UNIT 3: Adapt Resources Using Effective Principles for Materials Development
The goal of the assignment is to adapt ESL materials for my lesson using the principles of language acquisition
1. Target learners
My target learners are people between 25-40 years old. Their goal is to pass the IELTS test to be able to immigrate to Canada or study abroad. A lot of them are young professionals who are highly motivated as passing the test gives them an opportunity to get points in the application process. For students it gives them a chance to experience a higher quality education and potentially a career in a different country. The majority of the students are B1-B2 level. These people are proficient in computers and smart phones. Their specific need is to be able to get the score of 7.0 or 7.5 within a certain timeframe.
2. Lesson objectives.
Main objective is to practice matching paragraph headings to paragraph
Specific objectives:
· To acquire summarizing skills
· Develop the ability to identify keywords and key phrases
· To practice paraphrasing
For IELTS reading I don’t usually focus on vocabulary or grammar, however I always print out glossaries and attach them to the printouts for students to go over.
3. In my assignment I will focus on:
· Principle of language teaching No.1 The content and methodology of the teaching should be consistent with the objectives of the course and should meet the needs and wants of the learners.
Principles of materials development:
1. For any course in which the main objective is to help the learners improve their communicative competence in English, it is important that the English the learners are exposed to is used in ways that either represent or replicate the reality of language use in typical English discourse. This implies that most of the texts and tasks should be authentic in the sense that they haven't been contrived for language purposes ( Gilmore 2007; Mishan 2005) and that they are "as similar as possible for future applications of learning"(James 2006:153). It also implies that any explicit exemplification should be informed by corpus data ( Tan 2002a) or by systematic observation by the materials developers (Tomlinson 2009)
2. The materials need to be written in such a way that the teacher can make use of them as a resource and not have to follow them as a script. There must be a built-in flexibility to the course that helps teachers and learners to make principled decisions about texts, tasks, learning points, approaches, and routines in relation to learner needs and wants
Adaptations that I suggest:
I would say that the lesson meets the lesson objectives, but only partially. In order to practice summarizing and paraphrasing, it would be best to add exercises on synonyms and finding keywords. The warm-up activity starts with “Strategies to answer the questions” when they go right into explaining what needs to be done to find the right answer and not explain WHY this needs to be done. I would start with having a discussion with my students about why we need to look for keywords and key phrases first (to understand the main idea of the paragraph) and why it is important to summarize the information (this will be the “synonym” of our heading). Then I would take one paragraph as an example and ask the students to underline the keywords and key phrases, write the summary of the paragraph and come up with two or three versions of possible headings.
As part of the warm-up activity , the author points out three “things to beware of” when matching the headings and paragraphs like “look for synonyms, not exact same words” or “ there are more choices of paragraph headings on the list than paragraphs” However, there is no activity that offers a chance to practice it. Here is the exercise I would suggest. All students read the same story, which can be a textbook, newspaper or online article. I’d ask students to write down their paraphrases. Students can share their ideas with the class. How many new titles did we get? Can they all be called paraphrasing? Great time to refresh the students on what a good paraphrase is – the sentence structure and the vocabulary could be changed without adding new ideas or changing author’s opinion. This task will help us to achieve one of the lesson objectives – to practice paraphrasing.
Does the unit meet the needs of the learners?
I’d say yes, all of the students will have to take IELTS reading and do matching headings part.
B1-B2 students - for different levels of language proficiency ( B1 and B2) I would chose different texts for practicing. For B1 students I would go with the easier texts of 300 words to introduce them to the strategies first and then move on to more complex texts (texts from exams). It's also possible to split the students into small groups based on their level and provide guidance- walk around the classroom and listen the group discussions. When one of the students suggests a heading, ask to explain why they think so.
Does the lesson offer flexible choice for learners and teachers?
No. The lesson is designed so that the learners can work with it independently. It doesn’t offer any flexibility either for students or teachers, which means the teacher will have to create most of the teaching materials themselves.
· 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
Principles of material development
1. Prioritize the potential for engagement by, for example, basing a unit on a text or a task that is likely to achieve affective and cognitive engagement rather than on a teaching point selected from a syllabus.
2. Make use of activities that make the learners think about what they are reading or listening to and respond to it personally
3. Make use of activities that make the learners think and feel before, during, and after using the target language for communication
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. In the guided practice module, for example, I would try to engage students more on a personal level by asking them about their own experiences. Do they always read headings of newspapers or magazines? By reading a heading, can you always know right away what the article is about? Do they make their choices about articles when surfing the internet based on their headings?
2) Does the author make use of activities that make the learners think about what they are reading or listening to and respond to it personally?
No, not really. The main goal of IELTS reading practicing is to apply strategies for rapid reading and understanding the text, there isn’t much focus on students’ reflections on the text itself. Students could practice summarizing main ideas of paragraphs individually ( or in groups) and share with the class.
3) Do we make use of activities that make the learners think and feel before, during and after using the target language for communication?
No, I didn’t find any activities to answer this question.
References
Online IELTS Preparation Website. Reading lesson 1, Matching Paragraph Headings. Retrieved from https://www.ieltsbuddy.com/paragraph-headings.html
Tomlinson, B. (2014) Principles of effective materials development
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