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A huge variety of materials for English language teaching exist! Many of these materials are professionally developed and commercially published, and you will be fortunate if you use them. But they are not available everywhere, and they are too expensive for many ESL/EFL programs. In fact, the minimal budgets of some programs do not allow them to provide any teaching materials for classes. If you find yourself in a situation where you don’t have the materials you need to teach (or money to purchase those materials), don’t despair. The guidelines and ideas presented in this unit will help you pull through.
Scenario 1. Bob was an American going to a less developed country to teach English in a school connected with a humanitarian organization. Before he left, he was told that the school would provide English textbooks for him and his students. When he arrived in country and got to the school, however, he quickly realized that the textbooks were not only very old and worn but extremely outdated in their language, teaching/learning activities, and representations of modern American culture. For example, one unit on the various rooms in a house talked about a “parlor,” and the kitchen it depicted did not even have a microwave oven. Plus, most of the textbook activities involved simply repeating alphabetized lists of vocabulary items after the teacher and then translating sentences from the students’ native language into English and vice versa. Bob knew he would not enjoy teaching from this book and that, even if he did use it, his students would not learn the English they needed to communicate in the modern world. He had to do something different. Fortunately, the school administrators told him that he could teach any way and use any teaching materials he wanted. After all, he was the American “expert.” Glad for this freedom, he now wondered what helpful English-teaching materials he could come up with.
Scenario 2. Joan was a new teacher in a community ESL course held several evenings a week in her local public library. The students were adult immigrants to the United States. She was enthusiastic about helping them develop English skills. Those skills would allow the immigrants to integrate socially into the community and improve their economic situations by getting better jobs. She was shocked, however, when she learned that not only were there no textbooks provided (for her or the students) but also that there was no budget for purchasing supplementary materials. How could she teach if all she had was a chalkboard on the wall? She went to a local educational supply store, but the prices were higher than she could afford to pay. She was, after all, an unpaid volunteer teacher. Both of these teachers faced the challenge of either collecting or creating their own language-teaching materials at little or no cost. What would you do in if you were in Bob’s or Joan’s situation?
After completing this unit you will be acquainted with…
Visuals (words and pictures) and realia (authentic, real-world items that illustrate cultural and linguistic teaching points) can help convey meaning, capture students’ interest, and provide many other kinds of support for your learners, whether you are teaching English directly or engaged in content-based language teaching (see unit #35, “Teaching content-based language classes”). These items make abstract linguistic points concrete, visible, and memorable. They create a “here and now” that can make what you say more comprehensible to English language learners. They can also make classroom communication seem more natural. Any time you can provide visual support or bring real objects into the classroom, so much the better.
While it is possible to make many of your own teaching aids (see below), you don’t have to create everything on your own. You can simply gather up many useful items and take them to your teaching location. Many common, inexpensive items (e.g., an old newspaper, candy wrappers, cereal boxes, magazine pictures, etc.) have great linguistic and/or cultural value and can be used profitably in your classroom teaching. If you are teaching in your own community, getting these materials is relatively easy. If you are going abroad to teach English, you need to prepare ahead of time.
Below is a list of ideas for English teaching materials that you may want to gather to support your lessons. Not all of these items will be equally useful for all teachers in all situations. A lot will depend on your students’ age, proficiency level, learning goals, and cultural background. Nevertheless, since it is not always possible to get these items on the spur of the moment, you might want to at least start collecting some of them now.
But if you’re going abroad, space in your bags is limited, right? That’s OK. With a little resourcefulness and effort, there are many useful English-teaching materials you can get after you arrive.
In many countries around the world, even those where English is not the official language, you can still find locally published English-language newspapers (For instance, in China, the China Daily is widely available at many universities. In Japan??? In Mexico??) You may also find English-language magazines such as Time, Newsweek, and Reader’s Digest at newsstands, bookstores, and other places. It is also possible to subscribe to the international editions of many English-language news magazines, and they will be delivered right to your new address. These publications can be a rich source of English language teaching materials. They have stories, pictures, cartoons, and advertisements that can be used for English learning activities.
Even non-English local newspapers, magazines, and catalogs have pictures that you can cut out and use for visuals.
Of course, with a personal computer and an Internet connection, you have access to the World Wide Web and a universe of potential language-teaching materials. Add a printer, and the possibilities for creating language-teaching materials from Internet sources are virtually endless.
Wherever you teach, you can always create your own flash cards, word cards, and pictures. There is really no limit to the things you can do with these simple but extremely helpful teacher-made language-teaching materials. The only limitations are your own teaching ideas, imagination, and creativity.
