WEEK 9

In this activity, students are required to listen and understand a talk. Question (A) is asking about what are the changes that happen to the teenagers and the counsellor’s role in helping students to solve the problems. Question (B) will be about what effects that growing up have on teenagers. Firstly, students will be discussing about the questions based on the audio recording. The question starts with a bottom-up process where students have to listen to the topic in the talk and later on they will have to answer a question about changes that teenagers are facing now, activities that involved in this question are answering and duplicating. First, the listener will listen to the topic and then they will answer the question, other than that they are actually duplicating what is mention by the speaker in the audio. Next, the question which can a counsellor help them to solve those problems actually involved top-down process, students have to discuss the question based on what they know simply saying that they will have to utilize their schemata. We would say that the extending activity involved in the question because they have to think beyond the text by continuing whether talking to a counsellor can help students solve the problems.

    Question C need the students to use both top-down and bottom-up processes. To understand what they have to do, first they have to listen the audio recording and recall back a situation where they seek for someone advices and then they will have to relate the experiences to their friends. The audio recording acts as a guide for them to recall what information that they can use in relating the experience to their friends. This guide or scaffolding, become the base of their knowledge and they can get access to it. This is the combination of both top-down and bottom-up processes, often called the hybrid process.

     The listening process play a crucial part in this activity because they need to be able to understand the text to be able to answer the questions. To be able to understand this, they need to listen properly to the audio recording. Picking up the major points from a text is the most crucial ability to master and by training them to listen properly, little by little, they would be able to pick up the points from a recording. This contributes to generate meaning from what they heard. With the information they collected, it is now possible to answer the questions by referring back to what they heard and thus comprehension is established.

Reflection

Evaluation Questions:

- How it affects me?

     I would say that listening is one of the trickiest elements for me to learn but in the end we still have to learn it because we know that for a normal human being without listening you cannot interact to each other.  As I mention before listening is a bit difficult for me and as a future teacher I have to overcome this problem so that I can give my lesson smoothly to my future students.

-How does it affect my current level of knowledge & how can I use that knowledge to improve myself?

      Listening activity is not just listen and simply answer a yes or no question but it is more than that. In listening activity it triggered our cognitive process which involved bottom-up and top-down processes. Bottom-up is process which is the lower level and it is triggered by the sounds, words, and phrases which listeners hear as they attempt to decode speech and assign meaning. While top-down process is the higher level process that required listeners to utilize schemata or background knowledge and global understanding to derive meaning and interpret the message.

This knowledge will be useful when it is time for me to conduct listening activity in my class in the future.

WEEK 8

a) Compare and contrast McDonough and Shaw, Maley and Tomlinson and Masuhara adaptation techniques. Are there are differences or are they similar?

          The material adaptation techniques that all of them applied are almost similar in terms of the quantity. All of them mentioned about addition, omission/reduction, expansion/extension and many more in their adaptation techniques. Only McDonough and Shaw apply the simplification technique, which is simplifying the sentence, lexical content and grammatical, where Maley and Tomlinson and Masuhara did not apply. McDonough and Shaw categorised their techniques into 5 different types, which are addition, deleting, modifying, simplifying and re-ordering whereas Maley divided the techniques into 8 parts, which are omission, addition, reduction, extension, rewriting/modification, replacement, re-ordering and branching. On the other hand, Tomlinson and Masuhara categorised their techniques into 3 categories based on the quantity, which are plus (addition, expansion), minus (deletion, subtraction, reduction) and zero (modification, replacement, reorganisation, resequencing, conversion). They used different terms but all in all, it is almost the same.

b) Compare and contrast McDonough and Shaw with Tomlinson and Masuhara’s materials adaptation procedures. Are there any differences or are they similar?

Compare and contrast

1.     

            Adaptation framework

Tomlinson and Masuhara’s framework	McDonough and Shaw framework
Have 7 steps	Have 4 steps
Covers huge area not only adaptation of material (but also the reasons for adapting to using it in teaching and revising it)	Covers a narrow area which is only the adaptation part.

