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.