If you’re going abroad, once you are in-country, you can usually get paper-based teaching-support items, such as index cards, poster board, and construction paper, as well as markers, without too much difficulty. The only trick is finding where they are sold. As a foreigner and cultural outsider, You may need some help knowing where to go, but you can often rely on your adult students for help. All you need to do is tell your students,“ I need some felt pens. Who would like to go on a little field trip with me this afternoon and show me where I can buy some?” This won’t work in all situations, but in many countries, highly motivated students will be happy to show you around and practice their English in the process. They know the city, they’ll take you to the right spot, and they may even translate for you as necessary. Of course, you shouldn’t use children for this purpose; you always need to abide by school regulations.
Here are a few examples of language-teaching activities using simple word cards and pictures:
Pictures clipped from magazines and catalogs are useful. Having a CD or computer hard drive with lots of commercial, professional clip art on it is also nice, and you may be able to go online, download images from the Internet, and print them out for your instructional purposes. But you don’t have to rely on these external sources for every visual illustration.
With a little bit of practice and some confidence, you (yes, YOU) can draw your own pictures and use them for teaching materials. The most important thing to remember is that the purpose of these pictures is communication, not aesthetic effect. You don’t have to be a great artist. Even non-artistic teachers can draw simple pictures to support their teaching. It does not have to be beautiful; just communicate. Now, if you draw a cow, and it ends up looking like a truck, that’s a problem. But as long as it resembles a cow and communicates the idea of that four-legged, horned, dairy animal, that’s fine.
This kind of “teacher art” can make a big difference in your teaching, and its development requires only a little instruction and practice, not great artistic talent. Let’s start with something simple and useful--faces and emotions. All you have to do is combine a few different, easy-to-produce elements.
The best way to learn how to draw these different elements and then combine them for the desired effect is to doodle. Get out a blank piece of scratch paper and try drawing faces for various emotions (happy, sad, angry, surprised, shouting, tired (yawning), in pain, afraid, worried, puzzled, crying, concerned, hungry, flirting). It’s fun, and pretty soon you’ll have the confidence and skill necessary to do them on sheets of paper to use in activities or even on the board in front of your class.
Here are some videos that we might watch in class:
Think about each of the following questions related to the video you just watched. Write a sentence or two in response to each one.
If you want to know more about collecting and creating your own teaching materials, you can refer to these additional resources.
David Cross. (1999). A practical handbook of language teaching. New York: Prentice Hall International. ISBN 0-13-380957-9 (out of print, but available from many used-book sellers) Starting on page 119, chapter 10 is devoted to making and using simple teaching aids. If you don’t know how to do this, here is all the guidance you need. Cross also provides a rationale for using teaching aids to enliven learning, create enthusiasm, improve memory. Cross worked as an English Teacher in some of the poorer parts of the world for about thirty years, so he knows how to work on a tight budget. Starting on page 110, there is also a whole section on how to draw pictures. It has lots of examples of teacher art that you can use as models.
Bruce Marsland. (1998). Lessons from nothing: Activities for language teaching with limited time and resources. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-62765-6 “Lessons from Nothing is a practical sourcebook of around 70 language teaching activities which do not require extensive facilities or preparation. Devised primarily for teachers working in limited-resource environments, this book is invaluable for busy teachers everywhere who are looking for easy-to-use activities.”
Andrew Wright. (1984). 1000 pictures for teachers to copy. Collins ELT and Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. ISBN 0-201-09132-1 “Many teachers recognize the usefulness of simple drawings in their teaching. For language teachers…drawings have many advantages: they are quick to do; their content can be determined exactly by you; and they are easy to reproduce. But many teachers think they cannot draw, or that they do not have the time to do so. For these teachers, 1000 Pictures for Teachers to Copy is a unique and invaluable resource. The numerous themes and subjects covered by the illustrations in this book…include people, animals, everyday settings, common lexical items, grammatical points and sequential narrative.”
Norma Shapiro and Carol Genser. Chalk talks. Berkeley, California: Command Performance Language Institute, 1994. ISBN 0-929724-15-1 “This unique book will allow you to accomplish things in the language acquisition classroom that you may not have thought possible. You will be able to use your students’ own lives, regardless of their age or learning level, as a basis for your lessons—their stories, their ideas, their real-life concerns. How is this possible? The secret is in the symbols—simple drawings that serve as immediate cues for speaking.”
If you have suggestions for other resources (books, websites, etc.), please send them to TLYSK@byu.edu