2.      Adaptation Technique

Tomlinson and Masuhara’s framework	McDonough and Shaw framework
Uses all 3 category of technique which is known as plus, minus and zero category technique.	Uses 5 technique which is known as adding, deleting, modifying, simplifying and re-ordering. (can be categorize into the plus, minus and zero category technique).

3.      Evaluation

Tomlinson and Masuhara’s framework	McDonough and Shaw framework
Does evaluation after adapting and using it in teaching.	Does not do any evaluation after finish adapting.

c) List and discuss the levels of materials adaptation.

Levels of adaptation can divided into 3 parts which are macro adaptation, adapting a unit and adaptation of specific activities in a unit.

1^st level: Macro adaptation:

-      The first level will be done before the language program begins.

-      Macro adaptation helps to avoid waste of time and energy of the teacher and the students.

-      Helps the teacher to see what he/she needs to supplement so that he/she can keep an eye on                materials that could be used.

-      After comparing between what is covered in a textbook and what is required by the syllabus or examination, teacher can find certain areas or whole chapter of the book can be omitted, and certain contents need to be supplemented.

 2^nd level: Adapting a unit:

-      Helps to make the classroom teaching more smooth and cohesive.

-      Helps teachers to better fulfil the aims of a unit.

-      In this level we will reordering activities, combining activities, omitting activities, rewriting or supplementing exercise materials.

3^rd level: Adaptation of specific activities in a unit

-          Activity in a unit is regarded as valuable but it is not well-designed or not practical in a particular class. If teacher still want to use the activity he/she need to adapt it.

-          Adaptation involves supplementation, which is teachers add materials from other.

-          Teachers can used authentic materials for their supplementation which is better than non-authentic materials.

-          Teachers who use authentic materials will find it much easier to adapt textbooks.

-          Although, authentic materials are not always readily to hand, some adjustment have to be done so that teachers can use the materials as their supplementation.   

d)Chapter 4: Stop Air Pollution

The level of materials adaptation applied to this task is the first level, called and known as macro adaptation. Meanwhile the techniques that will employ to enrich the chosen chapter are by supplementing an audio-visual material as well as ‘realia’ which is a pamphlet. 

Under the speaking task (Let’s Talk, page 45): Teacher will play a video about haze and also distribute copies of pamphlet issued by the Ministry of Health regarding on haze. In pair work, students will record a video for a role-play between a news reporter and an officer who working in the Ministry of Health by answering these questions;

            1.         What causes haze?

            2.         What are the effects of haze?

            3.         What is the basic precaution you would take if you are exposed to haze?

Later on, students need to upload their video in Facebook so that they can state their comments and awarding the ‘Like’ button to each other for the whole class. The video which achieves the highest ‘Like’ button will get a reward from the teacher.

Media accompaniment: Video, pamphlet and social media network.

Reflection

How it affects me?

Well for us, as future English teachers, we need to know how to adapt. This is very crucial and can probably affect the students and direct them to the wrong direction if we do not know how to adapt. We should be aware that materials created should be relatable to the students and the difficulty is not too high or too low. On the other hand, we should also focus on how we can adapt the materials so that if the materials exceeds or does not fit the learners, we can always fall back on a backup. By understanding that there are a lot of techniques that can be used to adapt materials, we can be sure that we are on the right track of being a well-educated, well-prepared English teachers. Besides that, by understanding why there are needs for adaptation, we can know whether we are effective teachers or just run-of-the-mill, regular teachers.

 How does it affect my current level of knowledge?

Honestly, we do not really know about adaptation, because we have never found out about that in context. All the techniques in adaptation were regularly used by teachers throughout the world and somehow, that slipped our attention. When we were exposed about the materials adaptation techniques and procedures, we know that teachers do a lot of things to make sure their students will understand and learn from their lessons. Adding, deleting, modifying and simplifying are all the techniques used by teachers to adapt their materials and we as future teachers, should be able to understand the need and be able to adapt the materials if necessary.

 How can I use that knowledge to improve myself?

