Tutorial Week 9:Designing Materials for Listening

• Preview extracts from a local textbook
• Form 2 Textbook Chapter 3: Famous Faces

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•  How closely do you feel that the listening process is mirrored in these materials?
• Learners are required to converse with a partner in classroom. One of them can take the role of a famous personality. The roles of a fan and a famous person can be reverse so that both the learners can have the chance to express, listen and react.
• To what extent do they assist in developing the listening skills of our learners?
• Authenticity exist in this task as the language reflect real discourse when they are giving compliment and congratulate. Language used is not difficult. For example ‘You sang the song beautifully.’ The other partner has to listen for the compliment and give acknowledgement.

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• How closely do you feel that the listening process is mirrored in these materials?
• Learners are required to listen to the conversation in order to fill in the blanks to complete the statements given in the task. It is a must for learners to listen attentively to given conversation, if they fail to do so, they will not be able to answer the questions correctly.
• In task B, the situation is the same. Learners are to listen to the conversation again to answer the questions given in task B.
• To what extent do they assist in developing the listening skills of our learners?
• Learners are to listen to the conversation attentively in order to understand and also identify the answers. Learners are listening for a purpose, with this, they will pay more attention to the conversation given.
• Not only that, learners have a background knowledge regarding the theme of the conversation as they have learnt it in the previous tasks. This allows them to be familiar and have a rough idea on the conversation where top-down processing occurs.
• The more exposure the listener has to them, the greater the ability to comprehend.

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• How closely do you feel that the listening process is mirrored in these materials?
• In activity A, learners are required to say words after the teacher. This activity focuses on the consonants of /v/ and /w/.
• In activity B, learners are required to pronounce words that they have learned in activity A.
• To what extent do they assist in developing the listening skills of our learners?
• In activity A, it is a bottom-up practice activity. Learners have to listen and repeat to the words after the teacher. Learners have to pay attention and listen accurately to the sound in order for them to get the pronunciation correctly.
• In activity B, it is a top-down activity since learners have to use their schemata of correct pronunciation of the words so that they can say the sentences aloud. This encourage learners to discuss what they already know about.
• We noticed that this activity has both bottom-up and top-down approach. Correlation between two approaches can help the learners to sharpen their listening skill.

• Preview extracts from a local textbook.
• Form 2 Textbook Chapter 13: Our Green Heritage

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• How closely do you feel that the listening process is mirrored in these materials?
• For task A, the learners are to listen to a recording and then pay attention to the sequence of the story. After that, they need to sequence the picture given in the textbook.
• For task B, the learners need to listen to the recording again and then they need to sequence the sentences given in the textbook.
• To what extent do they assist in developing the listening skills of our learners?
• For task A and B, the learners are listening for a purpose, they need to listen attentively to details from the recording.
• The task relates to top down process as it requires learners’ background knowledge to enable them to relate the description of recording with the picture given.  

Week 8 ● Reflection

In this week’s tasks, we were asked to compare and contrast the different adaptation techniques between Maley and Tomlinson, McDonough and Shaw and also Masuhara. We were also asked to compare and contrast the materials adaptation procedures. Looking the techniques and procedures, I realised it’s all almost similar, it’s the terms that are different. It was a good task as I feel that it is necessary for teachers to adapt their materials to fit the students’ learning context and objectives.

Materials adaptation is something I feel has to be applied somehow or rather as no two classrooms are the same. By adapting the materials, learners will be able to learn better as the materials can fit them better. Despite that, it is really up to the teacher to choose to apply these techniques of adaptation as some teachers may think the textbook and material itself is good enough for every students.

I remember back in high school, my friend from a different class were discussing about our English teachers and we were comparing the teachers and how they taught. I remember how my friend complained that the teacher follows the textbook and never changes or make the class more interesting which in turn resulted in the class being boring and uninteresting. On the other hand, my teacher would always add activities, modify the materials to suit our class. It was fun and engaging and we were given chances to interact more in the class and do extra activities which made us love our English lesson.

In my opinion, teachers should at least try to adapt the materials in suiting the learners as it will be much more effective. By having these techniques and procedures, I would definitely try to apply materials adaptation to enhance my teaching next time.

*This reflection was written on the 18th of December. The date was changed because I thought it'd be better if it was posted after the respective task.

Tutorial Week 7 ● Reflection

For the tutorial this week, we were required to sketch out a digital language learning material (DLLM) interface and explain our concept based on week 7’s lecture notes and articles given. I am thankful that I was exposed to digital learning materials in my first semester but I only knew a little about it. All I knew was that the materials used were tools related to the computer and Internet. Therefore, this week’s lesson on DLLM allowed me to understand it better and I really enjoyed reading about it.

I’ve learnt that in creating materials/DLLM, we have to consider many aspects such as the learning objects and materials, the usability of that particular material, etc. We have to see how practical is the material and how would learners accept it or use it as a language learning material. Seeing how the DLLM corresponds with the needs of the learners and the pedagogical usability. I realised DLLM is not created because we want the material to be interesting and students will pay more attention in class; besides that, it has to focus on how language is being learnt and how learners can use these DLLM to improve and apply in their daily lives.

I enjoyed this tutorial as it allowed us to create a DLLM in whatever way we wanted. I enjoyed searching through the Internet to find suitable websites and software that are interesting, fun and most importantly, user friendly. We chose ToonDoo as we found that it was practical and it had the ‘criteria’ we wanted. We thought its very user friendly and it will not be difficult for high school learners to use it. After deciding on the suitable website/material, we created a comic strip and came up with questions that will enable learners to use the website to answer the questions given.

This week’s tutorial task was definitely fun and helpful as I learnt more about DLLM and how it is important to not just create a DLLM for the sake of having an interesting activity, but to create a DLLM to aid and enhance one’s language learning process. I will definitely follow these theories and principles in designing an interesting and useful DLLM for my learners next time.

Tutorial Week 7: Sketching Out A Digital Language Learning Material

Digital Language Learning Materials.pptx