a teacher doing things in English. What you will also expect to see are some teaching materials.
When you begin teaching, you will probably be given a textbook. You can also probably depend on the fact that you will be expected to be able to use a textbook. At this point, it is reasonable to ask, “How do I teach these materials?”. But there is a danger in this question, which some teachers never escape. They try to fit themselves and their students into the demands made by their materials.
Materials exist in order to support learning and teaching, so they should be designed to suit the people and the process involved. Where this is not the case, it is the materials, or the use of them, which need to change. Our purpose is not to teach materials. Our purpose is to teach students, and to use materials in that process.
There is one more general point to be made: use your materials with enthusiasm.
If you think you should be using different materials, then do something about it before the next class, but don’t poison this lesson’s learning opportunities. A negative attitude from the teacher towards the materials is strongly demotivating for the learners; it takes away their feelings of security and purpose. Remember that you are there to help the students learn and that students learn in many different ways. Certainly, some materials are better than others, but just about any type of material can be used well by a committed teacher.
Published Materials
Publishing ELT materials is big business, and it arouses strong feelings. Some teachers are as fiercely against textbooks as others are in their favour. The pity of it is that some teachers on both sides of the argument simply follow books instead of using them. And some teachers pour massive amounts of time and energy into producing a poor quality, home-made version of what is already available. Then they are often disappointed by the reaction of their students, who prefer the appeal and authority of a good textbook.
As long as we remember that we are teaching students, not materials, we can usually use published materials, and then use our energy and creativity in areas where it is more needed. So, it is important to develop a clear idea of what you can expect published materials to do for you, and what they cannot do.
They can be attractive in terms of topics, layout and illustrations, reliable in terms of the overall choice and correctness of information, and user-friendly.
A published textbook cannot provide:
- insight – into the interests and needs of any specific students;
- decisions – about which materials to use, and which to change, supplement, or leave out;
- creativity – to use the materials as the foundations of a bridge which students cross as they learn to speak for themselves.
These elements must, of course, be supplied by the teacher. This is just one of the areas where method and materials overlap.
Teacher-produced materials
In most teaching situations, the most important role of teacher-produced materials is to bridge the gap between the classroom and the world outside.
Until and unless you become very skilled at materials production, with resources and materials to back you up, perhaps the most useful materials production you can do is to make up simple exercises, engaging their imagination, their intelligence, their sense of humour (you know how the list goes on…).
Another important task is to introduce what are called authentic materials into the classroom.
Authentic Materials
The word ‘authentic’ is used in different ways in ELT, but the most common use of the expression ‘authentic materials’ is to refer to examples of language that were not originally produced for language learning purposes but which are now being used in that way. So, if you decided to cut an article out of a newspaper and use it in class, this would be an example of authentic material. Authentic materials are most usually reading texts, sometimes listening texts.
There are two reasons why authentic materials are so important:
· Language – Authentic materials represent the actual goal of language learning, including the difficulties that learning materials avoid. All learners must have practice in meeting these real challenges. Even at the early stages, students should learn how to respond to language, which they do not fully understand.
· Motivation – Authentic materials bring the means of learning and the purpose of learning close together, and this establishes once again a direct link with the world outside the classroom.
One way to use authentic materials is to take the exercises and frameworks you find with other materials and use them with your own.
Student Materials
We can think of student materials in two ways:
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