The Anglo-Mexican Foundation

In- Service Certificate in English Language Teaching

Methodology Assignment 3:

Evaluating and Supplementing Materials

Tutors: Andrew Watson and Arturo Calderón

Candidate: Ramón Sabás Vargas Sánchez

Submission Date: May 22nd, 2015

 Methodology Assignment 3. Evaluating and Supplementing Materials

The purpose of this report is to evaluate some of the materials provided by a

course book and to supplement those materials with other that would match the
students’ different linguistic and affective needs, their ages and their learning styles.

A Basic 5 class at the Anglo (A1-A2 according to the CEFR) was selected for this
assignment. After having worked with them for almost three weeks, I have observed that
the students have accumulated a number of problems in the course of their studies in L2
with the use of present simple to describe their daily routines so the lesson aimed at
reinforcing and consolidating the use of present simple in questions and affirmative
answers.

Unit in the Course Book

The book used in B5 at the Anglo is New Framework 1 and the first unit used for the
level is Unit 7. In the Spotlight (Appendices 1,2). The unit aims at enabling students to
describe their daily routines, and the frequency of their free time activities. The language
focus deals then with present simple, adverbs of frequency and expressions of frequency.
The unit also aims at reviewing the present continuous to talk about making
arrangements for the future and activities in progress.
The unit also reviews the use of numbers for different situations such as quantities,
percentages and days in months and regarding pronunciation, the unit focuses on the
pronunciation of the third person –s, -es, ( / s /, / z / , / ɪz / ).
McDonough, Shaw and Masuhara (2013) state that no textbook is likely to be the
perfect one and that the main objective of any textbook is to match the students’ needs.
Taking these two points into consideration, I decided to supplement the section A day in
the life of Sara Robbins on page 64 (Appendix 1) not only to give the students some variety
by not using the textbook, but also because that particular section provides some kind of
input about present simple with the reading text but it does not provide any tasks or
activities to use questions and affirmative answers, which the students needed in order to
describe their daily routines. Actually, when completed, the task would take students to
completing a very similar text (an article on a celebrity’s routine) and at the same time,
they would have the opportunity to review and consolidate their grammar to talk about
daily routines.

Supplementary Material and Rationale for Selection and Use

Tomlinson (1998) states three basic questions we have to answer to evaluate and
probably supplement the course book tasks. The first one is what the student is expected
to do. The second one is who they are expected to work with, and the third one is the
content of the expected outcome. The material selected was a task from the Face 2 Face
Elementary Teacher’s Book, pages 147, 148 (Appendices 3 A, 4 B) which is about a
presenter on a TV game show called First Date. The task is a gapped-text which would
provide an opportunity for students to use L2 in a semi-communicative task by first,
reading and understanding what missing information they have to ask for, which raises
student’s awareness as to how form and meaning are connected, Thornbury (2001). Then,
they are to write the correct (both grammatically and communicatively) question to
obtain the information (What students are expected to do). Students will also have to
work with a partner who needs information they have (Who they are to work with).
Finally, the content of the expected outcome will be a written text similar to the one they
have in Unit 7 of their course book: A Day in the Life of Sarah Robbins.
 Evaluation of the material used and its effectiveness

As a whole, I could say that the lesson was effective and the materials selected
proved to be efficient and helpful for the students. The task seemed to provide most
students with opportunities to become aware not only of the features of the present
simple in questions and affirmative answers but also of the students’ weak points when
using the target structure. This seemed to have been due to the fact that the task was
divided into the question writing, which provided students with an opportunity to raise
awareness, and the interview in which students had to use both the question and the
affirmative sentence. Tomlinson (1998) states that materials should help students build
confidence and the materials suggested for this lesson proved to help students be more
confident as they progressed in the task. Evidence for this was the fact that once they had
written the first two or three questions, they were more engaged in doing the task
because they were remembering the structure and they were using it more efficiently. As
for the second part of the task, once students had made the first two or three questions
and obtained the information, they realized they were able to complete the task
efficiently and correctly. At this point, most of the students were using the target
structure confidently and some of them were even correcting themselves or their
partners.
McDonough, Shaw and Masuhara (2013) state that when adapting materials we
have to match external factors such as the specific teaching situation and internal factors
such as content to achieve congruence. The way the materials selected for this particular
lesson seemed to have matched the students’ needs and how the materials seemed to
have helped students in the reviewing and reinforcement of the target structure seemed
to provide evidence to the fact that this congruence was achieved.
On the other hand, some areas have to be worked on. One of these areas is the
introduction of the vocabulary in the material. I thought most of the vocabulary would be
clear for students but it was not. At the planning stage I failed to recognize that they
would have more questions about vocabulary and I neglected some pre-teaching of
vocabulary that would have proved to be beneficial for the students such as presenter,
date, record. My failure to introduce these pieces of vocabulary took some extra time and
although I do not believe that this affected the outcome of the whole class, at the
moment that students needed the vocabulary, this delay seemed to change the pace of
the task. Another aspect that in the practice differed from the planning stage was the
timing. Students took longer than planned to grasp the aim of the task and an extra
example had to be given before they started working on their own. This fact might also be
attributed to my use of the language. I believe at the moment of explaining the
instructions I said too much or spoke too fast for students to understand and evidence of
this was their faces in confusion and then someone asking for clarification.

Action to take if these materials are to be used again

The pre-teaching of some lexis could enhance the students’ performance and it
might help the materials benefit students more. Helping students with the vocabulary may
help them focus on the form and not the lexis. Another aspect to reflect on more is the
timing. The two stages proved to be longer than I had planned and therefore they proved
to be more challenging than anticipated. The other aspect that I have to be careful with is
my use of language. If I do not control my TTT or the speed of my language, I will not be
able to offer the help that students need to consolidate or develop their L2 in future
lessons.

Number of Words: 1280

Bibliography

 McDonough, Jo, Shaw, Christopher, Masuhara, Hitomi (2013), Materials and

Methods in ELT, West Sussex, UK
 Thornbury, Scott (2001), Uncovering Grammar, MacMillan Heinemann, ELT
 Tomlinson, Brian (1998), Materials Development in Language Teaching, Cambridge
University Press