Important aspects to take into account when designing material for the English classroom

One of the most important things to consider when planning a lesson is the designing of our own materials. We have been reading an article “Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials” by Howard and Major (2005) and we considered 3 important instructions they mentioned.

The first one that we want to make emphasis on is that English language teaching materials should be “contextualised to the experiences, realities and first languages of the learners.” (Howard and Major, 2005). We consider it important because, as teachers, we have to relate what the students already know to the new material and topics to be taught and also we have to connect that content to their own culture. By doing this, we are giving them better opportunities to find English learning meaningful.

The second one we selected is “materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills and strategies” (Howard and Major, 2005). Since it is really difficult to teach everything that is meant to be taught  in the curriculum, due to the inconveniences we may face during the year, such as holidays, strikes, meetings, we have to make our students autonomous and allow them to see and be aware of the different ways they can use English outside the classroom.

The third one, “Materials should be attractive” is really important to consider because students may work with the materials in a more engaging way and feel motivated with the activity or task. Another point to highlight is that the materials must be appropriate for them in the sense of durability and easiness when working with it. By making our own materials more durable, we make sure they will help us a lot in different contexts, and making the necessary adaptations to the tasks we provide.

To conclude, we consider these guidelines proposed by Howard and Major really useful because they provide the basis for the design of teaching materials and help us to empower students in our lessons by providing them attractive and contextualized materials.  In this way, we learn how to approach our students in a entertaining and pleasurable manner so as to make their English learning more meaningful.