Stating the (not so) obvious: 5 tips for more effective materials design
by Catarina Pontes
April 30, 2024
In this post, Catarina Pontes summarises the talk she gave at the MaWSIG and BrazTESOL Joint Online Conference in November 2023, where she presented five different ways in which teachers can adapt materials to make their learners feel more engaged and make the most of their learning experience.
When designing a new English language teaching coursebook, it goes without saying that we need to consider some basic principles (like taking the target audience into account). But what does that really mean? How do we go about making informed decisions to provide learners with a meaningful, relevant learning experience as we go through the process of materials writing?
As a novice teacher (way back in the day!), I remember simply designing and selecting activities for classroom use based on the fact that they were fun (at least, they were for me!) and somehow related to the topic being taught. Sure, they were age-appropriate, mostly level-appropriate, but the task design and the extent to which they were suitable for the students and the course were certainly questionable. Fast-forward a few years and a few courses later, plus a few years of teaching and course design experience, and the way I approach task and materials design has significantly improved (phew!). I am proud to have been part of the organization and coordination of a course series that was nominated for the ELTons in the Innovation in Learner Resources Category (here it is in case you are curious ELTons Innovation Awards 2022 – Finalists).
In this post, I share five tips to consider next time you are at your desk planning and writing your upcoming classroom activities or your new course materials.
1. Know your audience
Knowing the target audience you are writing for certainly goes beyond stating the age range. Say the materials being designed are aimed at pre-school children – what characteristics do you immediately think of? Fine and gross motor skills, literacy, translanguaging, and stages of development are some of the items that should be on your list. Conducting research (be it desk or field research, or even working with focus groups), analysing data, and conducting lesson observations are some other important steps to be included in the pre-development stage. If your materials are aimed at teenagers or young adults, carefully selecting the topics and how they can be easily adapted considering different demographics is equally important. And if you have the chance to test and adapt your materials before they are officially launched, so much the better. This will help you try out your ideas and stand a much better chance of success.
2. Inclusion matters
Diversity, equity and inclusion have always mattered. If learners identify with, and feel represented in, the materials they use to learn a language, their learning experience will be greatly improved. Moreover, making sure materials are accessible, and that they cater for all learners’ needs (whether in printed or digital format) will have a significant impact and make a positive impression on learners. Consider how you can offer them the opportunity to customise the materials based on specific needs, such as those experienced by students with low vision or colour-blindness. Informed decisions regarding choice of fonts, colours, activity types, and how they facilitate the experience both in and outside of the classroom must always be considered. Careful selection of images and topics cannot be overlooked, either. Portraying a range of body types, age ranges, skin and hair colours, as well as different ethnic backgrounds, to name just a few considerations, will make your materials more relevant to a wider audience.
3. Think global, design local
Coursebooks designed for international use may fall prey to traps, such as asking learners to come up with solutions to problems that are not relevant to their context. Presenting a global problem like climate change and challenging students to think of local solutions will bridge the gap as you bring the use of the target language closer to their reality. Encouraging and inviting critical thinking, especially in classrooms where learners (such as those who have completed their studies) no longer have the opportunity to do so elsewhere can contribute significantly to the process of language learning, too. Seeing more immediate applicability to the language they are studying might help learners feel more connected with their studies.
4. Allow for personalisation
Back in the day, Stephen Krashen stated (in Rounds, 2011) that ‘we all learn languages in the same way – when it makes sense to us’. With that in mind, it makes sense to use learners’ background knowledge and their own contributions to personalise the activities done in class, such as information gap activities, drilling or role play. Going beyond the coursebook and thinking about the teaching itself, learning can be even more memorable when teachers welcome situations that allow for questions about incidental language, and when they make good use of teachable moments. Deviating from the original plan (and from the coursebook) to make lessons more relevant and memorable will contribute to making learners feel they are in a safe learning environment, and is likely to lead to greater levels of engagement.
5. Use and abuse of corpora
I believe I speak for all course designers and teachers when I say that we all want learners to communicate effectively. With that in mind, we might need to let go of old habits and incorporate new ones when writing materials. For example, if you are new to the business, you might need to ‘unlearn’ some things and ‘relearn’ the way you see language. We also know that everyday language does not always follow the rules we learnt at school. Pragmatics play a crucial role in materials design, and it is a great thing that we have a number of tools and resources to help us here. Corpus websites (such as the BNC or the COCA), online dictionaries based on corpora (such as Linguee), and sources like YouGlish (which guides us on the pronunciation of names of people, brands and places) are go-to resources. Streaming services are also a great way to combine work and pleasure, as they provide us with a constantly updated source of examples of how language is currently used in different English-speaking contexts, and these can guide us on what to include (or not) in the materials we are writing. After all, we all want to have materials that offer real-life English as opposed to the infamous ‘textbook English’, don’t we?
In addition to the five tips given above, here is a bonus one: make sure you include a range of accents in the audio tracks and a variety of ‘Englishes’ in your materials. We need to help learners know and understand that communicating in English today goes way beyond the dominant British and American varieties, and that even these offer a whole world of options. We have been talking about ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) for so many years now, but how many of its features have actually been included in coursebooks? How much do we talk about it in lessons? How much of it is considered when assessing learners?
Educating learners about the role of the most widely spoken language in the world can start in the materials we produce. The discussion has to continue in the classroom and in ELT forums alike. This can contribute to learners communicating more effectively, developing awareness, showing respect to different varieties, and fighting linguicism, too. This is the beauty of education in the foreign language classroom. It is even more exciting to think it can start with the materials we write.
Best of luck in this journey and feel free to share your own tips with me!
Catarina Pontes has been in education for over 25 years. She is an Executive Educational Products Manager at CNA Idiomas. A DELTA holder and CELTA trainer, Catarina is the co-author of “Getting into Teacher Education – a Handbook”. Catarina is also the former president of BRAZ-TESOL’s São Paulo Chapter, and former IATEFL PronSIG Coordinator.
References
British Council, 2022. ELTons innovation awards 2022 – Finalists. [online] Available at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/news-and-events/webinars/eltons-2022/eltons-innovation-awards-2022-finalists-0 [Accessed 7 February 2024].
Collins, 2021. COBUILD: The evolving corpus – How corpus use has changed over the years. [online] Available at: https://collins.co.uk/blogs/collins-elt/cobuild-the-evolving-corpus-how-corpus-use-has-changed-over-the-years [Accessed 20 November 2023].
EFL Magazine, no date. 4 ways to decolonize your English classes. Available at: https://eflmagazine.com/4-ways-to-decolonize-your-english-classes/ [Accessed 18 November 2023].
LinkedIn, 2023. Learning to write (better) ELT materials. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/events/learningtowrite-better-eltmater7127250166016823296/comments/ [Accessed 19 November 2023].
Rounds, M., 2011. Stephen Krashen on language acquisition. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTsduRreug [Accessed 7 February 2024].