Reflection on Tutorial Task Week 9

In this week’s tutorial task, we were required to evaluate whether the activity in the Form 2 English textbook teaches listening skills or not. We found that most activities are divided according to the various skills such as listening, speaking and writing. This allows us to easily identify which activity focuses on listening skills. However, from what we determined, it is actually not adequate enough to fully help learners learn the skill. As an overall, we came to a conclusion that not all activities may serve the purpose of teaching effectively. Thus, it is the teacher’s job to adapt or use the activity to its highest potential to teach the language. 

Reflection on Tutorial Task Week 8

We were required to compare and contrast the adaptation techniques between McDonough and Shaw, Tomlinson and Masuhara as well as Makey. We noticed that the technique mentioned by all three were similar except for the organization of the steps as well as using different terms for the same technique. For example, in Maley’s article, reduction was mentioned while in Tomlinson & Masuhara, it is called as subtraction. Both meant the same thing which is shortening of an activity/material.

I think a teacher should know how to adapt materials properly. This is because it helps the teachers to place the material in its full potential to help learners learn. It also helps the teacher to decrease useless activities or materials that bores the learners and is not helpful at all. Being able to adapt materials, teachers can suit the materials to their learners’ needs as all classes have different types of learners.

From my experience, it was always fun when teachers add in some games that not only helps learning, but also is fun. Thus, in my opinion, to truly grasp a learner’s attention, teachers must be able to use the techniques in adapting materials in order to suit the learners’ needs and also learning capabilities. Adapting materials does not mean that the materials are changed but it is just to construct the materials in order to present it or conducted with a better effect for learning to occur. 

Reflection on Tutorial Task Week 7

In this week’s task, we are required to develop a language learning material using any forms of media using technology ranging from videos (with sound and visual) to texts (with graphics).

Our group had decided to use ‘MakeBeliefsComix’. This is because it is easy to use and can be accessed by anyone without registration or sign ups. They just have to create their own creative comic strip based on any topics given by the teachers. However, there is one downside to this which is the requirement of internet connections

At first, we could not decide whether or not it was a language learning material or a language learning tool. Our group had a hard time deciding on whether it was what our task wanted. In the end, we decided to proceed with the little knowledge that we got from the internet. After our lecturer clarified the difference, we were even clearer on what are language learning materials and language learning tools. We were also relieved that despite what we knew, it was a right choice to search a little information on the differences of the 2 concepts.

From this task, I realised that tools are what you used for the learners to learn a certain language which is a form of media or applications for them to use in order to help the learners learn such as facebook, online grammar dictionaries, etc. For materials, it is an activity or exercise to be carried out together with the learners in class in order to help them learn a language. I learnt that it is difficult to create materials for your learners compared to using a tool. Thus, being able to fuse both tool and material is essential to help learners learn better.

MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT WEEK 8 LECTURE TASK

 (a) Compare and contrast McDonough and Shaw, Maley and Tomlinson and Masuhara adaptation techniques. Are there are differences or are they similar?

Adaptation Technique

McDonough & Shaw	Maley	Tomlinson & Masuhara
McDonough & Shaw’s Techniques •Adding – Expanding & Extending •Deleting – subtracting & abridging •Modifying – re-writing & re-structuring •Simplifying •Re-ordering	Techniques for materials adaptation 1. omission: the teacher leaves out things deemed inappropriate, offensive, unproductive, etc., for the particular group. 2. addition: where there seems to be inadequate coverage, teachers may decide to add to textbooks, either in the form of texts or exercise material. 3. reduction: where the teacher shortens an activity to give it less weight or emphasis. 4. extension: where an activity is lengthened in order to give it an additional dimension. (For example, a vocabulary activity is extended to draw attention to some syntactic patterning.) 5. rewriting/modification: teacher may occasionally decide to rewrite material, especially exercise material, to make it more appropriate, more “communicative”, more demanding, more accessible to their students, etc. 6. replacement: text or exercise material which is considered inadequate, for whatever reason, may be replaced by more suitable material. This is often culled from other resource materials. 7. re-ordering: teachers may decide that the order in which the textbooks are presented is not suitable for their students. They can then decide to plot a different course through the textbooks from the one the writer has laid down. 8. branching: teachers may decide to add options to the existing activity or to suggest alternative pathways through the activities. (For example, an experiential route or an analytical route.)	divided into three main categories in terms of quantity: Plus (+), Minus (-) or Zero (0) Plus: Techniques- Examples Addition- Teachers may add different text or activities Expansion- Teachers may expand texts and activities by increasing the length, difficulty, depth, etc. Minus: Techniques- Examples Deletion- Teachers may delete some texts and/or activities together Subtraction- Teachers may decrease the number of sentences in a text or part of an activity Reduction- Teachers may reduce texts and activities by decreasing the length, difficulty, depth, etc. Zero: Techniques- Examples Modification- Teachers may make changes to instructions Replacement- Teachers may swap one activity with another Reorganization- teachers may change the positions of texts and illustrations Resequencing- Teachers may change the sequence of activities Conversion- Teachers may change the genre of a text (from narrative to poem), or move the content from one medium to another (e.g. from print to a web page)

