Materials: Adopting? Adapting? Designing? Help!!

All along my masters course of Materials’ Design my classmates, professor and I have analyzed different textbooks and other materials used for English teaching in different programs and directed to different kinds of population too; nevertheless, we still argue which of three strategies is the best; adopting, adapting or design your own materials. Last class we had the opportunity to share with Mr. Francisco Vargas which is the representative of Cambridge University Press, a very well known university and publisher since the 1900’s, and who gave us some principles when choosing such as important decision of selecting the materials we will use on our classrooms.
I have come out with my own perception and I have analyzed that the three of them have their advantages and disadvantages, but I feel more inclined to use only two of the three strategies: adapting and designing. In regards to adapting materials, I use this technique since I consider that is important that we use materials which have been designed by experts and researchers of the field who know about the topic. Besides, at my workplaces, the syllabuses were designed according to a book, so this is the corpus and the guide of the topics to be developed along the program. But on the other side, as we teachers know, textbooks are standard and they do not satisfy completely our students’ needs; there is when it comes the need of adapt the activities and topics that those books offer to our goals, looking for different strategies of using these activities based on what we want our students to reach.
About designing our own materials, I am the supporter number one since I love designing my own materials according to a specific group, types of learning, level of performance and objectives to reach. Our own materials completely seek to please our students’ necessities and they are completely original and authentic. But designing materials is time consuming and unfortunately many teachers do not have the economic support or possibilities to create their tools.
So, I believe that each teacher should have judgment and have as well a clear idea of what they want to do in their classes. If we really know our objectives, we will have the enough knowledge and discernment to choose appropriately our materials and make the difference in our classrooms.

Be aware with your choice teachers!!

The idea of evaluating textbooks is not only for selecting which materials we as teachers like or dislike, but this decision-making process should be seen as a process where we need to discover if the materials we have in our hands are suitable for our students or not. Hutchinson (1987) says
“Materials evaluation can and should be a two-way process which enables teachers not just to select a textbook, but also to develop their awareness of their own teaching/learning situation”(2).
Also, as he expresses, evaluation should be seen as a process of matching where you need to find a link between the needs, the materials and the overall teaching/learning situation. Sometimes, teachers only select materials because they look pretty, full of colors, or they may be fun for the students; however, but at the end learners are not able to perform anything . As English instructor, there should be five important principles when we select materials; first, the content of the material and the relationship among what is being studied in class. Second, the objective of such material; how meaningful it is and if they students are really going to accomplish something when we finish the activity. The third principle is if the material is realistic and suitable for them to apply in real life situations; the fourth principle is the way this material is designed. Materials cannot be too crowded, with different fonts, easy to follow and understand and finally, the last principle is that they should cause a positive effect on the students at the time they are doing the activity.
By the reason of this, I prefer to design and adapt the materials I have because I know that they will fulfill certain objectives and they are going to be worthy although they mean work for me; but seeing my students working and reaching goals and be able to perform in the target language with materials I designed is more grateful than anything else. I consider that we teachers always have the right too chose, as you decide if you want to be a good teacher you can decide which materials you can use in your classrooms in many fields such as methodological, technological, style and approach .

Are class materials easy to design?

When acquiring a language, we instructors tend to take for granted that by using only a coursebook in our classroom or applying random materials in class that only satisfy us; the foreign language students will achieve a successful learning. However, this wrong conception has lead to the failure not only of our students’ outcomes, but also of us in a professional field as instructors of English as foreign language. The fact of designing materials does not only imply cutting and pasting papers or using colors; on the contrary, this is a task which requires time, knowledge, and the analysis of our students’ needs in our classroom. Developing materials in such a way provide with a possibility to communicate and use the language in real life contexts.

According to Brian Tomlinson, one of the most common pitfalls we fall into when designing materials is that sometimes they lack of coherence (13). In other cases, most of the materials do not show any use of language structures or a specific content; they have been just made with the purpose of entertaining students but this materials do not challenge them at all to practice the language. Indeed, very well designed materials, in this case coursebooks, must access content and structures to be developed in a coherent and organized way besides having an adequate layout that catch the learners’ attention. Regarding other materials such as games, flashcards and much more, they must cause a positive impact on the learners’ attitude and expose them in authentic use and real life situations. Our materials should increase learners’ confidence, motivation and interest because if they are not well designed, those materials can cause a negative backwash on our students.

In brief, although in the world there are great materials that we can adopt or adapt, we teachers can not just sit and fall into a satisfactory level that all we have bought or created is good enough. But we should go into the design, and mostly, improvement of our materials; make them meaningful so that they can offer our students a better chance of satisfaction and success in their learning process.

Learning from Peer Task

During the previous week I observed a lesson where culture was taught. It’s very interesting to see how students like to learn about culture and how interested they get on this topic. During the lesson they were learning about clothes, hair styles and attitudes toward fashion not only in general terms, but also inside our country and others.

Students learned that culture is in everything we do, say and the way we act; they are very conscious that now that they are learning a new language implies learning a new culture too. For knowing their opinion about the topic an interview was done, and the results surprised me in the way how conscious they are about this.

