Tutorial Task Week 3 Materials Development
a) Identify the theory behind communicative language
teaching approach. (Spada and Sauvignon)
Audio-lingual method
is introduced and applied to the language learning classrooms before the
existence of different approaches and methods which are more engaging. This
audio-lingual method is based on the behaviourist theory. The learners are
required to listen and imitate in order to learn the particular language. They
will listen to a CD and do some selection repetition to a certain phrase. The
learners will be learning chunks, sentences and words. There will be the
occurrence of negotiation of meaning through the use of language.
Hymes stated
that each human being needs four competences namely discourse competence,
pragmatic competence, linguistic competence and strategic competence.
Communicative competence means the ability to communicate and ability to
negotiate with meaning. The focus was not on language learning but language as
social behavior.
Linguistic
competence is the ability to put grammatical functions and items into place. It
is also about the knowledge of application of linguistic knowledge. The area covered
under linguistic competence could be spelling, grammar, pronunciation and
vocabulary. A communication without linguistic competence could lead to
communication breakdown. This is because learners do not have the syntactic
knowledge to express themselves. They might utter some sentences or words that
are meaningless as they are unable to choose the appropriate lexis.
As for discourse
competence, it is the ability to produce meaningful speech by focusing on the
structure of spoken and written discourse. It is metacognitive and talks about
how language is used in a particular context. When it comes to discourse
competence, IRF (initiate, respond and feedback) is explained. It is about the
organization of sentences, linguistic and context. For instance, discourse in
classrooms; it will be started with greetings from students to teachers. Then,
teachers will ask students about what they have learnt for the previous
lessons. Teachers will list or state out generally what the students are going
to be taught for the present lessons. So, it is basically about how to use a
language to tell students what the context are and producing texts with
cohesion.
Pragmatic
competence is important as it help learners to deliver and interpret intentions
with the usage of appropriate language or context. It is also vital as it
determine the ability of learners in avoiding anxiety. Basically, it is about
how you understand the language is being used in certain situation as in
whether it is formal or informal. For example, a teacher asked one of the
students to switch on the light and he or she is using a word please- ‘please
switch on the light’. In this situation, students need to realize that the
teacher has a higher authority and they will have to obey her regardless of whether
the teacher uses “please” or not. Students have to be able to differentiate or
identify formal, neutral and informal conversations. This is especially
important in multi-racial country like Malaysia to avoid miscommunications
among the different communities.
Last but not
least, strategic competence which refers to the ability to maintain
communication. There are several ways to achieve it. For instance, by using
gestures, nonverbal or verbal conversations, cues, pictures, elaboration, and
also by raising your voice to get your point to cross. There will be learners
who have a limited range of vocabulary especially beginners. In this situation,
non-verbal gestures may play an important role to them in helping them to
deliver their point across. For instance, they can use body movements to
indicate actions like running, eating and singing. Each learner will or may
adapt different strategies in maintaining interaction between interlocutors.
b) State the implications of communicative language
teaching towards materials development.
In communicative
language teaching (CLT), learners are encouraged more to speak with fluency
rather than accuracy. It is important for them to be able to communicate or
relay their message to others despite having grammatical errors. There are two
communicative approaches namely weak and strong. The ‘weak’ approach stresses
the importance of providing learners with opportunities to use English for
communicative purposes (role play) and the ‘strong’ approach stated language is
acquired through communication.
In a
communicative-based classroom, activities are designed to promote language
production that is creative, unpredictable and purposeful to improve learners’
fluency through sharing information and negotiating meaning, compared to a
traditional classroom where focus is on mastering linguistic items
Learners’ should
look at what message they should convey, rather than how it should be spoken. Yet
Swain (1985) proposed that learners should have more reliance on syntax and
less reliance on semantics, in which the comprehensible input hypothesis (CMOH)
is opposed with the previous sentence which mentioned that learners should
emphasize on the content of message conveyed instead of how it is spoken. However,
Long (1996) proposed Interactionist Theory which is a combination of the CMOH
and IH. For the Long’s Interactionist Theory, there are more interaction
between learners and others and the negotiation of meaning happens.