By thoroughly comparing and contrasting the adaptation techniques suggested by all three (McDonough&Shaw, Maley, Tomlinson&Masuhara), we noticed that all three techniques are fairly similar eventhough the terms are named differently.

Differences
The only difference between them is the organization of their techniques. For example, in McDonough & Shaw and Maley , the techniques are just organised in a simple and direct manner from ‘adding’ to ‘ re-ordering’ and ‘omission’ to ‘branching’. As for Tomlinson & Masuhara , they divided their techniques into categories which relates by the type of adaptation they are using. In our opinion, Tomlinson & Masuhara’s choice of organisation is useful whereby it can be easily be chosen by teachers based on what they would like to do with their materials.

Similarities
All of the techniques used are similar even if they have different terms. They can be categorised based on what is done to the materials when using the techniques. For example, the common technique found between them is addition. In all three techniques, they suggested that teachers can add and expand the materials using activities or exercises. The same goes for reduction. In McDonough & Shaw’s techniques, the term used is ‘simplifying’ while Maley uses the term ‘reduction’ and Tomlinson & Masuhara categorises it into ‘Minus’. All three terms share the same usage or adaptation which is removing or subtracting the unnecessary parts of the materials. Eventhough all three techniques are not organized the same, the usage or ways of adapting a material are fairly similar.

(b) Compare and contrast McDonough and Shaw with Tomlinson and Masuhara’s materials  adaptation procedures. Are there are differences or are they similar?

	McDonough and Shaw	Tomlinson and Masuhara
Materials’ Adaptation Procedures		i.Profiling of teaching context ii.Identifying reasons for adaptation iii.Evaluating iv.Listing Objectives v.Adapting vi.Teaching vii.Revising

Generally, the first move of materials’ adaptation procedures in both the McDonough & Shaw and Tomlinson and Masuhara are the same. They are only different in terms. In McDonough & Shaw, the first thing need to be identified in adapting a material is to match certain internal and external criteria to the material. External factors comprise both the overt claims made about materials and the characteristics of particular situation. Internal factors are concerned with content, organization and consistency. In this context, the matching and congruency is needed in order to localise (as in bringing in the local culture into teaching), personalise (relating the material to learners’ personal schema as in interpersonal use), individualise (relating the material to learners’ background information) and modernise (incorporate IT into teaching)the material used. This is the same as the one in Tomlinson & Masuhara’s procedure which is profiling of teaching context. It is same as there is the need to collect information about something so that later, a description about it can be done. This is important as it helps to identify the reasons/needs for adaptation. After identifying the reasons, evaluation will take place. The material will be evaluated to determine how it should be adapted in order to fit the learners’ context.

In term of differences, McDonough & Shaw do have something which is different compared to Tomlinson & Masuhara. It is that McDonough & Shaw provides specific techniques used in the material adaption. The techniques are adding (expanding and extending), deleting (subtracting and abridging), modifying (re-writing and re-structuring), simplifying (as in simplify the sentence structure) and re-ordering (putting parts of a coursebook into different order). These techniques will be applied into content areas such as language practice, tests, skills and classroom management. In other words, the material will undergo addition, deletion, modification, simplification and re-order to ‘fit’ the tests, language practice, skills and also in creating more effective classroom management.

