ADAPTING AND DEVELOPING LANGUAGE TEACHING MATERIALS

The course book or certain materials which are chosen for the teacher may not be suitable for learners. Here the teacher has the responsibility to modify the materials according to learners’ needs, ages, interests, motivation, etc which effect the process of learning.

Or the teacher may find the material doesn’t satisfy the needs of learners as well as his goal of teaching. He must produce new materials to fix this problem; but creating a material isn’t a simple task. Teacher should be equipped with enough pedagogic knowledge and make a need analysis before creating a material.

While developing a material, these points must be regarded:
# Learner’s needs, ages, interests, levels, cultural/educational backgrounds, social status should be identified

# Teacher should decide on the content of the book equally on teaching points(grammar, vocabulary, pronounciation) and skills(reading, writing, speaking and listening). So according to these points different syllabus types should be prepared.

# The materials should be recycled to enable learners the chance to learn what the material includes adequately. In this way, learning will be much more effective by recycling.

# The dialogues should be communicative. A dialogue mustn’t mean that two students read a written text aloud but they can feel as if they’re talking to each other outside. So the dialogues should include something interesting to get the attention of the learners. Students will find something from themselves and be eager to learn.

# All selected materials should be in a clear and authentic language. Learners shouldn’t have difficulty in understanding the material and the material should be interesting to the learners. This will increase the tendency to learn.

# The material should serve the aim of the teaching process and be parallel to what teacher and learner expect from the class.

Class And Homework Activities

As models for good communication, we should set the tone for the class by showing respect for students, by heeding what they communicate through the spoken word and other communicative channels, and by assuring that our own messages to them are appropriate in every way to their intellectual and social levels and needs.And finally as resource persons, we should provide whatever assistance they need to solve their language, communication, and learning problems.
Krowitz, Mary Jo A TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVES ;Washington, 1988, pg85

Division Of Class Time

• Management :
Up to %10. Teacher takes this much time to establish human contact and set up activities of the day
• Communication :
50% or more. This much time used for student-controlled communicative and problem-solving activities.
• Feedback :
Up to 40%. This is time for feedback from the teacher or on teacher-guided, problem solving and instructional activities.

MANAGEMENT

Establishing Contact :
• human contact
• Having equipment ready
• Set up activities and schedules
• Making sure students know (1)what they are to be learning (2)for how long, (3)most important, why.
Establishing Groups :
Let students form their own groups and in activities roles shouldnt be forced on people if they dont want to assume them.
Control of the Classroom:
The essence of being a manager is to avoid taking control, to communicate the task, purpose and organizational schme clearly and to get out of the way so that communication and laerning take place

Krowitz, Mary Jo A TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVES ;Washington, 1988, pg90

Communication Activities

a) Communication about subject (oral skills)
Where language is merely the means of learning something from visiting speakers, from class participants as speakers or from panel discussions and reading.
b) Problem solving activities (written skills)
Require careful communication to solve either linguistic problems or non-linguistic problems.

Krowitz, Mary Jo A TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVES ;Washington, 1988, pg91.

Speaking and Listening
Students talks should be a frequent occurance. This is because successful speaking and listening skills are acquired over time and with lots of practice. It's sometimes frustrating for students because there are no rules as in grammar teaching. If the class is large and the course is short , we can carry out speaking and listening activities in groups. Each student , speaking to his own small group and recording on a tape recorder, has a chance to monitor his own progress over four or five talks through the courses. In addition to moving around as observers, teachers can also use tape recorder to keep track of these activities .

http://www.euclideanspace.com/software/language/speaking/index.htm

In listening activities encourage students to watch a film, or listen to a song, but not to watch an entire film or listen for whole songs in english. Students should often listen, but they should listen for short periods - five to ten minutes. This should happen four or five times a week. Even if they don't understand anything, five to ten minutes is a minor investement. However, for this strategy to work, students must not expect improved understanding too quickly. The brain is capable of amazing things if given time, students must have the patience to wait for results. If a student continues this exercise over two to three months their listening comprehension skills will greatly improve.

http://www.euclideanspace.com/software/language/listening/index.htm

Writing and Reading

• The most important factor in writing exercises is that students need to be personally involved in order to make the learning experience of lasting value. Encouraging student participation in the exercise, while at the same time refining and expanding writing skills, requires a certain pragmatic approach. The teacher should be clear on what skills he/she is trying to develop. Next, the teacher needs to decide on which means (or type of exercise) can facilitate learning of the target area. Once the target skill areas and means of implementation are defined, the teacher can then proceed to focus on what topic can be employed to ensure student participation. By pragmatically combing these objectives, the teacher can expect both enthusiasm and effective learning.
Glendinning & Holmstrom ,1992 , chap. 5.

Choosing the target area depends on many factors; What level are the students?, What is the average age of the students, Why are the students learning English, Are there any specific future intentions for the writing (i.e school tests or job application letters etc.). Other important questions to ask oneself are: What should the students be able to produce at the end of this exercise? (a well written letter, basic communication of ideas, etc.) What is the focus of the exercise? (structure, tense usage, creative writing). Once these factors are clear in the mind of the teacher, the teacher can begin to focus on how to involve the students in the activity thus promoting a positive, long-term learning experience.
Glendinning & Holmstrom ,1992, chap. 5.