Students mentioned the following:

“Everything means culture, in this case we need to understand that they way people dress is going to reflect their culture and we must respect this even though we don’t understand why”

“Culture helps us to have an easier conversation. We can know which topics we can talk about and which ones we should avoid”

“We should be always interested on learning about culture. That’s how we can understand why people act the way they do”

“It’s good to learn about people’s habits and the origin of their traditions”

“It’s important to learn about other cultures but we must analyze our own too. We see culture even when we talk with our classmates. Everybody is so different”

As we could see, it is very important to include culture in our plannings. I learned from this experience that students really need that we teachers teach them culture, not only because we want or because it’s very important. It’s also because nowadays they are conscious about the importance it has. We need to teach them values such as respect and tolerance, so they can develop their critical thinking and analyze why people are and act the way they do. We need to erase prejudices that society has impose along many years and teach them that they are free to decide and give opinion about different cultures. In this way we will prepare students with different perspectives and analytical minds to receive different cultures and understand them.

Encounter with Texas

That’s incredible how you can learn new things in just two hours when you share with a foreign person! You can know even more than doing a research about culture and that’s what happened to me last week. I had the opportunity to share with Joanna, a woman from Texas, USA, who came to my class and share with us cultural aspects from this state and how similar it is to Costa Rica, my country. Some of the most important aspects I found out are the followings:

1. First, something that really caught my attention was to know that Texas was an independent state many years ago (I didn’t know that!), so that’s why people from Texas are very independent and they are quite different from the rest of the USA citizens.

2. In Texas, there are very strong family ties like here in Costa Rica. They know about their family roots, they share time and have family reunions during especial occasions like birthdays or Christmas time. That’s different from other states where families just stay in their homes and share between them. In Joanna’s case, she told us that her family moved from Germany, and since they settle in Texas, they have been taking care of the family cemetery and church, and that’s how they have learned who they ancestors were and where they come from. This point was really interesting, that’s really nice when your family tries to teach you who you are and never forget from where is the blood we carry inside.

3. In Texas, as well as in any other state, they have a lot of immigrants who come looking for the “American dream”. The reason is almost the same of many cities which people have given the prototype that in big cities everything is perfect and you are going to have better job opportunities and a better life. But sometimes it can be true, sometimes not. Besides, because of that immigration mainly form Latin countries, Spanish and English are taught in schools, so kids are getting involved between both languages and cultures.

4. Finally, one aspects that had no idea which is happening in Texas right now is the “unwritten rule of Texas” as Joanna mentioned, which is “Black people are not allowed in this state”. Can you imagine that? In this century where the equality of human rights has been a point of discussion between countries, and there are still places where black people is neglected by citizens and even when their own president is a black man! For me that’s unbelievable, but it is true.

I loved listening Joanna in our class and we talked with her about Costa Rican culture too and we found similarities in infrastructure, weather, family ties and some other aspects. But there is something in which all of us agreed; we must value everyone’s culture, and if we are not able to understand it, at least what we should do is to RESPECT.

Thanks Joanna for sharing with us.

CULTURE AROUND THE WORLD

Culture in North Carolina, United States

Knowing all the cultures we have in the world is almost an impossible task; however, I wanted to know about the culture in North Carolina, at the Southeast of the USA. So I interviewed a friend who lived there and she had the opportunity of sharing with the people of Trinity, a small town at the mountains of Randolph County.

Here are some of the most important facts about their culture:

Food

-They don’t eat a lot of fat foods, they eat a lot of pasta and the food is very spicy. Besides, bread is always served in any meal.

-Every weekend they serve a big breakfast to share with the family

-The most common dishes are: blue berry salad, chicken stew, hot dogs (they are prepared of bread, sausages, and mustard), corndog ( a sausage wrapped with a corn tortilla) and they eat a lot of potato.

Personality

-They are very friendly; however, you need to keep physical distance and avoid invading their space

Customs

-People from the mountains are more punctual than people from the city

-They take a shower in the night, not in the morning

-They don’t care about fashion, they mix colors and styles. However, on Sundays they dress very formal

-Women use a lot of make up

- In the house women cannot use shorts or small blouses because it is considered as a way to attract the man of the house

-People clean the house each one or two weeks

-They don’t show public affection

Religion

-Most of them are Christian or Presbyterians

-The catholic people usually belong to the high class

-The music in the church is not noisy, they just use the piano

-Children stay separate from their parents during the ceremony

-Women cannot use pants to go to the church

-It is not allow to say “Oh my God”, or “Oh my Gosh”; it is considered offensive, so you better say “Oh my Lord”

Education

-All the classrooms must be decorated

-The emphasis of the education is reading and math

-Every teacher must have an assistant.

Finally, one nice tradition that they have is the Desserts Party, which is done on December 24^th. Families get together and they prepare a lot of desserts which are eaten during the night. At 11 o’clock they start wrapping the gifts for the kids to open them next morning.

So, that’s part of the culture of people from North Carolina; they differ from Costa Ricans in many aspects; however, there are cultures in which they have some habits that are completely different from ours and we never thought they exist. Let’s check some of them:

ENGLAND

In England they have the Custom of the WELL DRESSING, which is popular all over Derbyshire. The wells are dressed with large framed panels decorated with elaborate mosaic-like pictures made of flower petals, seeds, grasses, leaves, tree bark, berries and moss. Well-dressings are beautiful and delicate and take a lot of work to make; however, they only last for a few days. I like this tradition because is a nice way to decorate the entire city, and whenever each picture needs to be changed, they are ready to put a new one. All the people around the town are ready with a frame for decorating the wells.

On the other hand, they have strange and even dangerous traditions as the CHEESE ROLLING. A round cheese is rolled down a hill chased by competitors. The winner is the first person to grab the cheese. They say that it is a spectacular to watch but hazardous to take part in, because many competitors end up with broken arms and legs. Imagine that!! That will be really funny but it’s incredible how people risk their lives for a cheese!!!!

These were some of the British customs; I invite you to look more unusual traditions in the web page www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/curious/. You will have fun there!