Week 3

'''THE REASON FOR DESIGNING MATERIALS (Jocelyn Howard and Jae Major)'''

 

In our Educational system the use of new materials is a challenge taking into account different factors such as: number of students in the classroom, lack of books and resources in public schools, way of teaching English (In some cases it is taught in Spanish) and number of hours that students receive English classes (average three hours).

Based on the aspect mentioned above it is important to consider some important aspects when designing materials for teaching English (based on Howard and Major discussion about it).

First, when teachers design materials, they explore their creativity and their products will be authentic and outstanding taking into account that those teachers will plan their materials based on what their students need and what they consider, will improve their students’ learning process.

In the same way, those materials that are going to be designed by teachers will be based on students’ context, which one of the most important and relevant aspects to be considered intheir lessons. When students have a contextualized practice with contextualized materials, their learning process will be much better and motivating for them.

Finally, those are my main aspects to take into account when I design my materials for teaching: I think about the level of my students, what they need to learn, what skill they need to improve (there are students that need to improve for example listening, or reading, even writing) Something that I consider important to include is what students like (regarding music, food, TV program); if students find and use materials that take into account their preferences, they will feel more motivated to learn and they will enjoy and participate more in their lessons.