Materials evaluation and material design

Materials Evaluation and Material Design

MATERIALS EVALUATION

        After completed our need analysis and course design, the next step that should be done by the teacher is deciding what they will do. Teacher may turn the course design into actual teaching materials. There are three possible ways of turning the course design into actual teaching materials:

1.     Select from existing materials: materials evaluation

2.     Write our own materials: material development.

3.     Modify existing materials: materials adaptation.

In this chapter, the writer concerns to discuss the first point “Material Evaluation”. The techniques and a lot in terms of ideas of evaluating the existing materials can be found in this chapter.

1.     Why Evaluate Materials?

According to Hutchinson & Waters (1987) stated that evaluation is a matter of judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose. Evaluation concerns on the relative merit. There is no absolute good or bad, only degrees of fitness for the required purpose. It means that, when the teacher does materials evaluation, the evaluation is based on the required purpose or goal that would be reached by the students.

 In another word, according to Hutchinson &Waters (1987) stated that in any kind of evaluation, the decision finally made is likely to be the better for being based on a systematic check of all the important variables. In doing the evaluation materials, the writer probably get a negative and positive impact. The negative side of evaluation materials is the teacher probably spent a lot of expense, time, and probably getting frustrated. On the other hand, the positive side of evaluation materials is; it can also help in justifying request of the sponsors or other members of an ESP team for money to buy materials or time to write them.

2.     How do you evaluate materials?

Hutchinson &Waters (1987) stated that “evaluation is basically a matching process: matching needs to available solutions”. In order to match the needs and solutions, the matching should be done as objective as possible. It means that teachers have to look the needs of students and the solution separately. In the final analysis, any choice will be made on subjective grounds. However, if subjectivity influence your judgement, it may blind you to possible alternatives. For example: teacher might reject a particular textbook, because the teacher does not like the picture on the cover or dislike functional syllabuses but it does not mean that the book does not suit the needs of parties. Thus, teachers should not let subjectivity too much influence their judgement in the early stages of analysis when evaluating materials to be taught. Process of evaluation can be divided into four major steps(see figure 26) :

1)  Defining criteria

2)  Subjective analysis

3)  Objective analysis

4)  Matching

        The fist two stages will be done in course design stage. While the other two stage is done as the continuation of the subjective analysis where teacher have to evaluate or develop their material through objective analysis. From these process, teacher will be easier to know how far the material match the needs.

Material Design

1.     Defining objectives

We can start by asking ourselves the question: What are materials supposed to do? In defining the purpose of the materials, we can identify some principles that will guide us to the actual writing of the materials.

a.       Materials provide a stimulus to learning process.

Good materials don’t teach but rather encourage learners to learn.

Good materials contain:

·         Interesting text

·         Enjoyable activities

·         Opportunities for learners to use their knowledge and skills

·         Content which both learners as well as teacher can overcome

b.      Materials help to organize the teaching-learning process.

By providing a way through the complex mass of the language to be learnt. Good materials should provide a clear and understandable unit structure that will guide teacher and learners.

c.       Materials contain a view of the nature of language learning.

Good materials should truly reflect what you think and feel about the learning process.

d.      Materials reflect the nature of the learning task.

Materials should try to create a balance outlook that both reflects the complexity of the task, yet makes it appear manageable.

e.       Materials can have a very useful function in broadening the basis of teacher training.

By introducing teachers to new techniques.

f.        Materials provide models of correct and appropriate language use.

This is a necessary function of materials, but it is all too often taken as the only purpose, which the result is the materials become simply a statement of language use rather than a vehicle for language learning.

1.      A materials design model

a.       Input

This maybe a text, dialogue, video-recording, diagram or any piece of communication data, depending on the needs you have defined in your analysis.

The input provides a number of things:

·         Stimulus material for activities

·         New language items

·         Correct models of language use

·         A topic for communication

·         Opportunities for learners to use their information processing skills

·         Opportunities for learners to use their existing knowledge both of the language and the subject matter

b.      Content focus

Language is not an end in itself, but a means of transferring information and feelings about something. Non-linguistic content should be exploited to generate meaningful communication in the classroom.

c.       Language focus

Our aim is to enable learners to use language, but it is unfair to give learners communicative tasks and activities for which they do not have enough language knowledge. In language focus, learners have the chance to take the language to pieces, study how it works and practice putting it back together again.

d.      Task

The ultimate purpose of language learning is language use. Materials should be designed to lead towards a communicative task in which learners use the content and language knowledge they have built up through the unit.

These four elements combine in the model as follows

·         The primary focus of the unit is task

·         The language and content are drawn from the input and are selected according to what the learners will need in order to do the task.

·         It follows that an important feature of the model is to create coherence in terms of both language and content throughout the unit.

·         This provides the support for more complex activities by building up a fund of knowledge and skills.

3. A material design model: sample materials

The basic model can be used for materials of any length. Every stage can be covered in one lesson, if the task is a small one, or the whole unit might be spread over a series of lessons. In this part, we will show what the model looks like in practice in some of our materials.