PRESENTING BY: SADIQ OMARMELI AND MOHSEN SABERI

Chapter 6 :Writing course materials for the

world: A great CompromiseJan Bell and Roger Gower

introduction

1.catering for a wide range of students, teachers and classroom contents

2.anticipating the needs and interests of teacher and students

The focus of the chapter

Whether the individuality of compromise is a positive or negative force upon the writer's pedagogic principles?

Course books yes or no?Some shared features among books 1.too quickly published with too little piloting2.they do not sufficiently reflect what we

know about language and then fail to meet the true needs of learners

3.they can provide a very useful resource for teachers

draw backs of course books:1.limitting creativity2.not showing the dynamic and interactive

nature of learning process3.it is not guaranteed that course books can

cater for all the individual needs of all learners of the time and build in enough flexibility to enable teachers to individualize them

4.with just few examples of authentic or corpus-based material you cant be sure about the natural use of samples by the students

5.when the format and the content of books are frequently predictable how can you bring to new materials a feeling that is not boring?

Global course books: for or against???????For: good sales world wide ensures a high

production quality Against:1.language imperialism2.the danger of cultural attack Advantages and disadvantages:not all the

classes around the world have the same facilities

In a multilingual classroom the teacher is not familiar enough with all the students’ culture

the notion of compromise:Course books are tools which only have life

and meaning when there is a teacher present Materials have to be useable by teachers and

students alike otherwise publishers lose their investment

In order to work, the material has to be targeted to a particular type of students and a particular type of teaching situation and a particular type of teacher

Age of the learners should also be taken into consideration

But a lot of situations around the world in which teacher want to use the global materials do have a lot in common like building up communicative competence and teaching in coeducational institutions

Publishers compromise : some materials have nothing new but as potential users want to use them publishers publish the material=Headway

Designers also need to compromise because what is a good design for a designer is not necessarily good for a teacher.Fromkin vs. Falk

The authors and teachers should also compromise. Teacher need to look at what student want rather than new ideas for themselves

A case study

Writing the first level of(Craddel to Grave series)an intermediate level case for adult students both in Uk(15-21 hours a week)and in the private schools 2-3 hours a week.

Assumptions: 1.Thaechers would have experience in communicative activities in the class and working with texts to develop reading and listening skills and being able to use the book flexibly

2.The materials might be used by less experience teachers

The first compromise:1.25 hours a week in Uk vs.2-3 hours a week

in non native speaker environment2.monolingual situation differ in culture.

China vs. Iran 3.the material was to be used by less trained

untrained or differently trained teachers

4.it was likely that the material would be taught to some learners who were too young to identify with the cultural content of the material

5.though the aim was to produce materials which could be use flexibly it was likely that the language syllabus study be formed by the course book

A set of key principles

Flexiblity:teachers should feel they could move activities around, cut them out or supplement them according to needs of students

From text to language: providing authentic text which contained examples of the focus language rather than construct text of the authors themselves

Engaging content: authors wanted to provide human interest texts like environment but they would not appeal while a lot of students seem to be interested in every day topics like money, relationships…

While course books are written to appeal to teachers, teachers do not accept them when they are boring for the students

Authors themselves were constrained by some cultural sensitivities so there could be no or very indirect reference to drugs,sex,politics or religion

Natural language:Authors’ wants: exposure to real and

unscripted language Analytic approaches: authors decided to use

a variety of approaches but decided to put a great importance on inductive grammar

Emphasis on review: as students are at in the intermediate level and a little familiar with grammar it is better to re-present some grammatical points than present a lot of new points

Personalizing the topics.Integrated skills; the receptive skills of

reading and listening should not be tagged on after the language work,so

1.authors were able to link speaking and reading with what students have read or listened to.

2.communication in language is something you only improve with practice and use.

Texts should be a little above the level of students.I+1

Balance of the approaches: inductive deductive and effective approaches to grammar

Learning to learnHelping students with vocabulary skills and

analysis of grammar from the beginning in order to encourage them to start their own personalized vocabulary and grammar books

pressures

Publishers: gave more attention to the flick test not its long term usability

2.they over emphasized the need for the rubrics to be intelligible

Schools and institutions: the book had to be the right length ,there had to be many units, the syllabus had to include this and that grammatical items

Institutional needs: the material shouldn’t be inappropriate to the context. The topics should be interesting ,it should have a good quality and be cheap

Teachers:pedagogic principles, usable and promoting materials, fun activities

Students: material should be enjoyable, should have something for them to learn,comperhensible and new langauage

Overall structure

The material ended up being less flexibly organized than we would have liked

Methodology: authors failed to present enough authentic materials appropriate for intermediate level

The analytic approach to grammar was not appreciated in some parts of the world

Texts: authors compromised in presenting natural and authentic listening parts

Content: it was impossible to please everyone even though the authors compromised and did not present taboo subjects

conclusion

Compromising is not inevitable, it is probably beneficial with certain compromises writes would have produced less effective materials