24 Teaching Materials and Teaching Aids
Dr Shravan Kumar
Content
- Learning Outcomes
- Introduction
- Teaching Materials & Teaching Aids: Role of teacher
- Guidelines for Teaching Learning Materials
- Teaching Materials
- Significance of Teaching Materials
Learning Outcome
After reading this module, any student will be able to comprehend the role of teacher as an aid who uses materials in effective ways. Anyone can get to know the difference between aids and materials and the role of materials in the classroom and their impact on the students and their career. Students will be able to know about the usage of worksheets and many other materials.
Introduction
Teaching is an art which includes knowledge, presentation, an art of dissemination and above all every aspect of paralinguistics. Teaching demands broad knowledge of subject matter in all horizons, complete curriculum with standards, positive and caring attitude with enthusiasm, and a desire for learning and techniques of classroom management and a desire to make a difference in the lives of young people. I am sure that nobody will deny the fact that a teacher is an aid and the activities used by the teachers are materials in the classroom.
The existence of materials is totally based on the creativity and innovative ways of teachers. No one can assume even a single material without a Teacher because it is a teacher who uses the materials in the classroom effectively and the effective usage of those materials is reflected by the involvement of the students.
We should know the difference amongst Teaching, Aid and Material. As per www.dictionary.com,“material used by a teacher to supplement classroom instruction or to stimulate the interest of students.”i. As per Merriam Webster, “Teaching Aid is an object (such as a book, picture, or map) or device (such as a DVD or computer) used by a teacher to enhance or enliven classroom instruction”ii and “Material denotes or consists of physical objects rather than the mind or spirit.”
Teaching Materials & Teaching Aids: Role of teacher
Teacher is the driver of the classroom who drives the class as per his/her pace and desire. S/he makes an environment in which all the students delve themselves in the ocean of knowledge which happens due to usage of the materials and aids used by the teacher in the classroom. They use themselves as an aid when they start using facts as a starting point and ask “why” questions and then look at all sides and encourage students to predict what will happen next. As a material, they try to engage the whole class with their questions and with the help of their motivation and varied questions they make a live classroom where every student gets involved. William Arthur Ward rightly says, “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”iv And, this quote reveals that teacher is an aid who changes her/himself according to the desired situation for facilitating and motivating the students in a better way. Dr Seuss also corroborates Mr William when he says, “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”
As soon as teacher enters in the classroom, he starts using materials which already exist in the classroom. S/he starts talking about last classes which gives a platform to the students for getting out something and teacher tries to link up that interaction with his/her upcoming class and it becomes a material for a teacher. A teacher digs out the material from the classroom and uses accordingly. Like, Students were scolded by a teacher of last class and an ELT teacher can ask few students to come up and share the experience of last class and from there that ELT teacher tries to hone the speaking skills of the students. These materials can be used to chisel the speaking skills of the students and students will be speaking whole heartedly which can be a good material to be used by any ELT specialist.
Teacher can use himself/herself to project anything in a better way by his/her gestures, postures, facial expressions and voice. For example, a teacher can teach the presentation strategies to the students by his/her voice modulation and facial expressions. It is the power of speech that may turn a dull topic into an interesting one whereas poor delivery may spoil significant presentation. So once the speaker has planned and developed the content he should begin practicing because it is not important what to say as it is how to say. There are a variety of delivery methods. A speech with same pitch delivered with stating pitch becomes monotonous so there should be variation in a pitch. The voice should be well modulated with proper pause at the right place along with normal rate of speech and fillers should be avoided. It can be easily practiced by these materials used by teacher in the classroom.
We express our emotions through words but often the feel of emotion is expressed through our various body parts. We can communicate by nodding our head, blinking our eyes, shrugging our shoulders or working our hands. When we study body language we look at the symbols of meaning that the physical movements of the body are communicating. Through body movements true inner conditions are reflected. For the expression of these inner body states faces, eyes, gestures & physical appearance are to be studied. For self control the presenter should pay attention to his body language. These things can be easily learnt by the students when they observe their teacher in the classroom and try to imitate the teacher.
