DEVELOPING TEACHER-MADE MATERIALS

Abstract

Teaching materials form an important part of most English teaching programs. From textbooks, videos and pictures to the Internet, teachers rely heavily on a diverse range of materials to support their teaching and their students’ learning. However, despite the current rich array of English language teaching materials commercially available, many teachers continue to produce their own materials for classroom use. Indeed, most teachers spend considerable time finding, selecting, evaluating, adapting and making materials to use in their teaching. In this paper we synthesize a range of ideas from the literature on materials design. We consider why teachers might want to design their own teaching materials and look at some of the advantages and disadvantages. We investigate six factors that teachers need to take into account when considering designing their own materials; and finally we present ten guidelines for designing effective English teaching materials.