Materials
promoting fluency focus on the outcome instead of the process, for example
information-gap, opinion-gap and reasoning-gap. Not to mention that well
developed language skills help learners communicate effectively. For example, obtaining
a wide range of vocabulary in their mental dictionaries helps learners develop
their ability to perform in the language. When reading a technical passage,
learners have to use their scanning and skimming (reading skills) to infer or
extract information, summarize (reading and speaking skills) the information
and produce a report (writing skills). Learners have to utilize their
linguistic, discourse and pragmatic competences to help them understand the
technical passage. This helps develop learners’ understanding of the English
language system.
An implication
of the communicative approach towards methodology is that materials and tasks
should reflect authenticity, as they bridge the real-world and the classroom.
Rogers and Medley (1988) defines authentic as language reflecting “a
naturalness of form, and an appropriateness of cultural and situational context
that would be found in the language as used by native speakers”. Authentic
sources would then reflect text (spoken or written) used in native or target
language speaking context. However, the suitability of the materials
(difficulty, cultural and social relevance) could actually be a problem in
terms of the learners’ proficiency level and interest. Learners could be
unmotivated by the materials, affecting focus on learning. If the learners find
out the developed English language learning materials challenging, teacher
needs to adapt the activity in the coursebook around the authentic sources to
make the materials comprehensible and hence, usable among learners.
In the
communicative approach, the role of teacher and learner has evolved. Nowadays,
teacher has the role of facilitating learners’ language learning progress by
designing, executing and managing activities in the classroom. This puts
demands on non-native speaking teachers confidence, skills and knowledge as
classroom situations become less structured. The learner takes on a more active
role of becoming “communicators and autonomous learners” in language learning. The
classroom environment has become more learners centered. Teachers would need to
incorporate or make learners more aware of language learning strategies to help
learners attain autonomy in their own learning. For example, strategies
employed when reading a text: skimming for ideas, scanning from content, and
identifying key vocabulary. Nevertheless, non-native speakers often reflect a
more traditional role of learners in the classroom. In certain contexts
learners are not familiar with being proactive with learning due to the
exam-oriented education system influencing different social factors e.g.
entrance to tertiary education level indirectly affecting learner’s kudos in
society (Gupta, 2004). Teachers face a challenge in guiding learners from the
traditional to a more active role in the classroom. This reality can be clearly
seen in Malaysia as so far vast majority of teachers strongly believe that
finishing up the syllabus is the most concerns in spite of providing successful
learners. They have to accomplish the schools’ curriculum objectives and aims
in spite of their targets which the schools’ aims is the higher passing rate on
the particular language in national based examinations compared to the previous
years.
Reversing the
learners’ role is easier if teachers are supported by policy makers, empirical
evidence from research in a non-native context and materials such as
coursebooks to help teachers overcome this problem. The communicative approach
should not be accepted as a packaged method, but should be context-dependent to
benefit the teachers and learners to achieve its goal – to become
communicatively competent. The teachers can help the learners to develop
language skills by integrating the approach or the developed materials which is
relevant and after consider about several conditions such as different learning
styles among learners, different proficiency levels and others. The social
context in which learning takes place has become an important factor in
determining whether the implementation of communicative approach is succeed or
not. When the learners’ conditions are taken into consideration before the
approaches are integrated and the suitable language learning materials are developed,
the learners might be more interested and they end up developing language
skills.
c) Locates principles supporting CLT within the KBSM
English Language Curriculum and F1 English Language Syllabus.
1. Form and
maintain relationships through conversations and correspondence, take part in
social interaction and interact to obtain goods and services.
~ Principle 1:
Teach communicative competence (linguistic): Linguistic competence includes the
ability to use grammar appropriately. This is because grammar (noun, adverb,
verbs etc) needs to be taught and be part and parcel in learning outcomes.
