Material Development (tutorial week 2) & Reflection

Tutorial Task Week 2

A. Watch Jeremy Short’s presentation on his take of materials development.

Please take note on the reasons he created the materials and the characteristics of his materials.

Which principles for materials development did Short apply when producing his materials?

        I.            Materials should achieve impact- Short created graphic novels or comics to attract learners because students get bored of the bulky textbook which does not arouse the interest of the learners to study the textbook.

      II.            Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment- Short used graphic novels so that the learners focuses and pay attention to what is being presented and it helps them to acquire the knowledge.

   III.            Materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use-Short uses graphic novels so that learners anticipated and in learning because the pictures and the style varies and changes due to different topics.

   IV.            Materials should maximize learning potential by encouraging intellectual, aesthetic and emotional involvement which stimulates both right and left brain activities – Short created graphic novels or comics and create varied series of activities to make the learners analyse and creative and at the same time, be motivated to learn as it is not too easy or too difficult so that the learners just not blindly accept everything but to set their brains at work so that they can use their background knowledge to understand a new concepts.

B. Design and complete the following diagram.

As future language teachers, developing language learning materials will become as aspect of your teaching career. Design a diagramon the aspects influencing materials development using the provided key words.  You can use either all or some of the key words. Present and justify the completed diagram using informed literature. Upload your justification and the completed diagram in Schoology. [You will be informed further which area in Schoology]

          According to the flowchart above, we believe that one of our country’s visions or goal is to create students who were `Celik IT’ which can be explained as the integration of technology in education field. 

          Based on the country’s vision, Ministry of Education modifies the curriculum goals and objectives and started to produce textbooks accompanied with CD-Rom which is the visual version of the textbook. It is perceived that the idea of using CD Rom for learning process in the classroom eventually helps teachers to activate schemata, stimulate the student’s interest to learn and helps to create active learning.

          School administration’s aims and objective also follows the government’s vision and started to improve the facilities in all classrooms by providing LCD, projectors, and laptop for teachers who need to use them for their teaching process.

          However, teachers have their own belief and rational which varies from one another. For instance, some teachers prefer conventional teaching methodology (chalk and blackboard) but some teachers believes that there must be an improvement and progress to be made constantly so that the daily teaching process becomes effective. Besides that, teachers also have to consider and determine about the difference in proficiency level of students because there are quick learners, slow learners, active learners and passive learners. Therefore, the teacher has to sort them out first in order to conduct their lesson effectively. Majority of teachers believe that the visuals are more attractive than the bulky textbook alone. Teachers found that the students really enjoy them and pay attention during lessons. Based on their belief and observation, teachers create the digital-based materials to teach a particular lesson. For instance, an English teacher who teaches Literature use videos to teach the story so that the students can get vivid imagination of the storyline and remembers them well.

         In addition, it is well known that the teachers have their own principles when it comes to teaching whether to use primary method or discover a new method to teach students. The teachers also need to fulfill the objective to be achieved at the end of the lesson. So, a teacher constantly needs more than a backup plan to make their lesson to be successful. The principles of second language acquisition are applied when teachers need to evaluate the textbooks and to understand the needs and ability of their students. If the textbook is unsuitable for the students, the teacher has to come up with solutions or modifications so that it can help the students to use the textbook and gain knowledge from it.

         Based on the principles of second language acquisition, the teachers conduct several school based examinations such as mid-term and final year examination to test the students understanding on the subject. If the teacher able to convey their lessons in a dynamic and interesting way, there are fat chances that the students able to grasp the knowledge and develop their skills.

        Learners or students are the targeted community for the entire education system or we can say that they are the nucleus of the entire education cell. The effectiveness of teaching, the relevance of the education system, the system of the school administration is measured and determined by the proficiency level of the learners based on the examinations. Meanwhile, parents have their own goals or desire that their children performance in examination as an accomplishment. For instance, if their children get straight A’s in PMR or SPM, the parents are proud and have thoughts such as that their children are smart, teachers taught well however, if it happens to be that their children obtain lower grades or marks, the parents think vice versa. Therefore, it is proven that the parents and learners share some inter-relationship when it comes to test and assessments.

        Finally, the students performance in the classroom as well as in the examinations affects the teacher’s belief and rational and it causes the teachers to change their perceptions of their existing teaching methodology. The teachers have to set their brains at work again to find a new method to approach and teach students.

Reflection task week 2

After watching the Jeremy Short’s presentation, I found out that the materials that he created for the students learning are very good and it really impressed me. The way he producing the learning materials do brings an obvious difference when compared to the traditional way of presenting the learning materials. Nowadays, the advance in technology do brings a huge influence towards the materials use for the learning. In the case of Jeremy presentation, he shows the graphic novel which in my own point of view is that, it does capture my interest as the visual presented is appealing. Moreover, from that presentation I start to know the characteristics that need to be implementing in producing the materials for the learning so that, the learning process can be carry out successfully.

 Here, it is really obvious that materials that are being use for the learning should be able to give a great impact to the students especially to attract their interest. Apart from that, it is very important for the teachers to expose the learners to language in authentic use so that the learners not only able to see a clear view on context of the language learning but also able to use the language in real life situation. In addition, I believe that teacher role is not only as a facilitator to the students but teacher also should make sure that students become independent and not just accept whatever is being given to them, thus it is very crucial for teachers to create materials that can maximize the learning potential of the students.

                For the question (b), we are asked to use the key words provided and construct the completed diagram regarding the aspects influencing the materials development. For this section, it is quite clear that all the key words provided interrelated with each another. Our group believes that in order to achieve the country’s vision, the ministry of education has stated the curriculum goals and objectives that need to be achieved by all school in Malaysia. Thus, to make it achievable the school administration also has stated it aims and objectives that can contribute to the county vision.

In addition, teacher belief and rational plays important role to achieve the school aims and objectives where here teacher should be able to create the materials that consider the aspects of principles of teaching and principles of second language acquisition. Furthermore, we also believe the output from the language test and assessment will portray the students understanding and this will eventually shows that the materials of the learning able the students to understand more and achieve a good results for their final test. Moreover, we also think that the parent’s and learner’s goal are the same that is to achieve an excellent results in the learners exam performance.

Thus, from this task we not only able to know the characteristic of materials that need to be take into consideration in order to create a good learning materials but we also able to see the connection that link all the aspects influencing materials development using the provided key words. Apart from that, by doing this task I am able to know more about the important of materials development in the context of learners learning materials. I am pretty sure that by the early exposure of the impact of materials development in this task, it will help me to increase my knowledge especially in creating my own learning materials in the future later. This is because, I am sure later on there will be much more variety of learning materials that are available as the development of technology is getting advance day by day.