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This is part of a paper about my teaching style written in 2003 for my Master of Applied Linguistics Program at the University of Southern Queensland. I've divided my paper into 5 parts:
Roles of learning materials
The role of instructional materials
Instructional materials play three major roles in my view. The first is to introduce learners to aspects of the target language culture. I often incorporate American folk songs and movies into my classes, by using them to introduce
grammatical items and communicative tasks.
Simpson (1979) notes that "One of the most important functions of
language variation is to enable individuals to identify with a social group or to separate themselves from it" (p.42). I feel that one of the most important
aspects of my job as an English teacher is to help students identify with my
culture. Schumann (1986) argues:
I also propose that any learner can be placed on a continuum
that ranges from social and psychological distance to social and
psychological proximity with speakers of the TL, and that the
learner will acquire the second language only to the degree
that he acculturates. (p.379)
Schumann and Simpson mean that learners who don't want to identify with English speakers and who are socially and psychologically distant, will have no
need to acquire English. However, learners who want to identify with English
speakers will be motivated to learn English, which is important because
motivation is key to successful language learning (Dornyei, 1998, p.117). As a result it is imperative that language teachers introduce learners to aspects of
target language culture.
The second major role of instructional activities is to introduce
language and prepare learners for communicative tasks. One of the eight
principles of language learning set out in the ALL curriculum, is that "learners
need to focus at appropriate times on language forms..." (Vale, Scarino, &
McKay, 1991, p.29). This helps learners access and develop the rule-based
system and leads to syntactilization and relexicalization as learners use the
rules to create new sentences with personally relevant meanings.
The third role of instructional materials is to encourage learners to take responsibility for and plan their own learning. For example, the text New Interchange 2 comes with a CD that contains all the pronunciation exercises in the book. I generally assign these for homework.
Another plan of mine is to sometimes give homework that must be completed online. There are so many learning opportunities on the internet that learners should be able to find resources that will help them in the future.
My website, ESLgo.com is another tool that learners can use to plan their study of English. Students choose which online classes to take and which communicative tasks to complete. I encourage the use of ESLgo.com and other sites by giving students homework options. Each student chooses the option s/he finds most interesting, which will hopefully encourage students to use some of the sites in the future.