Why "Designing the English Teaching World"?

As our blog’s name states, we are interested in the design of materials for EFL classrooms. So if you also think that designing is a good idea, here are some advantages, guidelines and factors to consider when designing materials that you can find in Howard and Major’s text: "Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials"

What they say is that it is important to design authentic materials that aim a specific group of learners in a particular context because, usually, materials designed by publishing houses are directed towards the world market instead of specific audiences/contexts; this is what they call “contextualisation”. Another benefit they mention is called “individual needs”, which is connected to the previous one in the sense that it deals with learners’ needs. Thus, it explains that materials should be adapted to every student in the classroom, taking into account their culture, their previous knowledge, their learning capacities, among many other aspects.

Two other advantages mentioned in the article are “personalisation” and “timeliness”. The first one refers to the fact that making our own materials will give them a “personal touch” and makes them more attractive for students, who will appreciate our hard work when preparing lessons. The last one makes reference to the fact that there is no doubt that if you create your own material it will be adequate for both international and local events. What is more, they will never be out of date!

Whenever a “coursebook vs authentic material” discussion appears, you (as a teacher) will have these advantages and this article at hand for you to support your teaching decisions and your teaching methodology. So don’t feel threatened by this new tendency, try it, you will enjoy the experience of creating your own material and students will thank you for doing it.  

References:

• Howard, J & Major, J (2004) Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials. Christchurch College of Education.

Digital Natives or Digital Immigrants? That is the question..

Even though we enjoy searching the Net and using most of the social networks, we would not consider ourselves “digital natives”. We think there are a lot of things that you can do on the Net that we don’t know about and we still enjoy reading a “real” good book and using pen and paper for some of the activities that our teaching proposes.

We think that age is the most influential factor to take into account when talking about natives and immigrants, because the absence of the digital media when “the old” were growing up defines the fact that most of them do not understand or do not even care about technology. While the presence of all the technological devices we may find nowadays in the lives of “the young ones” may be the reason why they can control and use all these devices, softwares and tools.

But another variable to take into account might be the fact that technology is not available for everybody and this may be one factor that divides “the young ones” into natives and immigrants. The high rate of poor people all around the globe has to be taken into account; those countries that do not have access to new technologies are left behind when talking about the advances of the digital era and this puts aside young kids who live in these countries. It is not just a matter of being old or young; it also has to do with the economic facilities that people have.

The concept we agree the most with in Prensky’s article (see Prensky's article for more information) is the one that poses: “if Digital Immigrant educators really want to teach Digital Natives - i.e. all their students -  they will have to change.”; we think that this statement acts out of pure logic: our students are constantly changing their thinking processes because the information they get from the new technologies, and specially the way in which they get the information are constantly changing. The Internet and the websites they visit everyday are constantly being updated, changing their formats and designs; students get in touch with everything that is happening everywhere by just being in front of a computer or using their cellphones, they can read every book, access every page, and listen to every single new song that comes out in the whole wide world by using only one tool. We, as teachers, should adapt our teaching techniques taking advantage of these advances, we should embrace all the information that is available for us (and our students) in the Internet and try to keep up with them; if not, our subject - and ourselves -  will be left behind, as if it did not matter what we can teach, or learn, or say.

References:

• Prensky, M. (2001) On the Horizon. Digital Natives, Digital, Immigrants. MCB University Press, Volume 9 (5). pp. 1 - 6.