TASK 3

In previous task 2, I were required to come out with a checklist to evaluate the suitability
and appropriateness of my teaching and learning materials that I have designed to be used in
the ESL classroom. I have come out with a teaching and learning materials which is a Big Book
story book entitled The Little Red Riding Hood. This teaching and learning materials also
accompanied with drilling activity materials to be conducted along in the lesson. This writing
would be discussing about the justification of the choice of the teaching and learning materials
used in the classroom according to the principles of selecting and adapting materials.

In terms of practicality, my teaching aid is physically possible. It is a mobile material that

could easily handle and carry to the classroom. It is physically light as it only contains eight
pages of text and picture side-by-side. The materials used to make the Big Book are solely A4
papers with printed texts and pictures and also four pieces of manila card. Same goes to the
small book, sentence strips and pictures. The material used is only paper and it contributes to
the mobility of the teaching aids. Large sized of text and pictures in it enable the students to see
and read clearly. All the small pictures and sentence strips can be put inside an envelope and
teacher could easily carry the Big Book to the classroom and ready to be used. Hence, teachers
would only need to hold the big book and sit on a chair and make the students sit around and
listen to the story being told with interesting manners. Therefore, physical attributes is really
important in determining the practicality of a teaching aid.

The level of students proficiency and interest has also been taken into consideration in
the process of developing the Big Book. In the text book, the story of The Little Red Riding
Hood is being taught part by part throughout the text book, therefore, I try to help to compile all
parts of the story into a simple, short and interesting story to be learnt by the students. The
students in my class were categorized as low proficiency and therefore by simplifying the story
according to their level and interest in very crucial in maintaining their attention span and also
easy for them to understand the story flow. For example, every single page of the book contains
dialogues and pictures that could help them to analyse and imagine the situation happened in
the story and simple words used help students to understand better. These teaching materials
were tested during my final observation and it was a success as my students did show
surprising responses, such as they could answer WH questions correctly, sequencing as well as
producing a small book with their own creativity by showing that they could recall all the
dialogues and the storylines. Thus, all of the responses and production are the result of the
used of the teaching and learning materials that actually have helped them in learning as well as
having fun at the same time.

Furthermore, in the sense of clarity, my big book is clear to be read with Comic Sans Ms
font type and size 70. The pictures in each page were also printed in A3 sized to enable the
students to look at and analyze it to the maximum. This big book is only suitable for the
classroom that consists of average of 25 students because it is just nice for the students to sit
closed and easy for the teacher to control the students attention. The size of the big book could
not contain the students vision from far behind if the students are in the range of 40 students
who were sitting around a teacher holding one big book for everyone to see. However, in term of
clarity of content and presentation of the story, it is all depends on the teachers ability to have
the manners of presenting a story. Teachers should equip themselves with the attitudes of a
story teller in order to deliver the story successfully to the students.(McDonough, 2003) Hence,
the clarity of presentation does affect the effectiveness of the teaching and learning materials in
students learning and understanding during the lesson.

Besides, in order to fulfill the factor of versatility, my Big Book story book caters for
different situations and topic of learning. The Bog Book could be used in a language lesson as
well as in a moral education lesson to enlighten the students with moral values in the story.
Other than that, it also flexible to be used in teaching different skills. For instance, other than
using it for language arts lesson, teaching could utilize the teaching materials in teaching
listening and speaking skills by questioning and answering, reading skills by letting them read
the story, and grammar by letting them identify the tenses used in the big book. Therefore, a
teaching aid should be flexible and could be utilize in many different ways so that it could be
exploit to the fullest. (Tomlinson, 1998).

In conclusion, it crucial for us, teachers, to be more aware of the factors and principles
that should be considered in developing and adapting teaching and learning materials. It could
greatly affect the students understanding and achievement if they find the learning materials are
very helpful in their process of learning.
Reference

Tomlinson, B. (1998) Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

McDonough, J. and Shaw, C. (2003) Materials and Methods in ELT. Oxford: Blackwell.