TSL 3111 DEVELOPING AND USING RESOURCES FOR THE PRIMARY ESL CLASSROOM

Evaluation on selected teaching and learning material McDonough, Shaw and Masuhara (2013), address that, selecting materials requires in-depth knowledge, not just of students' backgrounds and learning experiences, but also their abilities, interests, and learning styles. Thus, for this coursework, I have decided to choose an audio visual which is a video song entitled, The Adjective Song. There are lots of criteria that need to be considered in choosing a material and for the material that I have selected, an evaluation checklist was made in order to ensure the suitability of the material for my lesson. Hence, there are several factors that I have focused on in selecting the material such as content, layout and language. First of all, the decision that I made in choosing the video song is due to the transformation in the learning styles of students nowadays.. Allwright (1990) argues that materials should teach students to learn, that they should be resource books for ideas and activities for instruction/learning, and that they should give teachers rationales for what they do. From what he argued, it can be viewed in a perspective where teacher uses other material than textbooks, it tend to help in a length and gives larger benefit for the lesson as long as it meets the right aspects to be used in the lesson itself. Therefore, the first criteria that I will discuss here is the materials content, the video content is about adjectives which is correlated closely to the students self and general knowledge. In the video song there are lots of nouns which are familiar to the students and they can make easy relations between the existing knowledge and the new ones that are the adjectives. So, by using familiar examples rather than jargon things, the students understanding can be increase and simultaneously help the teacher to explain the grammar items more comprehensively. The content and the delivery of the video song also is very clear in its pronunciation, intonation and pace which will then help learner not to only understand the meaning but also increase their level of proficiency. Moreover, through the content displayed by the video, clearly it is very fun as the melody is very amusing and engaging to the listener as we need to include activities which develop creativity, fantasy and imagination that are so much part of the world of primary-aged children and which can lead to positive new learning (Read, 2007).

TSL 3111 DEVELOPING AND USING RESOURCES FOR THE PRIMARY ESL CLASSROOM

Secondly, the layout is very professionally presented and not overly cluttered, and was an initial positive factor in my selection of video song as the teaching and learning material for my class. Through the materials illustration and presentation, it is highly possible for the teacher to utilize the video in many ways to meet the learner s various learning styles. The rhythm of the video song itself can be exploited to a kinesthetic way of learning whereby students can clap or even dance along with the video song. Moreover, song is interesting and relaxinghas a universal appeal and it encourages an unthreatening, friendly atmosphere (Nessamalar, 2005). Even for the auditory and visual learners, there are pictures, video movements and audio which are very clear and vivid in showing the meaning and the input of the lesson. The most important thing, all the aspects of the layout and illustrations are very helpful in assisting the learners to comprehend the topic better. Lastly, in terms of the materials language criteria, it is important to consider the relationship between the language, the learning process and the learner. The video song is very communicative in its language presentation and more importantly, the words displayed is suitable to the learner language level as it uses high frequency words and the way that the video present the language which are very interactive, making it easier for the learner to grasp the lexical content of the video. Thus, increasing ability on a range of communicative criteria while, at the same time, acknowledging the need to provide systematic practice in the formal functions of language. (McDonough and Shaw 1993: 50). In conclusion, the material that I have selected have meets all the criteria that are necessary to be considered in bringing in ELT materials in a teaching and learning process for the KSSR level of students

TSL 3111 DEVELOPING AND USING RESOURCES FOR THE PRIMARY ESL CLASSROOM

Bibliography Jo McDonough, C. S. (2013). Material and Methods in ELT. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Nesamalar Chitravelu, S. S. (2005). ELT Methodology Principles and Practice. Shah Alam: Oxford Fajar Sdn. Bhd. Read, C. (2007). 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom. Oxford: Macmillan Education.