The goal of this course is to learn how to humanize and personalize a coursebook for your learners. Teachers teach from coursebooks, but coursebooks are never perfect. The difference between an "OK" language class and a "Great" language class is often the teacher’s ability to select, adapt and supplement appropriate language learning materials and activities into an existing coursebook. The process of selecting and adapting and supplementing the appropriate materials almost always depends on the students that we are teaching. To help us better understand this process, I have selected an internationally published coursebook that we will be using to create, adapt and supplement materials for.
The course will be run as both a simulation and a seminar, that is, you will have input sessions to help you meet the assessment requirements, but the assessment requirements will be imbedded within a real-world context. For example: The language institute that you work for has just chosen a new coursebook for it upper level middle school students. The owner of the institute has asked you to prepare resources and specific teaching materials for this coursebook. The owner would like these resources organized in the following manner:
1) Authentic listening and reading texts and activities
2) Vocabulary building materials
3) Inductive teaching and discovery learning materials
4) Personalized and contextualized freer communicative practice activities
5) Task-based learning tasks and performance assessment activities
Lecture notes will be made available as we progress throughout the semester. You will need your class ID and password to access.
top30% Attendance and active participation
20% Reading Homework Questions
50% Materials Portfolio (500 points) that will include the following:
1) Authentic listening and reading texts and activities (100 points)
2) Vocabulary building materials (100 points)
3) Inductive teaching and discovery learning materials (100 points)
4) Personalized, contextualized and freer communicative practice activities/games (100 points)
5) Task-based learning tasks and performance assessment activities (100 points)
The idea is to create a portfolio of materials that will allow you to humanize, personalize, and localize an international textbook from a major publisher, so that you can 1) understand the process and 2) so that you can have materials to use in the future.
topAttendance/Participation
Attendance is mandatory: Participants who arrive to class 10 minutes or
more after class begins will be considered late. Participants who are late
3 times will receive 1 absence. Any participant who misses 1/4 of all
class meetings will receive an F. Mastery of the ideas and concepts of
this course requires engagement and discussion. If you are not in class,
you miss that opportunity to exchange ideas. Moreover, participation is
also essential. Just coming to class is not enough. I expect all
participants to be active in class discussion and lectures as well as to
complete all oral and written assignments.
Homework on Readings
Each reading comes with guiding questions. Look over the questions before
you read and then answer the questions after you read. Questions will be
collected and assessed the week after they are assigned. I will count this work towards your attendance and participation grade.
Materials Portfolio
The materials portfolio is where you will collect the materials you create and supplement for the coursebook that we are adapting. There will five different kinds of materials that you will be adding to the coursebook:
• Authentic listening and reading texts and activities
• Vocabulary building materials
• Inductive teaching and discovery learning materials
• Personalized, contextualized and freer communicative practice activities/games
• Task-based learning tasks and performance assessment activities