As for Tomlinson & Masuhara, the listing of objectives comes after the evaluation. The objectives are important as it affects how the adaption to the material is to be done in the next step. However, there is no specific ‘techniques’ stated on how the adaptation should be done. In fact, the next step proceeds straight to teaching and lastly revising.

(c) List and discuss the levels of materials adaptation.

Textbook adaptation can be done at three levels. The first level is macro adaptation, which is ideally done before the language programme begins. After comparing what is covered in a textbook and what is required by the syllabus or examination, the teacher may find that certain areas or even whole units of the book can be omitted, and certain contents need to be supplemented. Macro adaptation is very important because it helps to avoid waste of time and energy of the teacher and the students as well. It also helps the teacher to see in advance what he or she needs to supplement so that he or she can keep an eye on materials that could be used. Based on Malaysia education context, finishing every syllabus of the English textbook is a prerequisite and the teachers are not allowed to choose another textbook. Having options to selecting textbook for teaching is not encouraging in Malaysia. Thus, it is impossible for English teachers in Malaysia to pick another textbook based on their thought in order to teach their students. On the other hand, teachers should evaluate the whole unit in the textbook and make selections on what chapters they should emphasize or less emphasize on based on the probability of the questions which will be asked in exams. For example, the topic’ pollution’,  ‘health’ and ‘technology’ are very common and popular that it have higher probability of coming out in exams. So, teachers should emphasize on those chapters.

The second level is of adaptation is adapting a unit. This could be reordering the activities, combining activities, omitting activities, rewriting or supplementing exercise material, etc. Unit adaptation helps to make the classroom teaching more smooth and cohesive. It also helps the teacher to better fulfil the aims of a unit. Before entering the class, the teacher must go through the textbook units and make decision about which activity or task is applicable in the textbook. The activity or task which are not very useful and does not give students much comprehensible input and new information, then activity can be omitted and teacher needs to replace or modify the omitted activity with a better one.

The third level is adaptation of specific activities in a unit. Occasionally an activity is regarded as valuable, but it is not well-designed or it is not feasible in a particular class. If the teacher does not want to give up the activity, he or she needs to adapt it. For instance, the activity is hard to be integrated in the classroom but it is crucial for students’ understanding in the certain objective of that particular task. Hence, the teacher should put more effort to modify or conduct and give students a clearer picture about that particular activity so that students can carry out this activity in a more efficient way.

(d) Without going in-depth into your 2nd part of your assignment (adapt and create), discuss in general what level of materials adaptation you will be using (it can be all three levels but used at different areas in the materials) and techniques you will employ to enrich the chapter you have evaluated. Briefly state the types of tasks which will accompany the current material. Please mention if there are media accompaniment with that task.

In chapter 9, there are two roles play activities where students have to work in pair. The situation of the roles play given is a conversation between a mother and a son and the other one is conversation of a doctor and his patient.  

Activity:

Firstly students have to choose either one of the situation given. They have to type out their conversation in not less than 120 words and the content of their conversation should include vocabulary and points related to their situation. This means that they have to do this task just like how they usually do in their exam for the writing/ essay section.

They then have to act out the situation in a very authentic way and record the whole process. Their conversation has to be based on their dialogue that they have typed.

After doing both the writing and roles play part, they have to post their outcome into their tumblr account.

Each pair also has to “check out” what the other pairs have posted on their tumblr wall by giving likes and comments, and each pair has to give likes and comments to at least 5 of the other pairs. 

One of the techniques that have been implied in this activity was Maley’s adaptation techniques of branching. Maley suggested that “teachers may decide to add options to the existing activity or to suggest alternative pathways through the activities. (For example, an experiential route or an analytical route.) “. So, for the roles play activity, students can either choose the conversation between the mother and son or, the conversation between a doctor and his patient. By choosing different situation, the content, vocabulary and points that need to be included by students will be different.