Learning how to adapt is very crucial because even though you feel that your materials are good enough, it may not fit the students during the lesson. Materials adaptation can ensure that your materials can fit the students even if they are weak students. Adaptation techniques work wonders even when teachers cannot carry on with their materials. In our opinions, we think that materials adaptation is a must skill for teachers as anything can happen in this doggy dogged world. We should always be prepared for anything when we are teaching and materials adaptation is just the solution.

WEEK 7

Examples of Digital Language Learning Material

-          Facebook

-          Twitter

-          Blogger

-          Prezi

-          Wordpress

-          Tumblr

-          Youtube

-          Edmodo

-          Schoology

List down SLA theories and principles

-Interactionist theory (Long, 1985; 1996)

-Sociocultural theory

-Communicative language teaching

-Comprehensible Input theory (Swain, n.d.; Krashen, 1991)

-Affective Domain (Krashen, 1991)

Principles:

- Materials should help learners develop confidence

- What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful

- Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment

- Materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use

- Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use TL to achieve communicative purposes

- Materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles and affective attitudes

- Materials should provide opportunities for outcome feedback

Criteria of technical usability:

-Errors

(i) Less serious errors = affect the work of the user

(ii)More serious errors = endanger the preservability of users’ outputs

-Efficiency

·Refers to how well experienced users can operate an application after they have mastered it.

-Learnability

·How long beginners’ use of a system before they learn the essential skills necessary to perform their tasks

-Memorability

·Ability of an occasional user who previously used the system to remember its operational system

Criteria of pedagogical usability

-Feedback

(i) The system or learning material should provide the student with encouraging and immediate feedback è encouraging feedback increases learning motivation; immediate feedback helps the student understand problematic part in their learning

(ii) Learning is based on the fact that mistakes are corrected immediately and progression cannot happen when corrections are not done.

-Motivation

(i) Affects learning and makes people behave the way they do

(ii)Motivation = the way to do things by reference to instincts, desires and reinforcement; support the direction on one’s general behavior

(iii)Motivation affects alertness and vigor

-Goal orientation

(i) When the goals of teacher, students and LM are closely aligned, best results are obtained

(ii)Goals should be clear cut and able to motivate them to achieve them

(iii)When the students themselves do not set their goals, their meaningfulness should be justified from the point of view of motivation

(iv)Students should be able pursue their own interests in relation with learning goals

-Learner control

(i) Learner’s memory should be pushed to the limit when learning a new topic

(ii)Materials should be broken down to be learned into small meaningful units

-Applicability

(i)The approach taken in learning material should correspond to the skills that the learner will later need in everyday and working life

(ii)The skills or knowledge acquired should be able to be transferred to other contexts

(iii)Learning something new can be accomplished effectively by relating it to practical tasks

(iv)LM should be at appropriate level from the point of view of learner’s learning process

- Added value

(i)Induce creativity in learners when using DLLM

(ii)Other kind of added value: adaptability to individual needs, number of flexible options, learning is controlled and initiated by learners, interesting contents, development of communication, active participation of students

-Learner activity

(i)Learners’ independent activity may increase when a teacher stays in background; a facilitator

(ii)Learning materials can support learner’s activities by being interesting and based on real life

-Cooperative/collaborative learning

(i)Studying with others to achieve common learning goal

(ii)Instead of just acquiring personal knowledge, learners construct knowledge as members of community in practice

-Valuation of previous knowledge

(i) Previous knowledge from the learners are assumed to be possessing some skills that previously been presented

(ii)LM that respects learner’s previous knowledge takes account in differences of skills and knowledge in learners and encourages them to take advantage of it in learning.

-Flexibility

(i)Learner’s learning differences should be taken into account.

(ii)Information gained in pre-test can be used to provide learners with different routes or methods of studies.

