Imagine you are teaching a test preparation course. All your learners need to take the IELTS, which is an English language proficiency test and a university entry requirement. You are preparing a reading lesson to help students practice matching paragraph headings to the corresponding paragraph. Please follow the link.
Based on the scenario, I will be focusing on two principles by Brian Tomlinson ( Tomlinson, B(Ed.).(2014). Developing materials for language teaching
I chose to look at two principles from the book:
· Principle of language acquisition No.2
"In order for the learner to maximize their exposure to language, they need to be engaged both affectively and cognitively in the language experience (Arnold 1999; Tomlinson 1998b,1998d)
Principles of material development
1) Does the task achieve affective and cognitive engagement?
Cognitive – yes, but, in my opinion, the “feeling” part is missing. There are no activities which refer to students’ emotions or personal experiences. The topic itself is dull, not relevant to many learners (Yoruba, town in Nigeria). I would take the theme that is relevant for most of us like relationships or life experiences.
2) Do we make use of activities that make the learners think about what they are reading or listening to and respond to it personally?
There aren’t many activities that follow that principle, most of them are very technical. I would ask students to reflect on what they have just read and ask them if there’s any connection to their personal experience. Are the students able to express their opinions? See what language they use to express their opinion and compare it with the language used in the text. Paraphrasing games can help too. The first person tries to paraphrase, then the second one and so on until the next person won’t be able to do it. The last person who was able to paraphrase wins!
3) Do we make use of activities that make the learners think and feel before, during and after using the target language for communication?
I didn’t find any activities to support this principle. I know that it comes to IELTS, many teachers prefer to follow certain techniques like skimming and scanning, I think it’s a good idea to add “creative” part, for example to collaborate on the topic, express their opinions, develop them educationally. One of the exercises could be working in groups, where students discuss the author’s purpose, the subject, main idea, author’s and their own feelings about the subject. This will help students in learning to analyze texts, identify key words and phrases and make summaries
· Principle of language acquisition No.3
"Language learners who achieve positive affect are much more likely to achieve communicative competence than those who don’t (Arnold 1999; Tomlinson 1998d)
IELTS preparation lessons can easily become overwhelming for ESL students as it focuses mostly on question strategies and methods to get the answers right. In this time a lot of aspects are taught just to supplement students’ ability to give the correct answers! It’s not about students learning how to speak or read in English and there’s very little real life with our feelings and emotions in it! That’s why I think it’s important to apply the principle of language acquisition No.3 in adapting the teaching materials.
Principles of material development
1) Do we make sure the texts and tasks are as interesting, relevant, and enjoyable as possible so as to exert a positive influence on the learner’s attitudes to the language and to the process of learning it?
In the given example the text is not on one of the popular or universal topics like feelings, biographies or real life experiences, it’s about a small town in Nigeria, which isn’t relevant to many students. For my classes I would try to use more texts and activities to reflect that, however, knowing the specifics of the exam, it would not be possible not to include other topics like science research or environment a wide variety of themes is included in the exam. In this case, this principle might not always be achievable.
2) Do we set achievable challenges, which help to raise the learners’ self-esteem when success is accomplished?
It’s hard to evaluate if I can apply this principle to the IELTS exercise given as learners’ could be of different CLB levels, I could assume that the student have a very solid English language proficiency. What could be done to implement this principle in your work is starting IELST reading preparation with smaller texts ( 300 words instead of 1 000) so that students stay motivated and don’t lose their self-esteem.
3) Do we stimulate emotive responses through the use of music, song, literature, art and so on, through making use of controversial and provocative texts, personalization, and through inviting learners to articulate their feelings about a text before asking them to analyze it?
I think it could also be applicable in the IELTS reading lesson by asking students to formulate the main idea of the paragraphs and matching them with images shown on the slides.
Another activity that could be beneficial for implementing this principle could be giving out to students newspapers, tables, airplane schedule, summaries and discuss how different types of information are presented? What are the reasons for that? That will help them to look at different ways of data presentation as some types of them appear in the exam tasks
I definitely see a lot of opportunities for students to be involved in material adaptation. To apply open-endedness, the teacher can include materials that resonate with the majority of students and encourage them to share their point of view.
Another example of student involvement in materials adaptation is giving learners a chance to choose strategy for preparing for IELTS reading section of the exam that works best for them. For example, one strategy could be simply to master your reading speed, read the whole passage and then answer the questions after the text. Another strategy is to read the questions first, identify keywords and then answer the questions. The third strategy is to skim the text first, then read the questions and identify the keywords in them, then scan the test and write short summaries for each paragraph.
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