Creating Your Own Materials

CREATING YOUR OWN MATERIALS

Materials development refers to anything which is done by teachers or learners to facilitate the learning of language and enhance the learning experience. Selecting and developing materials and activities for students helps focus on their needs, abilities, interests, and expectations, creating opportunities to make learning enjoyable and to present information in new and exciting ways.

When learners are exposed to a set of carefully planned and well-articulated learning activities, it enhances their self-confidence as they learn at their own pace and in their own styles. This also helps teachers in efficiently developing their classes to satisfy learning objectives. For this, it's important to create materials that promote motivation, interaction, and long-term learning.

According to Kathleen Graves (2000), “Materials development is the planning process by which a teacher creates units and lessons within those units to carry out the goals and objectives of the course. In a sense, it is the process of making your syllabus more and more specific.” Many teachers believe that materials creation involves designing something completely original and only of the highest quality; as a result, they do not consider themselves material designers.

However, teachers constantly make decisions about their courses. Even if they are not deviating from the textbook, they still make choices—for example, deciding how to sequence a lesson, whether to omit exercises, whether to do an activity as pair or group work, or how to introduce grammar concepts. This decision-making forms the basis for materials development, as teachers must make judicious choices during the creation process.

It's also important to note that materials development can be as simple as bringing in a visual aid to accompany a textbook exercise or as complex as creating a multifaceted activity that results in a speaking or writing product used for assessment.

Brian Tomlinson outlines six key principles for creating materials in his article on principles and practices of materials development for language learning:

• Authentic language
• Affective and cognitive engagement
• Positive attitude towards the target language
• Transfer skills
• Language awareness
• Communicative process

Materials development should take into account:

• Students' different learning styles such as visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, analytic, experiential, global, dependent, and independent aspects.
• Novelty, variety, attractive presentation, and appealing content to achieve teaching-learning.
• The importance of pre- and post-reflective questions about materials to detect flaws and re-examine students' needs.
• Reselecting activities aimed at meeting and challenging students' needs and learning.
• Use of students as materials and student-produced materials for activities.

Guidelines for Materials Development:

1. Use an experiential approach where learners are engaged holistically to achieve explicit learning.
2. Design activities that enable learners to use language, not just practice specific features.
3. Help learners develop their ability to communicate fluently, accurately, appropriately, and effectively.
4. Contextualise activities so learners can respond to stimuli (e.g., texts, needs, viewpoints, or events).
5. Encourage learners to use mental imaging and relate to their own lives and interpretations.
6. Promote transfer from classroom learning activities to real life use.
7. Develop the ability to use language effectively in a variety of situations and uses.
8. Incorporate collaborative activities to enable learners to make discoveries themselves.
9. Allow for a silent period at the initial stage until learners gain sufficient exposure to the target language and confidence in understanding it.
10. Offer plenty of free practice.
11. Provide opportunities for outcome feedback.
12. Most importantly, develop confidence in learners.

Materials development is a challenging endeavour, requiring careful identification of learners’ particular needs and learning tendencies. However, the positive outcomes outweigh these concerns. Alongside these advantages, developing materials can help build teachers' skills and knowledge and positively contribute to professional development. Ultimately, student success is the driving force for creating one’s own materials.