Rough outline of DLLM

-          Using Prezi as a platform to develop the DLLM

-          Includes 6 activities; each according to the levels or bands according to the School-Based Assessment (SBA) that the MOE developed

-          Using a chapter from the English Form 2 textbook; making sure the chapter is interesting and relatable to the students thus relevant to be used in their everyday and working life

-          Each activities are different from each other; might include one language skills, might be more than one (e.g. reading and writing in one activity)

-          Might be focusing on linguistic, thematic or both types of content

-          Each activity is a progression of the previous one; the first activity (band 1), increasing with each activity progresses

-          Making sure the materials follow the criteria of technical and pedagogical  usability

Visual design

a)  Harmony

- the manner elements of a display interact together in a pleasing manner.

- it pulls the pieces of visual image together.

- can be achieved through repetition and rhythm, where rhythm is the flow depicted in a visual and

helps direct eye movement.

-to ensure harmony 3x3 grid must be used.

-rhythm should either be a clockwise or counter clockwise.  

b) Balance and symmetry

-we can bring balance to the elements of different sizes by either moving them closer of father from

the center of the page.

-symmetry is when one half of a visual display is a mirror image of the other half.

-types of symmetry: horizontal, approximate horizontal, radial and asymmetry.

 c)  Emphasis

- create dominance and focus in their work.

- it emphasize colour, value, shapes or other design elements to achieve dominance. For example

“facebook” page used dark colour as their background and the symbol “f “for “facebook” in light

colour. 

 

d)  Alignment

- alignment of elements within a screen is important part of organizing and grouping.

-should visually maximize differences between text, label and pictures. 

e) Unity

- relationship among visual elements that helps all elements to work together.

- gives a sense of closure or oneness to a visual image.

- can be achieved through use of similar shapes, common pattern or use of a common background.

Reflection

How does the lesson affect me on my study?

It helps me to understand what digital language learning materials are. Textbooks are not the only

thing that we can use to teach students because now we are in the modern era and we have lots of

other materials that we can use to teach students.

Does the tutorial helps me on increasing my prior knowledge?

Yes! I really need this kind of knowledge so that I can use them in the future. Before this I never

really learn to create digital language learning material and I did not realize that I am actually

surrounded with digital language learning material for example facebook and twitter, both of these

thing are something that we can use to teach students.

Can I use this knowledge later on?

Being a teacher nowadays is a tough job. Therefore this tutorial is one of the most important things

we should know. Creating digital language learning material will absolutely helps us as a teacher to

teach students in the future. Imagine teaching using boring stuff? Students will be bored with our

lesson. Implementing interesting stuff in our lesson will increase students’ interest in learning to our

lesson.

WEEK 6

WEEK 4 & 5

Week 4 - Material Development (2)

Textbook Evaluation Checklist

Patricia Byrd and Marianne Celce-Murcia

Evaluation of the fit	Yes (a good fit)	Perhaps (an adequate fit)	Probably (a poor fit)	Absolutely not (wrong for curriculum, students, and/or teachers)
Fit between the textbook and the curriculum
Fits curriculum goals		/
Has appropriate linguistic content	/
Has appropriate thematic content	/
Fits the pedagogical and SLA philosophy of the program/course		/
Fit between the textbook and the students
Explanations understandable and useable for students	/
Examples understandable and useable for students	/
Activities appropriate for students	/
Thematic content understandable	/
Fit between the textbook and the teachers
Fits the language skills of our teachers	/
Fits the knowledge based of our teachers	/
Provides explanation that can be used by our teachers	/
Provides examples that can be used and expanded by our teachers	/
Fits the needs and preference	/
Provides in-book or instructor’s manual support for teachers	/
Overall evaluation of the fit of the book for this course in this program
Should the text be selected		/

In our opinion, this checklist, by Byrd, is not appropriate for an in-depth chapter/textbook evaluation. Looking at this the holistic view, we can see that this checklist seems to be a good evaluation at first but after viewing this checklist analytically, we deduced that this checklist is suitable for the overview of the textbook/chapter. In lay man’s term, this checklist just focuses on whether the textbook/chapter meets the need of the students, teachers and the curriculum, as a whole.

A full analysis of the textbook/chapter is hard to be done because the checklist is too simple and a bit vague. Furthermore, this checklist does not include the micro-evaluation stage that is crucial, even though it contains the macro-evaluation stage.

