Materials and Methods in ELT

Jo McDonough, Christopher Shaw

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781444336924
• eBook ISBN: 9781118357453
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Materials and Methods in ELT is an essential resource for teachers or for those engaged in taking professional courses relating to all aspects of English language teaching.

Now available in its 3rd edition, this popular teachers' guide offers a comprehensive and useful introduction to the principles and practice of teaching English as a foreign/second language. It examines the ideas behind current methodology and teaching materials, in addition to offering a practical guide to approaching materials and methods, evaluation and adaptation, technology for materials and methods, and teaching in under-resourced classrooms. These principles are then related to the individual language skills of reading, listening, speaking, and writing. The authors examine the different methodologies available to teachers for organizing and running an ELT classroom; discussing group and pair work, individualization, classroom observation, and the teachers' role in the contemporary ELT context.

Updated throughout, the 3rd edition features a new section on technology for materials and methods, as well as a new chapter on IT in English language teaching, and inclusion of new samples from current teaching materials.

Part I

Topics in the Design of Materials and Methods

1

The Framework of Materials and Methods

1.1 Introduction: Setting the Scene

(Graddol (2006: 22), in his study of global trends surrounding English, comments: ‘On the one hand, the availability of English as a global language is accelerating globalization. On the other, the globalization is accelerating the use of English’. He refers to a statistical projection of the number of learners: ‘… there could be around 2 billion people simultaneously learning English in the world’s schools and colleges and as independent adults. Nearly a third of the world population will all be trying to learn English at the same time’ (Graddol, 2006: 101).

As the need intensifies for social, economic and technological communication at a global level, so English language teaching has been diversifying. For example, English teachers may be engaged in teaching

• English as a Foreign Language (EFL) – English taught outside English speaking regions.
• English as a Second Language (ESL) – English taught inside English speaking regions to non-native learners.
• English for Young Learners (EYL) – English taught as an additional language to very young to young learners up to, normally, primary level.
• English for Specific Purposes (ESP) – English taught for specific occupational purposes such as English for medicine and for business.
• English for Academic Purposes (EAP) – English taught to those who wish to study at institutes of higher education.
• Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) – English taught in cross-curricular programmes in which content subjects and language are taught at the same time.

Whichever varieties of English language teaching we are engaged in, teachers of English are members of an established worldwide profession. Wherever we work, we share many assumptions about what we do; we prepare and use teaching materials and classroom methods and techniques based on similar, or at least comparable, principles. Yet, despite this commonality, it is not unusual for teachers to report a sense of isolation from colleagues in other countries, and even in different areas of their own country. Another attitude that is sometimes expressed is that the teaching situation in our country, or school, is unique, with its own special problems and difficulties. There is some justification for these feelings, of course: many teachers work in geographical isolation, and may not have access to channels of professional communication (journals, conferences, in-service training courses); different countries have widely differing educational systems and philosophies, resulting in teachers being subject to different expectations and pressures.

In this chapter we shall take some time to look beyond our individual teaching circumstances to what can be thought of as a professional ‘common core’. This has relevance to all teachers, whether we work in a Japanese high school, a Mexican university, a private language school in Spain, a Chinese polytechnic, a Turkish secondary school, a Zairean college – this list could go on indefinitely. We shall argue that the idea of a ‘common core’ is also useful whether our materials and methods are selected by us or specified by the educational authorities. It is, then, broadly made up of two kinds of factors: firstly, of the various wide-ranging criteria on which decisions about language teaching programmes are based, and secondly, on the pedagogic principles according to which materials and methods are actually designed. We shall take these two kinds of factors together and refer to them as the shared framework.

In what follows, this notion of a ‘framework’ is set out in a little more detail. We then subdivide it under the two headings of ‘context’ and ‘syllabus’, both exploring their general implications and trying to relate them as we do so to our own familiar and specific teaching situation.

1.2 The Framework: Context and Syllabus

In simple terms, the overall goals of a language teaching programme usually derive from an analysis of the reasons why a group of learners in a particular environment needs to learn English: these goals may be stated in general, educational, or very specific terms. They may, on the one hand, be set out in the large-scale categories of a national language policy with many associated implications for the development of the curriculum. For instance, the aim of English language teaching in Malaysia was earlier stated to be ‘to create a society that is able to utilize the language for effective communication as the need arises, and as a key to wider experiences. For those furthering their studies, the skills learned should become an instrument with which they may cope with the necessities of using the language’. The new guidelines for language teaching in Japanese schools include such statements as ‘to develop understanding of language and culture through a foreign language … to develop a positive attitude towards communication in a foreign language, and a basic practical communication ability in hearing and speaking’. Alternatively, at the other end of the scale, a course may be organized to address a particular learning need for, say, the identifiable purposes of a small group. For instance, a course may be designed ‘to meet the needs of learners who need to improve their ability to communicate when socializing, telephoning, making business presentations and taking part in meetings’, or ‘to help international postgraduate students in English-medium universities develop the writing skills necessary for writing dissertations’.

