TESL 0150- Unit 3- Adapt Resources Using Effective Principles for Materials Development: Make That Change! It's Gonna Make a Difference

In this unit, we had to apply effective principles for adapting resources activity. We had to use a scenario which were provided in the lesson and had to provide principles and evaluate it.

Scenario 2
Your LINC Level 3 class is comprised of a mixture of stay-at-home moms, seniors, and youth. Many of the students have previously asked you about volunteer opportunities. You are preparing a unit on community and government services. You have the LINC 3 Classroom Activities resource available. 

I chose the activity from pages 280-283 (Volunteer opportunities).

Principles:

Materials should be: authentic, based on students’ needs, task-based and relevant.

      Do the materials provide opportunities to practice English in the real life situations?

1. This activity is about volunteer opportunities. It has three types of activities which are reading, matching sentences and writing.  The main focus of this activity is to write an email and ask about volunteer opportunities. As students are interested in working as volunteer, this activity is close to their needs and would help them in learning how to write an email about volunteer opportunities. This activity is suitable for real life situations.

The students are able to communicate using materials.

2. The first activity of this resource is to read about people who want to work as a volunteer. Although this activity is about writing an email and communicating in written sample, I would suggest that the teachers start the class with a conversation about the volunteer opportunities in Winnipeg or Canada. The teacher can ask students about their interested jobs and start a conversation with the whole class. This will help students to have a verbal communication and help them in finding their interests.

Do the materials meet the needs and wants of the learners?

3. This activity is related to the students needs and wants. As many jobs are asking to receive the clients’ profiles through an email, this activity would help students to have a better understanding of how to write an email and ask for volunteer opportunities.

Do the materials provide clear instructions?

4. In my opinion, this activity needs more instruction in providing opportunities for discovering language features.  In the email activity, there is no instruction about how to create an email account and how to open and close an email. Some students might not know how to write an email and how to use it, especially seniors and they may need instructions to learn how to write an email.

In my opinion, this material is suitable for this context. It is related to their needs and wants and provides opportunities for students to practice English in real life situations. If I want to adapt this material, I would add a discussion at the beginning of the lesson as warm up. I found that having discussion would boost students mind and give them a clear idea about what they are about to learn. I also like writing an email activity. This activity is close to what students are expected to do if they want to apply for volunteer jobs. However, writing an email would be difficult for seniors and the teacher might have to add another activity in order to teach writing an email. In conclusion, I found this material useful and effective; however, I would add speaking activity as a warm-up. Also, I would check if all students are able to use internet and email before the lesson and would add additional activities related to that.

References

Tomlinson, B. (Ed.). (2014). Developing materials for language teaching. United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic.

Richards, J. C. (2010). English Language Teaching Materials. Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bilsborough, K. (2017). ELT materials writing: More on emerging principles.

LINC 3, LINC Classroom Activities, Language Instructions for Newcomers to Canada. Retrieved from http://www.moresettlement.org/LINC1-4/LINC4/LINC_3_Classroom_Activities.pdf