Other techniques that have been included in this activity are the addition and expansion techniques proposed by Tomlinson and Masuhara. For the addition technique, Tomlinson and Masuhara stated that “teachers may add different text or activities”. Hence, there is a writing task added into the roles play activity to let students practice in their writing skill. As for the expansion technique, Tomlinson and Masuhara stated that “teachers may expand texts and activities by increasing the length, difficulty, depth, etc.” The difficulty was increased when students are required to prepare a conversation that must include certain types of language features based on the situation that have been chosen., which include points that are related to their topic. On the other hand, students are also required to memorise their dialogues and act it out in front of a recording video and show authenticity in during the roles play. This means that students have to practice few times so they can perform this task more efficiently, and this can help them in their speaking skills.

Media material accompaniment: Tumblr and Video Recording

Make Belief Comix DLLM

http://www.scribd.com/doc/194357429/Make-Belief-Comix-DLLM

Reflection on Tutorial Task Week 6

My group received the task; Evaluating the English textbook in the US for Intermediate level using Cunningsworth’s checklist. We were required to pick 2 chapters in which we have decided after a brief discussion which is  chapter 4 and 6. In each chapter, it was further divided into 5 sections each. For each section, there were 3 to 4 exercises namely A, B, C and D. We had decided to evaluate each section which would be 10 sections altogether. From our evaluation, it can be seen that the coursebook did not have an “outline” indicating that communicative is one of its aim.

Through our discussion, we discovered that there are small parts of the activities that require learners to discuss in a small group or do pair works. From the whole section, there might only be one small part that emphasises on CLT. In this task, we evaluated the coursebook using Cunningsworth’s checklist. It was easy to analyse and evaluate as the checklist only focuses on CLT. However, we found out that only some parts of the coursebook chapters are communicative. This makes it harder for us to evaluate as we were limited to only CLT. Furthermore, our understanding of ‘communicative’ varies among us. Thus, we faced a clash of opinions when we need  to evaluate based on the checklist

In conclusion, I find the checklist to be suitable if we were to look at the coursebooks based on CLT only. However, my group came up with a suggestion that Cunningsworth’s checklist is suited as an additional checklist for other checklist. This means that, it is an important checklist but the full use and potential of this checklist can be portrayed when it is used as a part of other checklists.

After doing this task, I now know how difficult it is to find a good coursebook. It is important to evaluate a coursebook based on what we want but we should not be biased in evaluation as not all parts of a coursebook is deemed unusable. Furthermore, everyone has their own opinion on how a coursebook should be as well as the types of checklist suited to be used. Thus, it is important for teachers to equip themselves with various materials and activities in order to adapt the coursebooks as well as to be able to use the coursebooks to their full potential.

Reflection on Tutorial Task Week 4 & 5: Cunningsworth's Article (Materials Development)

For this task, our group were required to present/analyse Cunningsworth's checklist and create a powerpoint presentation. We encountered numerous problems analysing the checklist as we had no idea at all that all checklist are actually different. Due to that, we gt confused. An example of the problem or confusion was we thought the checklist was comprised of 3 checklists, which are; Design and Content, Interactive Communications and Style and Appropriacy but they are actually 1 checklist.

Our powerpoint presentation was confusing as we analysed it as 3 different checklist. Thus, we were unable to show how effective or not effective is the checklist. It was also hard to show the points we analysed as we analysed it individually but in actual fact, it was 3 different criteria which actually complements each other to form a checklist.

As an overall, we analysed and knew that Cunningsworth’s checklist was all about Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). So, it was easier for us to analyse the checklist as it was specific in the terms of CLT. We discussed and identified what we like and dislike about the checklist. The criteria are helpful and specific enough to determine the effectiveness of a material or taskbook based on the CLT. However, it is also limited as it only focuses on CLT. 

To me, I feel that this checklist is very good in determining the communicative criteria of a book. This is because the criteria are easy to understand with minimal confusion. In my opinion, this checklist is suited to be used by teachers to evaluate a material or coursebook. This is because a material or coursebook that is shows communicative properties provide opportunities for learners to communicate with others which also allows them to practice the language as in daily lives. However, it is not advisable to only use this checklist alone as it only focuses on one aspect which is CLT.