Although students might have a low proficiency in the English language but,
their knowledge in grammar is vital especially in allowing them to interact
effectively with people. So, teachers need to construct a task or activity that
can emphasize more on grammar. While constructing that kind of task or
activity, teachers need to relate it with current or real life situation, so
the students will be more familiar with it as well as can learn better.
Principle 2:
Practice functions and forms in context-rich environments.
The discourse
competence can be brought into this context as students are to be taught to
produce meaningful sentences. They may do so by practicing the different
functions and forms of words. For instance, the word “please” is used when
asking for favours from someone. In context-rich environments, students can
learn and practice cohesion in sentences. That way, they may identify the
‘semantic relationships’ using discourse markers and connectors.
2. Obtain,
process and use information from various audio-visual and print sources, and
present the information in spoken and written form.
Principle 2:
Practice functions and forms in context-rich environments (discourse and
linguistic competence).
This is also more
to the discourse and linguistic competence context. Students will assemble and
use the information they get from various sources to produce texts in either
spoken or written form. A text with cohesion allows readers to get the gist and
understand it. In terms of linguistic
competence, students need to learn the correct grammar and vocabulary. By
having them, it will definitely help the students in delivering their message
more clearly and accurate.
Principle 4:
Give priority to fluency over accuracy.
The linguistic
and pragmatic competence will play their parts in this context too. Teachers
need to teach other words when dealing with topic and syllabus to enhance the
students’ vocabulary. Teachers also should adapt and change the words according
to the proficiency level of the class so that the students will have a variety
of word choices. The students can “play” with words as well as use them in
writing and speaking. The educational system emphasize on fluency over accuracy
to make sure students are ready to take field works and facing the real world
(social life). Having pragmatic competence allows them to converse and
communicate using the simplest words. For instance, they will learn the basics
in greeting people such as ‘Good morning’, ‘How are you?’ and many more.
Students may have problems in pronouncing certain words but as long the
sentence structure or cohesion is there, the listener will somehow get the idea
of what is being said to them.
3.Listen to,
view, read and respond to different texts, and express ideas, opinions,
thoughts and feelings imaginatively and creatively in spoken and written form.
Principle 5:
Adopt a learner-centered attitude
Teacher regards
or treats the students as partner. So, in order to achieve the vision, teacher’s
role need to change. According to the principle, the teacher’s role changes in
the three stages of the language teaching operation. First, teacher acts as an
informant in the presentation stage, then in the practice stage, teacher plays
the role as a conductor and lastly in the production stage, teacher will be a
guide and a co-communicator. Through these stages, the students will be more
comfortable in learning and slowly established their own attitudes in learning.
Principle 7:
Promote Collaborative and Cooperative Learning
Learning tasks
should be designed to require true and active communicative interactions
between learners and should involve both input and help in learners’
production. Learning tasks also should encourage negotiation of meaning –
changes in language will happen. This is because students who have low
proficiency level cannot accomplish a task for higher level students, so they
need guidance in doing the task step by step while slowly achieving the high
level of proficiency. Collaborative learning enables students to interact more
among themselves and at the same time, sharing knowledge with each other. It
also triggers peer feedback which may lead to positive impacts. For instance,
they might discover new idea while discussing certain topics and clarify
certain grammar rules when they faced confusions.
Principle 8:
Provide Error Corrective Feedback
There are three
types of feedbacks which are positive feedback, negative feedback and both
feedbacks. Positive feedback is to confirm the accuracy of learner’s response
whilst negative feedback is more to error correction. As for both responses,
they are to facilitate learning when delivered effectively. By giving feedback
to students, they will be motivated and will learn better because they know
their mistakes and the reason behind them.
d) Identify general categories and specific items to
evaluate chapters in a Malaysian English Language textbook.
In the Malaysian
context, it is undeniable that we are not users of English as a first language.
However, we do share similarities in the context of EFL learners in other
countries such as the differences in proficiency levels of the learners.
