Tips for designing your own teaching materials

We all have sometimes listened to English teachers complaining about their groups of students at school: 'these kids just do not behave', 'this group is out of control', 'they do not and will not care about the subject', among other things. But, have these teachers ever thought that they may need to do something about the way they teach and the resources they use so as to change these problems?

Nowadays, it is very common that the majority of teachers rely heavily on coursebooks. In their work Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials, Jocelyn Howard and Jae Major point out that "most coursebooks remain organised around grammar elements and the PPP (presentation, practice, production) model of teaching, often with an 'unrelenting format' which can be 'deeply unengaging'".

Thus, what teachers may find useful would be the creation of their own teaching materials; nevertheless, they are likely to find some difficulties in doing so. Howard and Major describe some disadvantages when designing materials; they name the fact of organisation (which they say coursebooks fulfill greatly), quality (in the sense that teachers' designs "seem ragged and unprofessional next to those produced by professionals" (Block, 1991, p.212, emphasis in original) and time (labeling this activity as a time consuming one)

We will pay close attention to guideline number 1 and guideline number 4, which we consider extremely important when deciding to use yor own materials:

The first one exposes that materials should be contextualized, taking into account three specific areas: the curriculum they are intended to address, the experiences, realities and first languages of the learners, and the topics and themes that provide meaningful, purposeful uses for the target language. In short, they state that both the institution where we teach and the learner's specific culture will determine the techniques we may decide to use so as to ensure engagement and provide motivation.

Guideline number four, which states that language teaching materials should allow for a focus on form as well as function, puts emphasis on the importance of seeing languages as something to be manipulated. Thus, as well as providing instances for real communication, materials should allow students to form and test their own hypotheses, within the frame of an analytical approach.

In conclusion, if we follow what these guidelines suggest, we are likely to produce a change in learners' moods, getting them to a "state of 'expectancy' (What will happen this time?) rather than 'expectation' (Oh, not that again!)" (Marley, 2003, p.2)

                           Some issues to think about when deciding to design...

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