Designing Materials

Although teachers of English are aware of the great amount of materials available to use when teaching (for instance textbooks, videotapes, and pictures, among other commercially accessible resources), many teachers still prefer to create their own. They search, select, evaluate and adapt materials to teach a particular group of students. Why English Language teachers may choose to design their own materials?

Jocelyn Howard and Jae Major in their work Guidelines for designing effective English language teaching materials mention some advantages and disadvantages of designing your own teaching materials.

Advantages:

• Commercial materials such as textbooks provide a good outline of what to teach and when to teach it. But is it authentic language? Is it aimed at your specific group of students? These materials lack of contextualization, they are aimed at an ideal group of people sharing the same background knowledge who are supposed to react and answer in a particular way. But you know your students are all individuals living in a particular context and many of them may do not share the same background knowledge. If you make your own materials for teaching, you can adapt it to your specific group of students taking into consideration their learning environment, their needs, their performances, their capacities, etc.

• In connection with contextualization are the individual needs. Creating your own materials you try to make the level appropriate for your students, ensuring a challenge when learning. You also adapt it according to their cultures, their first language, their learning needs and experiences. At the same time you have more control over what to teach as regards topics, situations, notions, functions, skills, etc.

• Personalization is another advantage. Teacher-made materials add a personal touch and students would appreciate that since it is your effort. This may increase motivation and engagement. At the same time, once you are used to create your own materials, you may feel more comfortable with the classroom situations and it may give you more freedom and scope for spontaneity.

Disadvantages:

• As I mentioned before, coursebooks organize in some way the teaching process. “Teacher-designed materials may lack overall coherence and a clear progression” (Howard J. and Major J., Guidelines for designing effective English language teaching materials, p. 102).

• Sometimes it is expensive.

• You may run out of ideas.

• You may experience a feeling of uncertainty since you do not know whether it is going to work or not.

• It is really time consuming.

Even though designing your own materials may seem to be hard work and time consuming, we consider it would be highly profitable since it will be adapted to your particular group of students attending to their specific needs. Make sure you know your students well, their aspirations and purposes for learning English. Take into account the curriculum and the context of the place/institution where you are teaching. Finally, you also need to be aware of the resources and facilities available when teaching.

Hope it helps and good luck!

Virgi and Giuli

Source: Jocelyn Howars and Jae Major. Guidelines for designing effective English language teaching materials. Pages 101-107.