materials development- useful terms and Brown's principles

I am really enjoying this module. I think if I am to rank all the module I take, this one would come as FIRST followed by ICT in ELT. I value these because the tutors are professionals in their own field based on their years of experience and knowledge.

Anyway, I just wanted to note down some of the terms that came up in the last two sessions. This is solely for my own revision so that I can get back and take a quick view to recall some of the things we learnt in class. Oh, yes, one more reason why I fell in love with these, I find the knowledge learned through the modules soo relevant to my teaching experience with my daughters. So many things I need to be aware of and to take into account when designing some materials for my treasures and for my students (awaiting me in the near future hopefully!)

1. Scope and sequence- referring to the proportion and the order in which language items are presented. Scope and sequence are usually given at the beginning of the book. What this books includes and in which order.

2. "Small c" is the term associated with C. Kramcsh who makes a distinction between culture with big C and culture with small c. Big C refers to what is generally known as culture- art, music, pop-culture, food. Small c refers to cultural customs, values, ways of thinking, feeling, acting etc. Whenever we teach a language, we also teach a part of small c that comes with it.

3. Washback- one can have positive or negative view of washback. Washback is working from an assessment towards a syllabus. For example, If I have a group of students to prepare for IELTS and have at least 6 in all the areas of IELTS assessment, I can work at each skill area of IELTS examination, check which skills are they assessing and how does the exam take place and work out a syllabus to prepare students for that exam

4. Carrier content- topics selected for the materials

5. Surrender value- is a term coined by Pit Corder. Some language items are perceived to be very useful by the learners- so they have high surrender value. On the other hand, something that a teacher decided to teach based on students' weaknesses could be valuable thing to learn, but could be perceived to be less valuable for students. So, when materials have low surrender value(cognitive), students resist to learn it

6. Scaffolding- is very important when designing tasks. Teacher needs to ensure that learners unsderstand the instructions clearly and feel confident to carry out the task

7. Dogme- in a nutshell, in very extreme case refers to teaching with no materials at all

8. synthetic vs analythic approach is usually associated with Wilkins (1960's, functional notional syllabuses). Synthetic approach is atomistic, systematic, building up the language system one by one, learning one item at a time. a+b+c. most schools teaching English for general purposes adopt this approach to learning. Analytic approach, on the other hand, holistic and there is no clear cut order to learning. Teacher presents what learners find valuable to learn and learners internalize and expected to analyze the language items much later on. No structured teaching of grammar. most ESP course adopt analytic approach

Next, we discussed Douglas Browns 12 principles of designing materials

1. automaticity

2. meaningful learning

3. anticipation of reward

4. intrinsic motivation

5. strategic investment

6. language ego

7. self-confidence

8. risk taking

9. the language culture connection

10. the native language effect

11. Interlanguage

12. Communicative competence

These principles are very much coming from learners' point of view. Based on this, the role of instructions and materials should mainly focus on developing learners' skills, hence most of learning is going to take place outside classroom.