CONCEPT OF DEVELOPING TEACHING MATERIAL

By Asarika Fajarini

INTRODUCTION

One of the important problems frequently encountered by teachers in learning activities is to choose or determine instructional materials or teaching materials appropriate in order to help students to achieve competence. This is due to the fact that in the curriculum or syllabus, teaching materials written only in outline in the shape of the subject matter. The duty of teachers to describe the subject matter so that a complete teaching materials.

Teaching materials is one component of a learning system that plays an important role in helping students achieve Competence Standard and Basic Competence or learning objectives have been determined. By applying the teaching materials that have been developed, is expected to obtain alternative for teachers in delivering a learning material so that the learning process will run more optimally and varied and ultimately learning outcomes and activities of learners are also expected to increase.

So that teachers can make the preparation of efficient and effective, required to understand the various aspects related to the development of learning materials, in this paper will be described about the concept of developing teaching material. 

DISCUSSION

Pardo and Téllez (2009) in Mark Thomson offer a definition (for materials development) that they say is most apt due to its inclusivity. “It includes adaption, creation of learning and teaching exercises, a task, an activity, a lesson, a unit, or a module composed of several units.

Materials development is both a field of study and a practical undertaking. As a field it studies the principles and procedures of the design, implementation and evaluation of language teaching materials. As an undertaking it involves the production, evaluation and adaptation of language teaching materials, by teachers for their own classrooms and by materials writers for sale or distribution. Ideally these two aspects of materials development are interactive in that the theoretical studies inform and are informed by the development and use of classroom materials.[1]

It can be said from that definition above, developing teaching material is is a process guided by rules and responsibilities, but the criteria and parameters are self-constructed. This is allows the teacher to promote their values and beliefs in whichever creative, or pragmatic way they wish.

According Tomlinson (2013) there are principles and procedure of material development. One of them is Developing Principled Frameworks for Materials Development. Tomlinson describes experienced writers as those who use their instincts and prior-knowledge as the main influence on their process. Repertoire and creative inspiration are terms that are utilised, but principles and frameworks are referred to less so. This may be because experienced authors have ingrained principles and are intuitively considered.  He mentions that experts plan and draft their materials, while also waiting for inspiration. What really jumped out. In his description was: “experts have clear and well-supported concepts, while designing in opportunistic ways that always consider the students’ needs first”. Once again it is the need that is the jumping off point for material design.

As mentioned in Mark Thomas (2015) ‘Materials Now’ post, one of the other ingredients for principled materials development seems to be experience. To be able to differentiate and pre-empt possible needs and learner difficulties can only come with an understanding of Second Language Acquisition. Awareness of these potential issues from the inception of the materials development process are a real advantage. Tomlinson (2013) expresses his preference for materials development as an on-going process of evaluation driven by a set of agreed principles. Both universal ones applicable to any type of learning context and then local criteria specific to the target language context. Tomlinson (as cited in Mark Thomas 2015) advocates a principled development of materials through coherent applications of :

1. Theories of language acquisition and development.
2. Principles of teaching.
3. Current knowledge of how target language is actually used.
4. Results of systemic observation and evaluation of materials in use.

These applications would come under the universal criteria. Each application opens up a series of questions. Tomlinson (2013) expands on this by saying that materials should stem from SLA theory, leading to universal principles that in conjunction act as tools for development and evaluation.

Based on Tomlinson’s four decades of experience of teaching English he offers his proposed principles for ELT materials:

1. A prerequisite for language acquisition is that learners are exposed to a rich, meaningful, and comprehensible input of language use.

● Plentiful of spoken and written texts providing language useage from a variety of text types and genres relating to different topics, themes, events, locations, targeted to learners

2. To maximise learner exposure to language in use, they need to be engaged both affectively and cognitively in the language experience.

● Thinking while experiencing language helps deeper processing for effective durable learning plus higher-level skills e.g. predicting, connecting, interpreting, and evaluating second language use.

3. Learners who achieve positive effects are much more likely to achieve communicative competence than those who don’t.

● Texts and tasks must be interesting relevant, and enjoyable

4. Learners using materials resources typically that are also utilized when acquiring first language.

● Help learners reflect on their mental activity during a task, and then make use of mental strategies in similar tasks.

5. Learners can benefit from noticing salient features of input.

● Apprehend before comprehend and intuit before explore. Using an experiential approach, where a student is engaged holistically and they learn implicitly. Later they revisit and reflect paying conscious attention to features in order to explicitly learn.

6. Learners need opportunities to use language to try to achieve communicative purposes.

● Learners produce language in order to achieve intended outcomes

Hall (1995) as cited in Tomlinson’s chapter on Principles of Effective Materials Development (2010) insists the crucial question is: How do we think that people learn languages? He lists the principles that he believes underpins everything we do in planning and writing of materials:

● Need to communicate
● Need for long-term goals
● Need for authenticity
● Need for student-centeredness

There is a magnitude of literature that proposes beliefs and principles and the lists could go on. The examples its have put on the post thus far are not by any means conclusive. That is in some respects is an impossible job without consideration of the learners’ need, the learners’ background, the timing and the teachers’ beliefs.

CONCLUSSION

However, as mentioned at the top of the post it will discuss five beliefs of ELT. The method to which came to finalise these principles was through discovery, rather than a prolonged and agonising internal debate. A detailed and fruitful exercise in enabled us to reveal our five core beliefs for the learning and teaching language.

From there we wrote down our ideas. These declarations were then incorporated with other professional examples from other authors in the field. After deliberation and peer discussion, we whittled our way down to a personalised final list. Therefore, there may be some reliability issue due to the influence of others, but in general it would say that it does reflect a lot of who as a teacher and what we want as a learner too. Eventually,

Materials should:

● Engage students
● Encourage leaners to apply their developing skills to the world beyond the classroom.
● Be perceived by learners as relevant and useful
● Provide opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purpose.
● Take a balance of approaches in the way things are covered, inductive, deductive, and affective approaches to grammar, fluency and accuracy work.

On the whole, fairly satisfied with the results of this exercise for learning language. These theories apply themselves to idea that learning is about communication and using the language for a purpose. It is exposure to the language through doing that allows acquisition to take place. Relevance and use are connected heavily to a communicative purpose. If a learner has a goal they will be engaged in the process of achieving that goal. They will practice and recycle their language and expose themselves to as much of that language as they can to achieve that aim. This is in turn will allow for an eclectic approach that is concerned with achievement and not just accuracy.

REFERENCES

Tomlinson, Brian. 2013. Developing Material for Language Teaching 2^nd Ed. London: Bloomsbury.

Thomas, Mark. 2015. Principles of ELT Materials Development.

http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/markthomas/2015/03/10/principles-of-elt-materials-development/

diakses 19 April 2016.

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[1] Tomlinson, 2001, p. 66