There is, then, a whole spectrum of possibilities for defining the goals of language teaching, for a country, an age group, a whole school, a class or an individual; and whether for general educational purposes, business, scientific development, cultural appreciation or many other reasons.

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1 Is there an explicit statement of the goals of the language programme on which you work? If so, what are its primary aims?

2 If there is not such a statement, try to draft one that represents your own understanding of the goals.

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To define what is meant here by ‘framework’ we start from the view that materials and methods cannot be seen in isolation, but are embedded within a broader professional context. This is represented in figure 1.1, which shows in a very simplified form the typical stages of planning an English language programme.

Figure 1.1 The framework of language teaching.

Whether goals are stated in terms of a national language policy, or in the more specific environment of, say, a particular school or college, the possibilities for actually implementing them will be directly related both to the learners themselves – their needs, characteristics and so on – and to the whole educational setting in which the teaching is to take place. Obviously, as we shall see in our subsequent discussion, goals need to be realistic for each circumstance. There is little use, for example, in planning for a multimedia course if appropriate equipment is unavailable or unreliable, or in making too many general assumptions about classroom methodology. The statement of goals, then, related to the learners and conditioned by the setting, leads to the selection of an appropriate type of syllabus content and specification. The broad syllabus outline will in turn have direct implications for the more detailed design and selection of materials and tests, the planning of individual lessons and the management of the classroom itself. Clearly this logical planning sequence is an idealization of what is often a less well-defined procedure, where ‘set’ materials may linger behind aims that have been reformulated and updated, or conversely where new syllabus types may be ill-matched to existing educational objectives. The logical sequence will nevertheless be used as a reference point for discussion, and as a starting point for the exploration of individual teaching circumstances.

Let us now look at the most important contextual factors involved in planning, and then at the key types of syllabus from which actual courses are derived.

Contextual Factors

In the preceding section, we took a broad view of ‘context’ and included both learners and setting under this heading. Let us examine each of these in turn in a little more detail.

Learners

It is possible to identify a number of important learner characteristics or ‘variables’ which, as we have suggested, influence planning decisions and the specification of goals. The relative importance of these variables, and their effect on programme design, obviously depend to a certain extent on some of the situational factors to be discussed in the next section. For example, a pupil’s mother tongue may be more, or less, significant depending on whether more than one native language is represented in the classroom, or perhaps on the educational philosophy of that particular environment.

For the moment we can list here the key characteristics of ‘the learner’, indicating how they might affect planning and noting that they form part of our common frame of reference as language teachers, wherever we work. Some of these are characteristics of whole groups or subgroups of learners; others are individual and less open to generalization. Again, some can be known in advance and incorporated at the initial planning stage, in principle at least. Others are more appropriately assessed in the classroom environment itself, and as such are more obviously susceptible to teacher reaction and influence.

We consider the learner’s

• Age: this will particularly affect topics chosen and types of learning activity, such as the suitability of games or role play.
• Interests: as with age, this may help in the specification of topics and learning activities.
• Level of proficiency in English: teachers will wish to know this even where their classes are based on a ‘mixed proficiency’ principle rather than streamed according to level.
• Aptitude: this can most usefully be thought of as a specific talent, in this case for language learning, as something that learners might show themselves to be ‘good at’, perhaps in contrast to other subjects in a school curriculum. (It can be measured by formal aptitude tests, although they are not very frequently used.) The relationship between aptitude and intelligence is not clear, and is certainly not direct.
• Mother tongue: this may affect, for instance, the treatment of errors or the selection of syllabus items – areas of grammar or vocabulary and so on.
• Academic and educational level: which help to determine intellectual content, breadth of topic choice or depth to which material may be studied.
• Attitudes to learning, to teachers, to the institution, to the target language itself and to its speakers. This is directly related to the following point.
• Motivation, at least in so far as it can be anticipated. Obviously a whole range of factors will affect this.
• Reasons for learning, if it is possible to state them. With school-age pupils this may be less significant than with many adult learners, where it is often possible to carry out quite a detailed analysis of needs.
• Preferred learning styles: which will help in the evaluation of the suitability of different methods, for instance, whether problem-solving activities could be used, or whether pupils are more used to ‘rote learning’, where material is learned by heart.
• Personality: which can affect methodological choices such as a willing acceptance of role play and an interactive classroom environment, or a preference for studying alone, for example.

Many of these factors will affect the learners’ needs (for a recent book on needs analysis see Long, 2005), and this issue will recur in the relevant sections of subsequent chapters.

Setting

That aspect of the context that we refer to as setting is to be understood here as the whole teaching and learning environment, in a wide sense: it is the factors falling under this heading that will determine whether the aims of a language programme, defined with reference to the learners’ needs and characteristics, are actually feasible and realistic. In certain situations, the setting itself may be so significant that it provides the foundation for the specification of aims. This might be the case, for instance, in a country with a single political or religious ideological base, where the education system is primarily an expression of that ideolog...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• List of Figures
• Preface to the Third Edition
• Acknowledgements
• Part I: Topics in the Design of Materials and Methods
• Part II: Teaching Language Skills
• Part III: Aspects of Classroom Methods
• Bibliography
• Index