The general
categories to evaluate chapters would be:-
a) Educational
context- In terms of the educational context, it is important to determine
whether the context is relevant and provides proper education. The contents in
the textbook should reflect what a second language learner is ought to learn or
know. Besides that, the context should also be based on the culture of that
particular country. For instance, the culture in Western and Eastern countries
will definitely be different given that the English language has different
‘stand’. In Western countries such as America and England, English is their L1
while in countries like Malaysia and Brunei, English is their L2. So, the
educational context should be focus more on the function of the English
language in that particular country.
b) Learning
Theories- The chapters should be designed based on the learning theories such
as the SLA theories and the principle of teaching and learning. Activities in
the textbook can be designed to create more interactions among students
(interactionist theory) and encourage teachers to apply the principles they had
learnt into the activities. For instance, teachers can actually create new
activities using new materials in order to enhance students’ learning as long
as the learning objectives can be achieved. The principle in materials
developments suggested teachers to focus on authenticity in usage of materials
and linking them to students’ everyday lives.
c) Curriculum-
The textbook is all based on the curriculum. This is to suit the ‘target’ the
country intended to achieve. The curriculum will be the base or guidance in
determining the context (chapters) in a textbook.
d) Facilitate
learning- The main function of a textbook is to facilitate learning in
classrooms. The chapters in the textbook are divided into several different
topics and it may help students to understand them better. For instance, the
chapter ‘Friends and Family’ will teach the students more about family in the
Malaysian context. The textbook provide pictures and exercises to further their
understanding.
e) Learner’s diversity-
The topics/chapters in the textbooks are different according to the students’
level. For instance, the chapters in a Form 1 English textbook are different
with the chapters in a Form 5 English textbook. The words or terms used in the
textbooks are also different as the proficiency level of students in different
Form differs.
f) Teacher’s
beliefs- So far, teachers in schools all teach the English language by using
the textbook as the main source. In order for an effective teaching of English
to occur in class, that will have to depend on the method the teachers used and
whether they have the intention to hold on to their principles. Their beliefs
are what may change the students’ learning process. It can be said that the
teachers themselves know what would be the best method to teach the students in their own
class. Different teachers have different strategies and beliefs in teaching.
However, their beliefs are often shaped by the curriculum and the schools’
vision.
g) Psychological
validity- The contents of the chapters in a textbook should be rational and
creative. Students should be able to answer the questions either independently
or through cooperation with peers. It is important for their self-development
as well as helping them in developing good characters.
h) Pedagogical
validity- Another important criterion is that the textbook should act as
guidance to both the students and teachers. There should be choices of
activities that teachers can conduct in class. As for the activities, it will
be better if students are able to do their very own reflection by the end of
the activity. This is to ensure that they will remember what they had learnt
and be able to identify their mistakes or errors.
i) Process and
content validity- The contents should be relevant to the students. Contents
that students can relate to their daily lives are often easier for them to
grasp. Besides that, creativity plays an important role in the textbook’s
contents. They should appeal to the students and trigger their creative thinking.
Leanza’s reflection:
The competences
that have been taught during the previous lesson are related to the
communicative language teaching. I can ‘slightly’ have a clear image about the
complexity of communicative language teaching or shall I just say materials
development? This is because every theories and approaches or principles are
seemed interrelated. For instance, when we talk about principles of materials
development, the things that we have been exposed during second language
acquisition is related.
Before Miss JC
explained the question (a) during the tutorial on Monday, I personally thought
that the theory lying behind communicative language teaching approach is
related to hypothesis and theories of second language acquisition. The answers
that I have prepared were something about interationist theories, sociocultural
difference and comprehensible input hypothesis. After the tutorial, I can
understand that it is actually about the four competences which are namely
pragmatic competence, discourse competence, linguistic competence and strategic
competence. Before the language learning become more engaging, the learners are
exposed to audiolingual method. For my opinion, the learners usually apply
bahaviourist theory consciously or unconsciously when they start to learn
something. Based on behaviourist theory, the learners are exposed to positive
and negative reinforcement in order to learn or a language, or acquire when
they are familiar with it.
