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AKDENZ UNIVERSITY

ELT MA

MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT

REALIA
Sebahat YILMAZ 20118509716

Outline

Realia Definition Why Should We Use Realia? How can we decide if materials are appropriate? Using Realia: For Young Learners For Learning Vocabulary/Grammar In a role play With Reading Instruction Implementation Ways to Bring Real Life into the Classroom Activities Involving Realia New Uses For Realia Quick Ideas Virtual Realia Tips& Warnings Advantages of Using Realia Disadvantages of Using Realia Conclusion References

Realia Definitions
If youre thinking the word realia sounds vaguely Latin, then youd be correct. In the TEFL classroom, the word realia means using real items found in everyday life as an aid to teaching English. Using realia helps to make English lessons memorable by creating a link between the objects and the word or phrase they represent. Realia are physical objects that are related to the target culture. Realia refers to objects or items from real life , which are used in the classroom to illustrate and teach vocabulary or to serve as an aid to facilitate language acquisition and production. Realia are objects from real life used in classroom instruction by educators to improve students' understanding of other cultures and real life situations.

Realia Definitions
(in

language teaching) Actual objects and items which are brought into a classroom as examples or as aids to be talked or written about and used in teaching. (Longman Dictionary of
Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics. Richards, Platt, & Platt. 1992. Essex.)

Anything

which has a purpose outside of the ESL classroom and can be brought into the classroom. (Realia: Bringing the Real World into the
Classroom.Dickens, Robertson, Hofmann.1995. Victoria, BC.)

Objects

of any origin used to illustrate vocabulary and structure in the L2. (CelceMurcia & Hilles, 1988)

Concrete

objects and the paraphernalia of everyday life. (Zukowski-Faust, 1997)

Realia Definitions

Realia in EFL terms refers to any real objects we use in the classroom to bring the class to life. (Admin, 2008)

Everyday objects that surround us by relating them to langauge and looking at them in new ways. (Munford , 2008)

EXAMPLES

Why should We use Realia?


Kinesthetic

learning is the type of learning that students will most effectively acquire, mostly because they will have hands-on experience. The use of realia brings a welcome change in the class, a break from typical class activities like reading and writing. They are often more interesting than material from text books and can be on subjects that will really engage the students. Students will be expected to use real material when they leave your classes.

Why Should We Use Realia?

The unexpectedness of having to suddenly interact with real objects will keep students on their toes; it will create excitement, and theyll have fun. Students have the chance to practice real life situations like using maps and asking for directions in a foreign language, but with the guidance of someone who speaks fluently and will help them get it right. Once they hit the street, they will feel more confident in speaking the language with the locals. Students will clearly understand the reason theyre learning a particular ESL component. Inste ad of wondering when and where they might have use for a particular language element, theyll know the reason.

How can we decide if materials are appropriate?


Decide

if the topic matter is appropriate for your students, if you are not sure you can ask them or find out what their interests are. Look at how much new vocabulary and grammar structures are in the materials. If students are to cope with real material, they may have to learn to deal with topics with a lot of alien vocabulary.

Searching for Appropriate Realia


One solution for culture-content based EFL teachers is to keep their eyes open for useful realia such as magazines, adult education pamphlets, menus, newspapers, advertisements, maps and voting brochures. Teachers must develop an awareness of what can be utilized in a classroom. This involves both becoming more creative as materials designers and also more sensitive to the target culture and to the culture of the students.

Common Realia for Different Levels


Beginners
Television timetables Cinema timetables Train timetables Restaurant menus Postcards (Writing) Utility bills Application forms Classified adverts Recipes

Intermediate
Teenage magazines Surveys & teenage issues Newspaper articles from tabloid newspapers Instruction manuals Adverts & flyers

Advanced
General newspaper article Magazine articles Academic material At advanced level you can choose nearly anything, because they should have developed strategies to cope with unknown vocabulary.