Guidelines for Teaching Learning Materials:
Littlejohn and Windeatt says, “Materials have a hidden curriculum that includes attitudes toward knowledge, attitudes toward teaching and learning, attitudes toward the role and relationship of the teacher and student, and values and attitudes related to gender, society, etc.”vi Materials have a basic instructional viewpoint, approach, method, and content, including which provide linguistic and cultural information.
As Jolly and Bolitho say, “Materials should also be contextualised to the experiences, realities and first languages of the learners. An important part of this involves awareness on the part of the teacher-designer of the “socio-cultural appropriacy” of things such as the designer’s own style of presenting material, of arranging groups, and so on.”vii So, It is required to inform about the culture-specific learning processes of the proposed learners. Materials should be interlinked by which learner can acquaint him with the materials. The materials should be based on the experiences and realities which should be related to the topics and it should be appropriate for the desired learner to make sure of their involvement.
Mr D Hall says, “Most people who learn to communicate fluently in English which is not their L1do so by spending a lot of time in situations where they have to use the language for some real communicative purpose”viii It means that the materials should stimulate interaction and it can be achieved by providing the activities which involve the situation and their real time conversation. Mr D Hall also says that the materials should encourage learners to develop their learning skills and strategies and the activities such as recording of their conversations.
According to Demetrion, “an antidote to the profusion of skills based activities and artificial language use pervasive in the field of ESL instruction.”ix It clarifies that the materials should be developed to help the learners towards analytical approach with a focus of learning.
As Bell and Gower suggested, “at the very least we listen and speak together, and read and write together”. I think the materials should be well connected with all these four skills. The learner can integrate LSRW skills with the help of materials.
Materials should be alluring in terms of appearance, User friendliness and durability. If any material possesses these characteristics then all the learners will readily use the material whole heartedly which will definitely produce the positive results in the classroom. Materials should be flexible also by which we can use that material in many places like a picture can be used to teach parts of speech as well to enhance the spoken skills, even that picture can be used to develop writing skills by the change of instructions. Materials should be authentic also by which the acquirement will be better and faster and the students feel successful over their achievement because the skills that they acquire make them feel that they can handle the situations in the real life too. Teachers should be very cautious while choosing the materials because the students can be demoralized if the materials are higher than the level of the students.
Teaching Materials
Earlier it was hard to see the interactive classroom, teaching –learning materials and the teaching-learning environment that’s why teaching became very monotonous and students had to mostly rely on the process of mugging up. The classroom teaching was dominated by the Lecture Method of teacher and there were some essential aids like chalk, duster, blackboard in the classroom. Teaching learning materials were hardly used in the classroom. The Teaching Learning Materials (TLMs) are being designed to disable the monotonous learning methods. These TLMs made a shift from Response Strengthening to Knowledge Acquisition for construction of Knowledge.
In this context, a teacher provides an environment where any student can construct his knowledge by interacting with his physical and social environment.
A teacher should always think about his/her students before providing TLMs. A teacher should identify the need of developing new teaching and training materials. Teachers can classify their materials according to the need and requirement of students. A lesson plan can be one of the effective materials. I would like to give an example of a Lesson plan for teaching a lesson on Pronoun.
Teacher should show a chart as an aid to the students and can ask them to identify the Nouns present in the chart. Students will response with curiosity and enthusiasm and they can spot few names of Noun. Have a look at the Picture. I think students will tell the names of Nouns like Road, Bicycle, Boy, Girl, Pond, Dog, Sun, Tree, flowers, swings, clouds etc. Then, s/he can ask primary questions like:
- Can you name girl in another way?
- Can you name boy in another way?
Students will give answers that Girl=She and Boy= He. After getting these answers, teacher can say these terms can be also termed as Pronoun and the terms which we use in place of Noun are known as pronoun. I think these kinds of involvement of students will make them enable to understand the definition and usage of Pronoun. Now teacher can elaborate the types and usage of pronouns and students will learn very easily.
Games can be used as interesting materials in the classroom. Games can help to improve teaching and learning processes which improve communication and social skills in the students indirectly. I would like to mention a Grammar based questioning game.
