Weekend TESOL Materials Development

1
Weekend TESOL Materials Development

• Week 14 class notes
• Evaluating ELT Materials (workshop), SLO Writing
  Choosing Keywords Workshop,

2
Homework

• Take out your answers for Evaluating ELT
  Materials. Discuss your answers with your group
  and please make changes to your answers when
  appropriate.

3
Lesson Plan and Materials 2

• This assignment is due in TWO weeks (week 16)
• You will be required to hand in a FULL lesson
  plan and ALL materials for a receptive skill
  lesson (reading or listening)

4

• Next week I will meet with you individually to
  review your lesson plan and materials
• Please make sure you bring
• Your SLO (make sure you describe your target
  students age and level)
• Choose keywords and brainstorm how you will do
  initial assessment, elicitation and comprehension
  of the new words
• Next week also bring
• the listening or reading text (in written form)
• a rough lesson plan of ideas for activities and
  materials to show me and other members of your
  team.

5
Create Your SLO Using This Formula

• By the end of the lesson, SWBAT demonstrate their
  understanding/comprehension of the __________
  (text/passage/story/dialog/conversation/article/et
  c.),_________ (title of text) BY ______(doing
  something)__________.

6
Choosing Keywords

• What are keywords? How do know which words to
  pre-teach?
• How many words are appropriate to pre-teach? Why?
• Look at listening script for the Korean Food
  lesson (p. 104). Underline all the difficult key
  words and then circle 6-10 key words

7
List of Difficult Words

• tasty
• texture
• chewy
• beef
• pork
• vampire
• bugs
• marinated
• slurping

• squid
• octopus
• blood sausage
• blood soup
• silk worm larvae
• miso soup
• buckwheat noodles

8
What words would I teach?

• The Korean Food lesson is interesting because
  the words for the food have been made strange by
  being expressed in English.
• I would teach this lesson in the PRE stage
  differently than the way described in the course
  packet
• I would use a collaborative discovery activity,
  so Ss could discovery the meaning of the Korean
  words made strange

9
Activate schema and assess prior knowledge with
the menu activity
??s World Famous Korean Restaurant
10
Choosing Keywords

• Now look at your texts
• How many difficult words are there?
• Are all the difficult words keywords?
• If you have more than 6-8 keywords, is the text
  too difficult for your learners?
• How will you scaffold Ss learning if the text is
  too difficult?

11
Lesson Planning-Pre

• Questions to ask your self
• What is your text?
• What is your SLO?
• How will you motivate the Ss to engage in the
  lesson?
• How will you encourage the students to
  predict/anticipate the reading/listening lesson?
  
• How will you check their prior knowledge?
• Which words will you pre teach?
• How will you teach/assess their understanding of
  new words?

12
Lesson Planning-During

• What simple question can I ask to have my
  students notice the
• form, setting, genre, mood, gist (see end of
  reading on PDP framework)
• How will my students show that they have
  understood the story or listening text?
• What materials will I use to support them?How
  will I include VAKT? Peer learning?
• Do each of my activities have a purpose given
  before the Ss listen/read?

13
Lesson Planning-Post

• What aspect of this lesson can I transfer to
  another skill? Is there a language point, a
  theme or a topic which will lend itself to
• Will it be a speaking or writing activity?
• What materials do I need to support this?

14
Materials

• Remember, materials refers to anything which
  is used by teachers or learners to facilitate the
  learning of a language
• Possible materials
• Pictures, PowerPoint, realia, drawing of the
  white board, teacher talk (for example CCQs,
  guiding questions, focusing questions,
  instructions and anecdotes) a game, worksheets,
  (SARSed) course book pages, drawing of the
  seating arrangement,
• Must be age-appropriate (Tom. A-6)
• Must support/match the lesson.
• Must be labelled to match the lesson plan.
• Must follow Tomlinsons guidelines, (for example,
  A-2 help the learners feel at ease, A-10
  different learning styles)

15
Aspects of Tomlinsons Features not in Receptive
Skill Lessons

• 8. Draw learners attn to input
• 9. Communicative purposes not required
• 13. Silent period will happen naturally
• 15. Not too much controlled practice

16
Planning for Clear Instructions

• What info do Ss need to know?
• page or materials
• task
• purpose
• groups
• time
• special considerations such as turn taking, not
  showing your paper, etc

• How will T convey that information?
• using focusing Qs
• previewing
• short simple instructions
• chunking
• CCQs
• modeling
• providing visual as well as verbal instructions

17
Warm Up

• Think about this
• Why do teachers need to evaluate ELT materials?