Using Realia for Young Learners


If

you are going to teach English to young children, realia is a must. Young children are at the perfect age to learn a language and as visual learners, you should try to tap into their natural creativity. Bring in fruit, vegetables and lots of toys. Children love to role-play and enjoy playing games, so ask them to move animals onto tables, under tables, or around the farmyard. Make up simple stories using toy animals or puppets, and children will enjoy their English lessons, and be motivated to learn. TPR & Imperatives

Activity Time

When grow up...

I want to be a doctor. I want to be a teacher. I want to be a rock star.

You are going to tell us what you are and WHYHave Fun!!!

Choose the things that fit you, to dress up..

Dont be shy ; at the end when you are ready

Like your dream!

We may use these realia in many other ways. What are these ways?

Using Realia
for Learning Vocabulary/Grammar It is unrealistic to bring real objects into your classroom for every single word that you wish to teach and some words will lend themselves better than others to using realia. Remember, realia can be used indirectly as a tool for teaching grammar; for example, items of food and drink are perfect for teaching uncountable and countable nouns.

Using Realia with Reading Instruction


Bad Kitty Gets a Bath by Nick Bruel Another installment of "Bad Kitty," Bruel offers us an insightful and hysterical look at how to give a cat a bath. The Introduction reminds us of what happens when we have asked Kitty to do things that Kitty did not want to do...such as eat vegetables...before beginning the saga. The pictures are definitely worth a thousand words, especially with the expressions on Kitty's face! Examples of Realia: *sponge *brush *towel *stuffed animal (cat) *soap or shampoo *band-aids *"tub" (to serve as bathtub) Suggested Themes: humor inference (using the pictures to have students predict Kitty's feelings) prediction/connections (reading strategies) cats

Using Realia with Reading Instruction


The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens & Susan Stevens A dog drops its tennis ball into a prairie dog hole and the result is a good lesson on supply and demand! Prairie dogs, at first frightened by the strange object, soon discover how appealing and troublesome its fuzz can be! Examples of Realia: *stuffed animal (prairie dog)...if not available, substitute with picture of prairie dog *tennis ball *Great web site that includes pictures, sounds, video about prairie dogs:http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammal s/prairie-dog.html Suggested Themes: supply/demand (economics) sharing/respect (character education) bullies

Using Realia in Role-play


Dont stop at using realia to learn vocabulary or grammar. Use objects in role-plays to make the situation more realistic. This could be something as simple as a mobile phone or your train tickets. Using realia is only limited by your imagination: here are some ideas on how to use realia in your lessons. Use your countrys flag and a map to show students where you live and to help them learn the names of foreign countries. Timetables, tickets and pedestrian maps of London are great for practising role-play scenarios such as asking for directions, or buying tickets.

Implementation
Ways To Bring Real Life Into The Classroom We may teach a subject with flashcards or picture. However, if we bring realia students will be surprised and thrilled and will never forget this lesson. This is what the use of realia in the classroom is all about: the use of real life objects that students can touch, feel, and even smell to effectively teach ESL components. Here are some ways to take full advantage of the possibilities offered by the use of realia in the classroom.

Ways To Bring Real Life Into The Classroom


5 oclock tea

This is by far the best way to teach table manners, requests, or expressions related to ordering or serving tea, coffee, or any meal in a home setting. For the following dialogue: - Would you like some tea? - No, thank you. - What would you like? - Id like some coffee, please. - With milk and sugar? - Just black coffee.

Simply bring a childrens tea complete with tea cups, saucers, spoons, teapot and/or coffee pot, sugar bowl, creamer, biscuits, etc... and have students practice offering and serving each other coffee or tea. You can make it as simple or as complete as you wish, or as time allows.

Ways To Bring Real Life Into The Classroom


Eating out Obtain or Design and print out a menu with the food you'd like to teach including starters, main courses, and desserts. Have one student play the role of waiter and take orders, while the other students order their meals. Then have students switch roles.

Students may ask the waiter for a missing item like a spoon, fork, or napkin.

Ways To Bring Real Life Into The Classroom


Location, location, location!
To

teach prepositions of place take common classroom objects like pens, pencils, books, balls etc Place them on or under desks, and around the classroom; then have students simply tell you where each item is, or take turns asking each other where their own personal items are. Also for teaching this, that, these, and those, as the perspective of having items near and far from you clearly illustrates the differences between the demonstrative pronouns.