Types of Oral Activities that Will Support Writing:

• 1. Expand my sentence. For this activity, you start with a basic sentence and take turns expanding the sentence.
• For instance:
Person 1: "I have a dog."
Person 2: "I have a big dog."
Person 1: "I have a big black dog."
Person 2"I have a big, black dog named Dodger."
Person 1"I have a big, black dog named Dodger who loves people.
• 2. Another activity that can be done orally is to take any object or item and tell as much about it as possible.
• For instance: Dogs are friendly. Dogs are furry. Dogs like to eat bones. Dogs can really hear well. (When the child exhausts everything they know, you move to a different object/item or topic

http://esl.about.com/cs/teachingtechnique/a/a_twrite.ht

• 3. To help children understand the 4 types of sentences, you will want to help them understand what they are:
• Declarative, which makes a statment:
Close the door.
• Imperative, which expresses a command:
Finish eating your dinner.
• Interrogative, which asks a question:
Would you like to go to the park?
• Exclamatory, which makes an exclamation:
That roller coaster ride was really scary!
Take turns orally making sentences while the other states what type of sentence it is, or give the type of sentence and get the child to come up with that type of sentence. However, keep the oral language fun and as the child progresses, written language is the next logical step.

http://esl.about.com/cs/teachingtechnique/a/a_twrite.ht

• Reading activities can be an arduous task to apply as it is often difficult to know how to improve student skills. One of the most obvious points about reading is that there are different types of reading skills.
• Skimming - reading rapidly for the main points
• Scanning - reading rapidly to find a specific piece of information
• Extensive - reading a longer text, often for pleasure with emphasis on overall meaning
• Intensive reading - reading a short text for detailed information
• http://esl.about.com/cs/teachingtechnique/a/a_treading.ht

Identify the reading skills required in the following reading situations:

• The TV guide for Friday evening
• An article in National Geographic magazine about the Ottoman Empire
• A good friend's homepage on the Internet
• The opinion page in your local newspaper
• The weather report in your local newspaper
• A novel
• A poem
• A bus timetable
• A fax at the office etc..
http://esl.about.com/cs/teachingtechnique/a/a_treading.ht

Problem solving activities and Games

• Cloze procedures
The cloze is a type of synthesizing exercise that has gained attention in recent years primarily its use as a testing device.
To prepeare a cloze test, simply take any written passage, remove every fifth or tenth or ….th word and replace it with a blank space, which the student fills in with any item that seems grammatically and semntically appropriate.
Krowitz, Mary Jo A TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVES ;Washington, 1988, pg96.

• Cloze procedures as group activities :
Any student who doesnt find an answer to one blank will at least have been trying and must judge appropriateness of his colleagues’ answer. He may be the one to find next answer. Disagreements produce interesting question for teacher to reply (teacher serves as real source). And it is wise to have patterns of group cooperation already well established before starting work on cloze tests and to remind students they must talk to each other to find and agree on their answers.

Krowitz, Mary Jo A TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVES ;Washington, 1988, pg96.

Fill in the blanks with ONE word only.

• Alex Ferguson is a forty-two year old over-weight farmer. His wife Darry is a thirty-nine year old housewife.
• They have __________(1) three bright obese children. __________(2) names are Timmy, Penny and Carlos.
• Timmy __________(3) a six-year old, round faced, freckled, ginger __________(4) boy. He has got gig, brown
• __________(5). Penny is an 8 year old, short straight haired, fair and tall girl. She’s got green eyes like her
• mother. Carlos is an 11 year old curly haired, scruffy boy. __________(6) has got glasses. They all like eating,
• so Darry is usually in the kitchen to cook delicious __________(7) for __________(8).

GAMES

GUESSING GAMES
NUMBER GAMES
SUSAM SOKAĞI


Some Do’s and Don’ts for Exercises

1. Dont use exercises simply as something that cant do students any harm or that keep the student busy. That kind of thinking can cause plenty of harm to the teacher student relationship.
2. Use exercises sparingly and in response to teacher/student-diagnosed and student-felt needs.
3. Dont require exercises when a student doesnt want to do them or isnt sure why he should do them.
4. Differenciate between the kind of exercises :
a.Repetitive practice, requiring no real decisions. The student only recognizes the pattern and follows it. There are rarely of value.
b.decision-involving, requiring a choice between two or more paterns it is valuable only when the student has been confusing patterns.
c.Open ended, requiring a number of decisions. These can be quite good if their content at the students’ intellectual levels.

Krowitz, Mary Jo A TEACHER’S PERSPECTİVES ;Washington, 1988, pg.118.
Feedback

• Feedback makes students what they are doing wrong, so that they can make changes in some aspect of their internal grammar. The result is usually positive change in their communicative or linguistic behavior which make the form of a bad communicative strategy avoided, a discourse connector, idiom, grammatical structure, or word used appropriately; a sound pronounced corectly etc…
Krowitz, Mary Jo A TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVES ;Washington, 1988, p113.


• http://www.euclideanspace.com/language/index.htm
• http://esl.about.com/cs/teachingtechnique/a/a_twrite.ht
• Krowitz, Mary Jo A TEACHER’S PERSPECTIVES;Washington, 1988.
•

Writing Activity

CABBAR’S DREAMS

A. Make complete sentences using the clues and parts given below.

1. will/ I/from/Gaziantep University/ graduate/next year

I hope…………………………………………………………………………

2. sure/ am/I/ will/civil engineer/ a/ good/ be/ I

……………………………………………………………………………….

3. I/build/ will/in/Gaziantep/ skyscrapers/probably

……………………………………………………………………………..

4. rich/ be/ I/will/

………………………………………………………………………………

5. buy/ I/ a/ house/ car/ a/ will/ and

………………………………………………………………………………

6. a / beautiful/ girl/ Antebian/ marry/ I/will

Maybe,……………………………………………………………………..

7. we/ have / will/ three/ children

I think………………………………………………………………………

B. Now, write a paragraph using transitions such as,” and, then, after that, but, because” etc…

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...........................................
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