Week 5: Workbook Evaluation

Week 5: Presentation on Workbook Evaluation based on Williams checklist by CressidaHugo

Tutorial Week 4

Tutorial Week 4: Developing Criteria for Textbook Evaluation-MD by CressidaHugo

Week 7: DLLM

Checkpoint 1: Examples of Digital Language Learning Materials (DLLM)

·         POWER POINT (Teaching Aid)

·         FACEBOOK (Discussion and Forum)

·         YOU TUBE

·         BLOG

·         MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)

·         WISC-ONLINE (A digital library of Web-based learning resources called 'learning objects)

·         JORUM

Checkpoint 2: SLA Theories and Principles

Theories:

a)    Behaviourisistic

b)    Interactionist

c)    Innatist

Principles:

a)    Materials should achieve impact

b)    Materials should help learners to feel at ease

c)    Materials should help learners to develop confidence

d)    What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful

e)    Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment

f)       Learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught

g)    Materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use

h)    The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input.

i)       Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes.

j)       Materials should take into account that the positive effects of instruction are usually delayed

k)     Materials should take into account that learners differ in affective attitudes

l)       Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction.

m)  Materials should not rely too much on controlled practice

n)    Materials should provide opportunities for outcome and feedback

o)    Materials should help the learner to develop cultural awareness and sensitivity.

p)    Materials should reflect the reality of language use.

q)    Materials should help learners to learn in ways similar to the circumstances in which they will have to use the language.

r)      Materials should help to create readiness to learn.

Checkpoint 3: Rough outline of own DLLM

1.     Blogging in character

·         Pick characters from a book, such as a history book. Then, have the students to journal in their new persona. Teachers assign identities for all of the books that the students have read and let the conversation begin.

2.     Art gallery

·         Take photos of student work (or scan and save as images), and then have students to add their artworks to blog posts. To encourage writing skills, ask students to describe their art and the creation process.

Checkpoint 4: Summarize explanation for each criteria

1)    Errors:

·         There are two types of errors which are serious and less serious. Less serious is referring to a situation when work of the users are disturbed while serious is when the users’ outputs are endangered.

2)    Efficiency:

·         It explains how well the experienced users can operate an application after they have mastered it.

3)    Learnability:

·         It refers to how long the beginners use the system before they learn the essential skills which are necessary for them to complete tasks.

4)    Memorability:

·         It explains the ability of an occasional user who has previously used the system to remember its operational principle.    

Pedagogical Usability

1.     Feedback

·         DLLM should provide students with encouraging and immediate feedback.

2.     Motivation

·         Support the direction of individual's general behavior.

3.     Goal orientation

·         The goal of LM should be clear.

4.     Learner control

·         Learner’s memory should be put into optimal.

5.     Applicability

·         The knowledge should be transferable to other context.

6.     Added value

·         Value acts as an additional function towards learning.

7.     Learner activity

·         DLLM plays an important role in students’ activity.

8.     Cooperative/Collaborative learning

·         DLLM enables collaborative work with the teacher as a control.

9.     Valuation of previous knowledge

·         Include previous knowledge as an advantage for the learners.

10.                        Flexibility

·         Contains diverse assignment, adaptable, suitable and fit learners’ need.

Reflection:

For this task, we are required to provide examples of DLLM and to identify the theories and principles related to DLLM. There are certain criteria and pedagogical usability that we must follow when we develop DLLM for students. We also indicate a rough outline of our own DLLM that can be used to teach English in the local classrooms.

            From my personal experience when doing this task, I get confused between both materials and tools. In my initial thought, my notion is that a tool is somehow the same with materials as long as they are in digital form. However, after listening to Ms. JC explanation regarding this matter, I can relate that DLLM are anything that learners can use to learn a language and digital tools will help learners to share and convey what they have learned with others whether online or offline.

            As a pre-service teacher, DLLM is really helpful to enhance the effectiveness of using textbook to teach a language. DLLM is created in a more visual manner to arouse learners’ interest towards language learning. However, teachers must make sure that designed materials must fit with students’ proficiency level and able to activate their schemata in the teaching and learning context. It is crucial for students to sustain what they had learned through DLLM because DLLM is not only meant to engage students with the learning environment but also to show their ability to apply the language in real life. 

Week 2-Tutorial

Materials Development:

Tutorial Week 2- Principles for Materials Development

A) Watch Jeremy Short’s presentation on his take of materials development.

Please take note on the reasons he created the materials and the characteristics of his materials.

Which principles for materials development did Short apply when producing his materials?

Answer:

     Jeremy created the materials after he found that his students feel that textbook is boring and also expensive. Later, he managed to create interesting, fun and engaging learning through visual and audio. Hence, he implements the story telling into narrative which known as the graphic novel textbooks. It is important to ensure that the learning materials are interesting in a way to attract learner’s interest and understanding.

     When producing his materials, Short applies the principle of Materials Development which found in Tomlinson’s Principle. Short believes that materials should achieve impact in order to attract learner’s curiosity, interest and attention through novelty, variety, attractive presentation and appealing content. Materials are created to help learners to learn the language with texts and illustration that relates to their own culture.

B) Design and complete the following diagram.

     The reason why we choose to draw our diagram in this manner is because we believe that these aspects are inter-related with each other. Country’s vision is placed on top of the diagram because it works as a mover in the society which leads the parents to set a goal in their children’s academic performance. Later, curriculum goal and objective are created to suit previous relation between parent’s goal and country’s vision. Learners are expected to be able to master all the learning skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary. Then, we can see the development of two principles which are the principles of teaching and learning and the principles of SLA. 

      In the principles of teaching and learning, the styles of teaching and materials play an important role in ensuring the effectiveness of pedagogy and getting into effective language learning materials. Teachers can vary the learning materials according to curriculum requirements and learners’ interest. It is best to create fun and engaging materials such as via flashcards, videos and ICT. Connecting SLA research to materials development, there are principles in SLA that affect the designed materials. Moreover, teacher’s belief and rational should be based on the principles. 

     From many perspectives, teachers believe that every student has different learning styles. Teacher sees the importance of creating effective materials to cope this problem. The rational is that teaching and learning process are influencing each other in a way that the teachers should be aware of learners’ proficiency level. Teacher is the key factor that influences students’ performance in school. The learners should be given tasks based on their proficiency level. 

Reflection

1.    How does it affects me as a pre-service teacher?

Materials development is formally designed to help teachers to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning using materials in class. As a pre-service teacher, I believed that the principles mentioned by Tomlin are really interrelated with each other. If I were to plan my lesson plans in the future, I can refer to the principles as a guideline for me to determine and decide on what are the most suitable materials for my students.

2.    How does it affects my current knowledge?

Education is really changing time by time and we have to change with it. Back then during school time, textbook is not really being used as a tool for teaching and learning in class. We seldom open up the book and look into the contents as what we must do now as a pre-service teacher. I did not see the importance of English textbook when I was in school because students are set to learn and practise on how to answer exam questions than learning the language. Learning the language and memorising the answers are two different things because when we learn, there are important skills that we need to master and acquire in real life. Moreover, I am able to understand the different principles that are related to materials development.

3.    How can I use that knowledge to improve myself?

I can apply current theoretical principles and research findings to the practical realities of developing and/or exploiting classroom materials and offer new ideas and directions in materials design that is suitable for the different types of learners in the future. In developing language teaching materials , it is important to make the materials fun and engaging so that learners are motivated to learn the language.