Ways To Bring Real Life Into The Classroom Tell me about your family
Real

family photos are great for not only learning about relationships but also physical descriptions. Have students bring one family photo each and describe family members. Students may also take turns asking classmates questions.

Ways To Bring Real Life Into The Classroom Lets have a fashion show
Children love to play dress up, and what a better way for them to learn items of clothing and colors than put them on and strut around the classroom to show off their unique style? Adult learners can also model the clothing theyre wearing.

Ways To Bring Real Life Into The Classroom Celebrate the holidays

Learning English is not only about learning to speak in a foreign language. Students should learn about cultural elements as well. Special holidays likeHalloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas offer unique learning opportunities. To teach students about Halloween, plan a celebration complete with pumpkin carving, costume contest, and typical games like bobbing for apples. Give your students the chance to experience the holidays and not just read about them.

Ways To Bring Real Life Into The Classroom


The Job Interview
Do

you have students who will be applying for jobs in English? Try to get your hands on some real job applications and have students practice filling them out in class. You may also conduct job interviews using real life interview questions. not only teach them the vocabulary they should know, give students the boost of confidence they need.

Role Play Time


Be

in groups of 4-5, There should be a total of 4 groups. One person from each group comes and picks an envelope. Read the instructions, and pick and use necessary realia for your roleplay. You have 5 minutes to complete it.

Activities Involving Realia


About me Gather some bits and pieces that you have in your bag, purse and around the house such as used cinema or concert tickets, train or bus tickets, cards youve received, passport photos, shopping receipts etc. Stick them on a piece of card or on a cork board. Get students to ask you about the items to gather information about you. As a follow up, ask students to do the same and bring in some bits and bobs they have for their classmates to ask

Activities Involving Realia


Identity envelopes Get three or four envelopes and fill them with bits and bobs you find around the house such as foreign currency, shop receipts, postcards, photos, buttons, etc. Put students into groups and ask them to have a good look at the objects and to decide who they belong to. They should be able to build up the identity of a character from the objects. You could say they are all suspects from a crime and they have to decide who did it, or simply create the characters to use in a role play.

Activities Involving Realia


Recycling race

(Depending on the recycling facilities in your country you will need to adapt the task accordingly) For this you just need a bag of rubbish (clean items out first) that you are about to recycle like tetrabriks, glass jars, cereal boxes, tins, old newspapers etc. Ask students what all the objects are and which container theyd put them in to recycle them. Draw a picture of each of the possible containers and get students to come and choose an item and tell the class where theyd put it to recycle it and why. You could make this into a team race by giving each team the mission of collecting all the items for their container one by one. You could then use the recyclable material to make a poster with your students about recycling.

Activities Involving Realia


Island survival Bring in a selection of items such as a coat hanger, a corkscrew, a packet of dental floss, a clothes peg, a plastic bag, a wooden spoon, some swimming goggles, elastic bands etc. Put the students into groups and tell them they have been ship wrecked on a desert island with their group. Luckily there are some random items on the island they can use to help them survive. Reveal the items one by one and elicit vocabulary. Then tell students they have ten minutes to think about how they are going to use the items to help them survive. At the end, listen to each groups ideas and vote on which group you think would survive the longest.

New Uses for Realia


1. Specific Grammar Points Scissors and the Present Perfect Tense

Write three sentences representing different uses of the present perfect tense on the board. Hold the scissors pointing up, so the class can see, with one hand on each handle. Open the blades by moving the left hand up, keeping the right hand still. Now say the first sentence, 'I have lived in London all my life', slowly closing the blades with your right hand. Open the scissors as before, read the second sentence: 'I have seen that film three times', but this time stop the blade three times on the way, to represent the three times. For the last sentence, 'I have just had lunch', open the scissors slightly then snap them shut. Note: The upright blade represents the present and the moving blade represents time moving between the past and present. By moving the blades you can show that all three sentences have the connection between past and present in common, even though the last sentence is dealing with a very short time ago. As you are facing the class, you should move your left hand, not right, so that the students will see the 'past' blade moving toward the present, from their left to right.

