What I take into consideration in my attempt to design material is firstly the basic characteristics of students, their needs, their background and their "reservoirs of experience" (Florez and Terril, 2003).
Another very important element is that learners should express their own thoughts on what they feel that it would more suitable for them to learn depending on their goals or skills they would like to empower or practise.
What is more, an important principle in material design is to connect learning with real life practices.
Reference
Florez, M., & Terrill, L. (2003). Working with literacy-level adult English language learners. Retrieved July 12, 2017, from http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/litQA.html
http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/litQA.html
Hi Efi, thanks for sharing your thoughts on your own principles for materials design. Thanks too for the link to the article. It's got some useful tips for how to conduct a needs analysis for adult students in a specific context but is useful in general because of the way it breaks down and identifies a number of different literacy levels - all of this was new to me. I agree on the importance of connecting learning with real life - especially when it comes to teaching refugees as you have done.
ReplyDeleteDear Katherine, thank you very much for your positive feedback. Teaching adults is in general very challenging and demanding and needs a lot of research and planning. I belong to those who advocate that education could be transformative when it is connected to reality. There is still a long way to go though and a lot of critical action research to be done.
ReplyDeleteDear Efi, you ARE right that learners should active in materials ideas and desing. That's what I have been doing with my learners. It's very important for the learners to feel they are a part of learning/ teaching process. Their performance advances are more significant when they are invited to take responsibilities.
ReplyDelete