LANGUAGE ANALYSIS AND LANGUAGE LEARNING 681

ASSIGNMENT 4

DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHING MATERIALS

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays nobody complains of shortage of teaching materials for EFL. Most

methodologies teachers use are supported by various textbooks, supplementary materials,

workbooks, reference books, listening and pronunciation courses, dictionaries and so on. In

addition to all mentioned above, modern teachers and students are also able to use on-line

materials.However, learning and teaching English as a foreign language in non-English speaking

countries still comes across a number of serious problems and shortcomings. One of them (and

widely recognized by most practising school teachers) is the availability of the only one textbook

(based on the national curriculum and syllabus), using of which is obligatory. Consequently, such

textbooks are far from being all-embracing, lack in one way or another, and are criticized by both

teachers and students. Not surprisingly, school teachers (being much more aware of practical side

of language acquisition problems) come along with ideas of improving existing teaching materials.

In Saudi Arabia today grammar and pronunciation seem to be reasonably covered in the

existing set of materials. However, after several years of learning EFL at school, most students

still find it difficult to express themselves in English and complain that English-speaking people

often don’t understand them. I can see the reason for that in insufficient (and in many cases

inappropriate) vocabulary taught.

THE PROBLEM

As long as Saudi Arabian National Curriculum is claimed to be based on the

Communicative Approach, one should expect the existing textbook to teach the students mostly

authentic and communicative language. In reality, it is rather formal and artificial. One of the

examples is astonishing scarcity of idioms and phrasal verbs. The latter don’t exist in Arabic, but

are an essential part of English. According to Mahmoud (2000) , the most frequently used by

Arab learners of English strategy is literal translation. And any English teacher is , certainly, aware

of the fact that one can not ‘literally’ translate English phrasal verbs. So, Mahmoud (2000) comes

to the conclusion that “ errors such as ‘break out problems’ and ‘run off pain’ could not be

interlingual” but “intralingual”. From my own experience, I feel it necessary to pay more

attention to English lexis (not only introducing but also mastering) in Saudi Arabian secondary

schools. It can also motivate the students and bring variety to some boring lessons (by using

songs, jokes, cartoons, etc.).

THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF DESIGN OF MATERIALS

My choice was influenced mainly by the ideas of Communicative Language Teaching and

Lexical Approach. Lewis (1993) stated that “successful language is a wider concept than accurate

language”, and it seems to be true when we consider which student has more opportunity to

express themselves -the one with perfect knowledge of grammar rules of the one whose English

vocabulary is larger? I also agree with his assumption that beginners/ elementary

materials/methods “are radically different” (Lewis, 1993) from upper-intermediate ones, and tend

to believe that applying of the mentioned above approaches properly may be highly motivating for

school students , as they presuppose some interesting context and can provide good topics for

discussion.

As far as many mistakes are made due the students’ trying to copy their native language

into English, such theory as Contrastive Linguistics can not be avoided. Matthews (2005) defines
it as “ any investigation in which the structures of two languages are compared” and stresses that

it is “explaining, and possibly helping teachers to remedy errors made by speakers of one language

in learning the other”, which is our primary concern.

The choice of the developing materials based on phrasal verbs also requires some

theoretical explanation on the nature of phrasal verbs. Swan (2005) gives the following definition

:”common short verbs like ‘bring, come, do, get, give,go, have, keep, make, put and take’
are very often used with prepositions or adverb particles (e.g. on, off, up, away) to make two-
word verbs. These are called ‘prepositional verbs’ or ‘phrasal verbs’, and many of them are
idiomatic.”

It is also widely known that one use more phrasal verbs in informal speech , and I often

noticed that students know such words as ‘arrive’ and ‘ continue’, but never use (or even

understand) their equivalents - ‘turn up’ and ‘keep on’.

USE OF THE MATERIALS

While at lower levels (beginners/elementary) phrasal verbs and idioms can be taught just to

be recognized by students, at higher levels (intermediate/upper-intermediate/advanced) the idea

may be already to teach phrasal verbs and idioms to be widely used by students ( as nothing can

motivate students better than confidence that they, actually, can ‘speak’ a foreign language).

A set of exercises (which can constitute one 45 minute lesson in a Unit of four lessons

(not necessarily every week, but at least once a month)) may include the following exercises :

ROLE OF THE MATERIALS WITHIN A WIDER TEACHING FRAMEWORK

As already mentioned above, I presume that the similar sets of exercises can fit into the

syllabus and be included into the textbooks. They can be based on songs, book abstracts, extracts
from cartoons (“The Jungle Book”). I don’t see any difficulty with them being integrated into the

existing teaching materials as they are closely connected with teaching such aspects as reading,

writing, possibly listening, speaking. In addition, one simply can not imagine teaching lexis

without it being associated with grammar and phonetics. As for ‘communicative ability’ - learning

‘real-life’ English is definitely highly stimulative.

POSSIBLE PROBLEMS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR EXTENSIONS

Inevitably, some problems may arise in the process of teaching. To accommodate aims of

the national curriculum in Saudi Arabia, the teachers ( and designers of teaching materials) should

be rather selective in choosing vocabulary units for secondary school students, which may demand

a lot of creativity and be time-consuming. But, I am sure the results of introducing more authentic

materials and teaching the students to communicate using ‘real-life’ language will bring good

results.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I’d like to quote Harrison (2007) who said that “ by going through the

writing process themselves, teachers are able to evaluate published materials in a more informed

way”. Thus, development of teaching materials improves teachers’ professional skills and may

contribute to both EFL syllabus and curriculum.

REFERENCES

O’Dell, F. and Head, K. (2003).Games for Vocabulary Practice. Cambridge : CUP.

Harrison, R. (2007). Materials Writing. ET Professional. Issue 53, pp.49-51.

Lewis, M.(1993). The Lexical Approach: The State of ELT and a Way Forward. Hove :
Language Teaching Publications.

Mahmoud, A. (2000). Modern Standard Arabic vs Non Standard Arabic : Where Do Arab
Students of EFL Transfer from? Language, Culture and Curriculum, 13/2, 126-136.

Mahmoud, A. (2003). The Interlingual Errors of Arab Students in the Use of English
Binomials. Journal of Documentation and Humanities,15,9-22.

Matthews, P. (2005).The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford : OUP.

Swan, M. (2005). Practical English Usage. (3rd ed.). Oxford : OUP.

Workman, G. (1999). Making Headway : Phrasal Verbs and Idioms (upper-intermediate).

Oxford :OUP.