PPP for quang binh teachers dec 2014

Module: Evaluating class room materials
by Maureen McInroy
by Maureen McInroy
Hue University
College of Foreign Languages
English Language Teaching
Methodology & ICT Workshop
Hue city, December, 2014
What are we trying to do?
What is our purpose?
2
If our task is to teach English to
our pupils or students, what
materials are there to help us?
3
Do the materials help the
teacher and the learners to
teach and learn English?
4
What are we evaluating?
What criteria (tiêu chu n) ẩ
should we use to make an
evaluation of the materials?
1. Is the material suitable for
Vietnamese pupils living and
learning English in Vi tnamệ ?
.
5
What are we evaluating?
What criteria should we use to make
an evaluation of the materials?

2. Do the materials help to develop
language skills - vocabulary
development, reading, writing,
speaking, listening and grammar
6
What are we evaluating?
What criteria (tiêu chu n) should we ẩ
use to make an evaluation of the
materials?
3. Does the material help the teacher
and the pupils to revise (ôn t p)ậ new
learning and to consolidate (c ng c ) ủ ố
what has been learned earlier?
7
8
1. Are the materials designed
especially for learners in Vi t Nam?ệ
1. Are the materials designed especially for learners in
Vi t Nam?ệ
Some materials have been
prepared for pupils whose first
language is English.
Are these materials helpful for
Vietnamese students learning
English in Vi t Nam?ệ
9
1. Are the materials designed especially for learners in
Vi t Nam?ệ
Do the materials show Vietnamese
families living in Vietnamese houses

and doing the things that Vietnamese
families do? Or do they show children
in English-speaking countries, such as
England, Australia or America, where
the culture is different?
10
1. Are the materials designed especially for learners in
Vi t Nam?ệ
Do the materials use words that
the learners would not know or
would not use in Vietnamese?
Do the materials show pictures
of things that you do not see in
Vi t Nam?ệ
11
1. Are the materials designed especially for learners in
Vi t Nam?ệ
It is difficult for children to learn the words
for and meanings of things they have not
seen or cannot understand.
Sometimes things can be learned from TV -
for example, most children will know what an
elephant or a kangaroo is even if they have
never seen a real one.
12
1. Are the materials designed especially for learners in
Vi t Nam?ệ
It is important for the teacher to remember
that the pupils and students need to learn
the meanings of new English words and the

new words at the same time.
This is a more difficult task than learning to
recognise new words in Vietnamese.
13
2. Does the material help the
pupils to develop basic
language skills
14
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?
a. Vocabulary
Do the materials help the learners to
build up their vocabulary? Do the
exercises introduce and use new words
only once and expect the student to
remember them? How many new
words can students remember from
one lesson?
15
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?
Professor Nation writes: “The major
resource for learners of English at
elementary (primary) levels has to be text
written within a controlled vocabulary.
Without this there can be few, if any,
experience tasks in a foreign language
program.”
16
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic

language skills?
What is a controlled vocabulary? Do the
materials control the number and kinds of
words used?
Or do the materials use many new words in
each lesson?
How many new words should the materials
introduce in each lesson?
17
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?
Do the materials pay attention to word
endings which are very different in English?
Do the materials pay attention only to
reading and writing new vocabulary and not
to listening to and saying new words?
18
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?
One big problem is with lexical sets,
synonyms, free associates and opposites.
Research tells us that it is 50% - 100% more
difficult to remember words if we teach and
learn them as a lexical set or a list of
opposites or synonyms or free associates
but almost all language teaching
books do it.
19
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?

Synonyms are words with similar
meanings such as:
big, large, huge, enormous, great, giant
little, small, tiny

kind, helpful, friendly, generous
20
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?
Free associates –
yesterday, today and tomorrow
next to, beside, and between.
near, far, over here, over there
on, above, over, on top
under, beneath, below
21
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?
Opposites –
old and new, old and young
fat and thin, thick and thin
tall and short, long and short
difficult and easy, hard and easy,
big and small, big and little
hard and soft
22
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?
Lexical sets – the names of
colours,

fruit and vegetables,
days of the week, months of the year,
items of clothing,
parts of the body,
parts of the head,
names of countries.
23
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?
24
More examples of lexical sets: names of:
wild animals, zoo animals and farm animals
foods
items for school use
furniture in the class room and at home
prepositions
adverbs of frequency
2. Does the material help the pupils to develop basic
language skills?
Do the books introduce new words as lexical
sets? Do the books teach opposites at the
same time as they introduce new words?
25