The Teacher can ask students to write separate sentences with each word which they told after observing the chart. Then, they need to be instructed to write a paragraph with the help of those sentences. After this, they can be instructed to evaluate his/her friends’ copy. During evaluation, they can be instructed to check how many students have written all the sentences. How many sentences are correct (as per their evaluation)? How many of them have used all the sentences to write a paragraph? How many of them have used these sentences to attain coherence? All the students will be involved in writing and evaluation which develops the learning process of students. Another example can be better implemented in the class as a material to enhance the writing skills of the students. A teacher can ask the students, “Let’s assume that you live in a room in college which you share with another student. However, there are many problems with this arrangement and you find it very difficult to work. Write a letter to the accommodation officer of the college. In the letter
- describe the situation
- explain your problems and why it is difficult to work, say what kind of accommodation you would prefer”
These above mentioned games can make the classroom very lively and interactive.
A teacher should know KWL chart before starting any topic in which he should know about the previous knowledge of the students and the lesson plan is always based on previous knowledge where students give the answers on the basis of their previous knowledge which becomes the primary answers. It decides the material of the topic because if the students are acquainted with Noun then only they will try to learn Pronoun and it will show their will to learn. So, the teacher should know what they are willing to learn and in the classroom assessment a teacher can know what they learnt. For assessing the students in the classroom we can use some materials:
Worksheets can also be a very effective material for learning in an effective way. A teacher should take appropriate care while making the worksheets. Questions should be based on skills and sub skills. Questions which are based on skills are productive and receptive. The questions based on sub skills can provide specific information, detailed information, and general information. Fill in the blank reveals the specific information. Multiple choice questions identify the topic, context, function, gist. The questions can be of the following types:
- Yes-No Questions
- Wh-Question
- Tag questions
- Choice Questions
- Hypothetical Questions
- Embedded questions
To improve the vocabulary of the students the word scrambles or jumbles help a lot. The letters of each word can be mixed up and students have to put them into the proper order. A teacher can set this type of material by keeping the scramble with the help of key vocabulary, spelling list words, names of students in the classroom and teachers’ last names etc.
Significance of teaching materials
Allwright says, “Materials should teach students to learn, that they should be resource books for ideas and activities for instruction/learning, and that they should give teachers rationales for what they do”xi. Learners are oriented towards the instruction and learning. Any syllabus or curriculum has the goals of learning, the methods of learning, etc and teachers help the learners to learn. Teachers are required to follow the curriculum and provide a better platform to understand the curriculum with the help of materials. Teachers may adapt, supplement, and elaborate the materials to disseminate the content to the students and they need to monitor the progress of the students and finally evaluate the students. Teachers and students rely on materials to comprehend the content, and the materials become the centre of education. Therefore, it is important for the teachers to know the correct methods, to choose the best material for instruction and they should also know how to make supplementary materials for the class, and how to adapt materials.
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Reference
- http://www.dictionary.com/browse/teaching-aid?s=t
- http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
- http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
- http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/416931.William_Arthur_Ward
- http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizlange/2012/02/28/you-have-brains-in-your-head-you-have- feet-in-your-shoes-you-can-steer-yourself-in-any-direction-you-choose-youre-on-your-own- and-you-know-what-you-know-you-are-the-guy-wholl-decide-where-to-go/#23a9184a4023
- Littlejohn, A., & Windeatt, S. (1989). Beyond language learning: Perspective on materials design. In R. K. Johnson (Ed.), The second language curriculum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- Jolly, D., & Bolitho, R. (1998). A framework for materials writing. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching (pp. 90–115). Cambridge: Cambridge Language Teaching Library, Cambridge University Press
- Hall, D. (1995). Materials production: Theory and practice. In A. C. Hidalgo, D. Hall, & M. Jacobs (Eds.), Getting started: Materials writers on materials writing (pp. 8–14). Singapore: SEAMO Regional Language Centre
- Demetrion, G. (1997). Communicative competence and second language teaching: Lessons learned from the Bangalore Project. Retrieved 30 January 2004 from http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/George/Prabhu/cover.htm
- Bell, J., & Gower, R. (1998). Writing course materials for the world: A great compromise. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching (pp. 116–129). Cambridge: Language Teaching Library, Cambridge University Press
- Allwright, R. L. (1990). What do we want teaching materials for? In R. Rossner and R. Bolitho, (Eds.), Currents in language teaching. Oxford University Press