18

• What are the three stages of evaluation that are
  addressed in this article?

19

• What are the three stages of evaluation that are
  addressed in this article?
• External
• Internal
• Overall

Please, take a moment to describe what happens in
each stage.
20
External evaluation

• Offers a brief overview of the materials from
  the outside (cover, introduction, table of
  contents)
• What is the purpose of doing this?
• ? to find out what the books say about themselves
  

21
External EvaluationThe blurb

• Reach into Backpack and discover a course packed
  full of exciting activities and bursting with
  opportunities to get your young learners using
  English! Your pupils will love the lively
  approach of Backpack, with its fun illustrations,
  real-life photography, chants, songs, games and
  project work. (more deleted for space)
• Youll find the course clear and logical to
  teach, with plenty of support in the Teachers
  Guide.
• Develops reading, writing, listening and speaking
  skills in a balanced way that reflects the way
  your pupils will use English in real life. This
  is achieved through a wide variety of projects,
  games, role-plays, songs and puzzles.
• Gets your pupils interested in reading from an
  early age, with pull-out Little Books  Starter to
  Level 3 and theme based magazine pages Levels
  4-6.
• Extra practice and revision on the CD-ROM.

22
External EvaluationTable of Contents

• Contents
• Fun in Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . . . . . 2
• My Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . . . . 14
• All About Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . . . 26
• My Clothes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . . . . 38
• At the Toy Shop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . . 50
• People Around Town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  62
• Swinging and Sliding . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . 74
• Animal Friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . . 86
• Food I Like . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . . . . 98

23
Workshop Evaluating ELT Materials

• The online class requires that you take
  responsibility for your learning.
• Again, I am going to give you a set of task and I
  expect you to do them.
• These tasks take time, but if you only watch the
  lecture without doing the task, you miss
  important learning opportunities

24
Task

• Define your context Who and what are you
  teaching
• Choose some ESL/EFL course books to examine.
• Examine the course books by looking at the
  blurb and the introduction.
• What kind of information about the materials does
  it give you?
• What are the key words that help you determine
  this?

25

• Which parts of the blurbs and introductions
  would you want to investigate further for your
  evaluation of the material?
• What about the blurb and introductions made the
  course book seem appropriate for your target Ss?

26

• Once you have selected a course book that is
  potentially appropriate based on the external
  evaluation, the next step is to do an internal
  evaluation of it.

27
Internal evaluation

• In-depth investigation into the materials.
• Analysis of the extent to which the factors
  addressed in the external evaluation actually
  match up with the content of the coursebook.
• In order to perform an effective internal
  inspection of the materials, what is the
  suggested minimum number of units of the course
  book that should be examined? Why?

28
Sample Content Backpack Series
29
Task Continued

• Investigate if the claims made actually match the
  content of the course books.
• Give yourself time to do a thorough evaluation,
  try to skim over a couple of units and
  investigate the factors.
• Which factors do the materials address? Were any
  factors missing? Would this be a major factor for
  not adopting this course book? Why?

30
Overall evaluation

• According to this article, after doing an
  external and internal evaluation of a course
  book, you can then make an overall evaluation
  based on four factors.
• What are these four factors and what do they mean?

31

1. The usability factor ? How usable is it for
   your course? Does it fit in with the syllabus? Is
   it level and age appropriate for your students?
   Could you use it as a core material or would it
   serve better as supplementary material?
2. The generalizability factor ? Is the material
   generally useful? Can you use most of the
   material?
3. The adaptability factor ? Is the material in the
   course book adaptable to your particular group of
   learners and/or for your specific course?
4. The flexibility factor ? Can you use different
   parts of the course book at different times, or
   is the course book very rigid and you have to
   follow it exactly the way it is laid out?

32
Final Task Overall Evaluation

• Look at your findings from your internal
  investigation
• Use the four factors to help you summarize your
  findings and make your recommendations
• The usability factor
• The generalizability factor
• The adaptability factor
• The flexibility factor