1. Specific Grammar Points


A Corkscrew, a Bottle Opener, Action and State Verbs The different ways of opening wine and beer bottles can be related to state and action verbs. Explain that when you open a beer bottle the bottle is either open or closed, i.e. it is in one state or the other. Compare this to the opening of a wine bottle. This is a process which you can see, as the screw is pushed in and pulled out. Hold a corkscrew in one hand and a bottle opener in the other. Say a verb and hold up the appropriate instrument (bottle opener for state verb, corkscrew for action verb). Get volunteer students to do the same. (NB some verbs e.g. 'think' can be both, so you may need a tool that does both!)

1. Specific Grammar Points


A Pencil Sharpener and Reduced Relatives Clauses Again, metaphor can make the unfamiliar more familiar. Students may not be familiar with reduced relatives such as 'The man (who was) killed in the accident was my neighbour' where the words in brackets can be omitted. Explain that by taking out the two words, you make the sentence better, more economical, and sharper, as a native speaker would. The metaphor of a pencil sharpener works like this: you cut off something to make the pencil sharper and more efficient.

1. Specific Grammar Points


A Tie and Prepositions. Show the students how to tie a tie. 'Put the tie round your neck. Cross the ends in front of you, then pull the smaller end under, Then over, then under again, over again, then up, behind the knot, through the knot, then down. Pull the knot up.'

2. Drills
A Whistle and a Pronunciation Drill Write the vocabulary that you want to practise on the board. Mark the stressed syllable(s). Now use the whistle to demonstrate which word you want the students to repeat by blowing the syllable pattern, e.g. blow 'long short short' to elicit 'confident' and 'short short long short' for 'population'. You need a variety of word lengths and syllable patterns for this.

2. Drills
A Ruler and a Drill Use a ruler or any similar object to 'conduct' a drill as follows: Write a sentence on the board. Practise the sentence, marking the stressed syllables. When the students can remember it, go to the back of the class, and ask them to turn and face you. Now conduct the drill, using the ruler as a baton. Looking at the board, beat the stressed syllables with the ruler while the students take their cue from you.

2. Drills
An Empty Bottle and a Drill Say a sentence into a bottle. Screw the lid on and tell the class that the sentence is in the bottle. Now open the bottle and let the sentence out one word at a time, that is, students repeat the sentence one word at a time. Put another sentence in the bottle, and tell students to pass the bottle round the class, letting one word out at a time, one word per student. Then let students fill the bottle in the same way. The point here is to get students to listen and focus on word order.

3. Free Speaking Activities


Discussion and a Microphone This is suggested by television programme hosts, who control conversations by the use of the microphone. Put students in groups, and give one student the. Say a group of six students are talking about 'holidays', the person with the microphone can move around the group giving different people the chance to speak, ensuring everyone gets an equal chance to contribute.

3. Free Speaking Activities


Tennis Balls and Conversation A tennis match can be a metaphor for a conversation. Put students in pairs facing each other, as in doubles tennis. They should be about 1 meter apart. Give one student a tennis ball. He starts talking about a subject then throws the ball to someone on the other team, who should continue on the same subject, before returning the ball to someone on the other team. They should keep the conversation moving swiftly. You can have a referee to penalise slow turns, 'foul' throws and dropped balls, and keep the score as in tennis, e.g. 15 love.

New Uses for Realia


Classroom

aids are all around us, but sometimes we need to think about the best ways to use an object. 'Mapping' the use of an object onto a language point, or finding a language related use of an object are two ways of using realia in class. Have look around the staffroom. The teaching aids you need may be closer than you think.

Quick Ideas
Take

along a hat, scarf, gloves, to introduce winter/winter activities. Teaching business English? Make use of mobile phones to create realistic telephone conversations. Use diaries, to schedule meetings, and plan events.