Our suggestions would be to use this checklist as the overview evaluation and then complemented by another checklist that involves a more in-depth evaluation. Then we can consider the evaluation is good.

WEEK 3 CLT

Week 3 - clt MD

REFLECTION
How does the lesson affect me on my study?
In this tutorial we are required to identify the theories behind communicative language teaching approach.
Based on what we have done it really affect me on my study because I will not just only use this knowledge for my assignment or final exam but I will also use it for my lesson in the future. The theories behind CLT also help us in creating our material for teaching other than that we are also required to refer to the KBSM so that we can really understand what we are doing, with that we can understand what we are dealing with.  
Does the tutorial helps me on increasing my prior knowledge? 
It really does helps me on increasing my prior knowledge because as I said before it will help me in my assignments, exams and future lesson for my future students. We already learned about CLT before but with this tutorial it increased our knowledge on what CLT is all about.  
Can I use this knowledge later on?
I can really use this knowledge later on. Future lesson for my future students will not go smoothly if I did not learn about this.

WEEK 2 What influenced the building of materials development

1) Principle of SLA influenced the developing of material through theories that have been introduced in SLA.

 -Exposing language in authentic use: things that we do everyday actually play a big role in developing the material for example as easy as starting a conversation or reading, watching or listening English material, if students like to watch English movie or cartoon we can relate the story that they have watched in building the materials.

-Develop confidence: some students have problems with their confidence, what we doesn’t know is those who quiet actually have lot of thought but they are unable to talk about it because of their level of confidence. In order for us to build the material consider those who are quiet, meaning that the material can stimulate the student’s confidence.

2) Principle of teaching and learning.

-Helps learners to feel at ease: using textbook as the only learning material will make the lesson a little boring, with the used of other materials such as graphic, video or audio visual can enhance the lesson quality.

-Maximize learning potential: to build a good material for students teachers have to look through what the students have achieved in their previous lesson therefore the material that teachers have to develop must enhance the students prior knowledge.   

3) Learners + parent’s goal

-Materials that we develop should not always cater their interest but the materials should at least stimulate their interest in learning rather than demolishing the dust, as you can see learners and parent’s goal are connected to each other, this is because both of them share something which is motivation. From the learners point of view we call it intrinsic motivation where students develop their interest within themselves while from the parent point of view its extrinsic motivation where parents motivate their child in learning.

4) Country’s vision + Curriculum goals & objectives

- Both of them connected to each other. For example, other groups have mention about “Celik IT” and ability to speak English. Our country need the students to master in both IT and English therefore the material that we should develop must have the ability to boost the students knowledge about IT  and English. Other than that parent’s goal and country’s vision are connected as well, parent want their children to learn and acquire knowledge therefore the country’s vision have to consider what the parent want, PIBG or PTA here are main roles in building the visions.      

REFLECTION

Based on the tutorial that we have done I realize that there are lot of things that influence the building of materials development. As a future teacher material development helps teachers on giving lesson to their students, there are things that should be considered on building the materials. How does the lesson affect me on my study? It clearly shows that the lesson have opened our mind on how materials work in lesson and how it connected with the development of students. The tutorial was not meant for just answering an exam in our final but it will also helps us in the future to deal with our students for example principle of SLA and teaching and learning guide us on how to make sure our material can be successful in teaching lesson to students.           

Does the tutorial helps me on increasing my prior knowledge? To be exact, at first I thought that building materials for lesson rely on the teacher but I was wrong. To build a good material needs to have several views for example learner, parent’s goal and country’s view. Without those things the materials will not suit the lesson and maybe the materials will not be materials that help students to develop their knowledge. Teachers have to be concern on student’s interest so that they can relate their materials thus making their lesson more engaging. Other than that parent’s goal and country’s view can share one specific goal which is having a great future for the children, for example they want their children to have confidence and enthusiasm in learning therefore teachers must play their role in making their lesson more engaging.

Can I use this knowledge later on? I would say absolutely yes. Why? Because this lesson is not just for exam but it’s actually a knowledge that will helps us later on when we are in our class teaching the next generation.