Next, for
question (b), the main point that our group would like to emphasize on is
trying to switch the learning environment from traditional approach to learner
centered learning for stating the implications of communicative language teaching approach towards materials development. For my opinion, to having a switch on the learning
environment from the traditional way to learners centered is a challenge for
the teachers and educators nowadays. We can clearly see that because of
different kinds of distraction, passive learners are produced recently. For
instance, the learners or so called students nowadays could be distracted by
the mobile phones or missing about playing computer games at home, or thinking
about what facebook status should they post when they reach home later after
school. Hence, it is a probably unreachable target for the teachers to grasp
the learners’ attention. However, the developed materials might give a shot as
the learners might pay attention to the teaching and learning when the
materials is relevant to their daily routine (teachers should consider about
the tremendous change of the living style of the students nowadays, especially
the urban area when it comes to develop suitable language learning material).
Here comes the authenticity and the learners who are interested with the topic
and with the help of developed materials applied in classrooms, the learners
are able to develop certain language skills according to the learning
objectives and activities conducted in classrooms by teachers.
For the question
©, I would like to point on a few principles of the answer s of our tutorial
task week 3. The first principle would be adopting learner centered attitude.
Frankly to say, the students nowadays are passive learners. They refused to
take part in any activity in classrooms, even having problem to hand in the
homework on time (based on my teaching experience during semester break). They
are passive and even teacher prepared the games, they refused to involve as
well. So, I personally think that this principle should be take the learners’
attitude and understanding level into consideration before any activity is
planned. Secondly will be the error correction. For my opinion, error
correction is encouraged to be on the spot as it can help the students to
remember it longer in the length on time. However, if the students are being
responsive and yet the answers they have given are actually wrong, what
teachers have to do is correct them. It will be fine if they are corrected a
few times but if it happens too often, the students will be demotivated and
they refused to participate in any discussions in classrooms anymore. This
might affect their academic performance indirectly as well.
Last but not
least, for question (d), the categories to evaluate a Malaysia English textbook
are listed down. I strongly agree that the teachers' belief are shaped by schools' aims. Instead of strive for their own targets which they wish their students to reach certain proficiency levels or develop certain skills of language learning, they are helping the schools to achieve the target of reaching higher passing rate of that particular language. Thus, I agree that the teachers' belief are always being changed because of taking schools' aims into consideration to their teaching.
Evaluation
for every chapter is a necessity or to ensure that the students are exposed to
enough knowledge of this particular language in classrooms. Sheldon’s checklist
is impressionistic and it is superficial. I personally think that the checklist
needs to be improvised. On the one hand, I think that in depth analysis cannot
help the teachers or the evaluators to choose a good textbook. This is because
only a few chapters are selected for evaluation and I personally think that it
is deficient as it does not mean that the selected chapters can represent the
whole textbook. So, what I think is when it comes to evaluating a textbook, all
chapters should be included for evaluation to determine whether the textbook is
suitable for English language learning. The checklist sample that I preferred
the most is William’s checklist. The criteria under several categories are
listed in the checklist just to make sure that the textbook is usable although
it is a tiring work.
Conclusively, what
I think is being a teacher is uneasy. Before they start to teach, students’
proficiency levels and sociocultural difference need to be considered before
developing any teaching and learning materials. They have to apply the
principles and theories in order to provide enough information and ensure the
students learn something and finally being a successful learner. They also need
to provide scaffold, giving guidance or being a facilitator just to ensure that
the students learn the language. After all, the teachers have to take the
curriculum relevance requirement under consideration to their teaching.
Eventually, the evaluation is required to show that whether the activities or tasks
created according to whole class proficiency levels is applicable or suitable.
It can be a peer evaluation among the teachers or collect opinions from
students that have been exposed to the activities before.