Virtual Realia
Virtual realia: (in language teaching) digitized objects and items from the target culture which are brought into the classroom as examples or aids and used to stimulate spoken or written language production. It is a collection of linguistic and nonlinguistic authentic materials which have been compiled, scanned, and posted on WWW server. It benefits especially those international teachers who are less mobile or unable to collect their own materials.

Virtual Realia
Can virtual realia still be considered realia? The larger question regarding authenticity of which realia is a part paints a confused and contradictory picture at best. What does seem clear, however, is that authenticity is a relative matter and that different aspects of it can be present in varying degrees (Taylor, 1994).

Virtual Realia

But virtual realia isn't really the object at all; it's just a digitized image of the item. Foreign language practitioners do accept modifications of realia items such as the lamination of authentic materials onto a card (Zukowski-Faust, 1997). Wood (1980) even presents the postage stamp as a cultural artifact that may be easily photographed and enlarged to facilitate its use and discussion in class.

Tips & Warnings


Prepare

your materials and supplies before the lesson. Purchase all the necessary supplies beforehand, rather than wait until the last minute to go shopping for them. Make all photocopies necessary or cut flashcards. Organize these into envelopes. If youre using clothing, pack them into a bag the night before. There must be : a purpose of the language and content, accordance with level, age , complexity, students interests and needs, quality rather than quantity.

The Advantages of Using Realia

As English teachers, the use of realia is only limited by your imagination. It is possible to use realia to teach almost any subject. Using realia stimulates the mind, and is one way of encouraging creativity by involving the senses. Realia saves time, as recognition of an object is immediate and so cuts out the need for lengthy explanations and drawing funny pictures on the board. Elicitation becomes much easier and holding up the object with a raised eyebrow will usually result in the desired word being spoken. Realia breathes life into new vocabulary, and the chances of your students remembering the new words you have taught them increases.

The Advantages of Using Realia


Using realia in the EFL class proves a positive and rewarding experience since it makes lessons more interesting and enjoyable is a link between language learning and sociocultural learning brings EFL classes nearer to the English speaking countries helps students to discover and process new input is a good complement to the usual reading materials

Advantages of Using Realia


Accessible Relevant Visually interesting

and captures the attention of the learner Provides a focus away from the written word or the 1:1 interaction its like a third person that can be spoken about (without consideration to feelings, social conventions etc) Useful to help your students grasp the cultural differences or learn practical skills.

Disadvantages
Real

objects may not support a cultural distinction. Activities with real objects might lose the class path. Spending too much time in one activity with real objects in the class.

Conclusion
You will have probably realized by now that including realia in the classroom involves a great deal of preparation in some cases. Is it really worth you time? The answer is, yes. Absolutely! And your students faces will be living proof.

References

Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teaching with DVD (4th Edition) (Longman Handbooks for Language Teachers). Pearson Longman ELT. pp. 177. ISBN 978-1-4058-5311-8. Jean-Pierre Berwald. 1987. Teaching Foreign Languages with Realia and other Authentic Materials. Eric. Center for applied linguistics. Washington. Autumn 2004 Publication . CATS: The IATEFL Young Learners SIG

Simon Mumford. Using Creative Thinking to Find New Uses for Realia. Izmir University of Economics Turkey. Penny Ur. 1988 Grammar Practice Activities. Cambridge University Press.

http://authenticteaching.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/business-englishrealia/ http://busyteacher.org/ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/realia http://www.ehow.com/how_4549705_use-realia-esl-lessons.html

References

http://elementaryreadingrealia.blogspot.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realia_(education) http://iteslj.org/Articles/Smith-Realia.html http://www.jamesabela.co.uk/advanced/realia.ht ml http://www.learner.org/libraries/tfl/key_terms.html http://oupeltglobalblog.com/tag/realia/ http://www.stephenhenryconsulting.com/letter/dr_ lozanov.php http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/languageassistant/teaching-tips/realia http://www.usingenglish.com/weblog/archives/00 0228.html

Karaoke Time?
As a post activity or to spend last 5 minutes in an enjoyable way, we may listen and sing a song with our microphone.

Thank You.

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