Someone contacted me on this blog asking a question about the DipTESOL.
Q: Where/how did you find good listening and reading materials for the teaching practice?
My answer:
a) I recorded my own
b) I sourced authentic materials on the net and adapted them
A bit more explanation:
My overall topic for the sequence of functional lessons was making suggestions/giving advice. I worked backwards from a main task – I decided that this would be a tourist information roleplay. I made this task first before anything, so I could work out the language students would need to complete it.
You can find the lesson plan and resources for my observed lesson in this previous post. Here are some example role cards for the task though:
I figured that students would need language related to the following:
- giving directions
- checking information
- making suggestions/giving advice
- responding to suggestions/advice
- follow-up phrases
Plus they would need information and language related to bars in Edinburgh, so they had some places to recommend.
I taught these items in the order above. I covered information related to bars in the penultimate lesson so students were clued up for the final task.
For most of the language input I made listening texts. I’ve uploaded these elsewhere but here they are again:
Giving directions/checking info
(this one was a bit slow as I wasn’t too sure about learners listening skills)
Giving advice / responding
I can’t upload the one about follow-ups as a bloke on my course helped me make it and haven’t asked his permission!
Example roleplay (see other post for more info)
So, that just leaves the information about pubs. I decided to use authentic material that I found on https://www.greatergrassmarket.co.uk which was really useful. I snipped it into mini about 8 mini texts like this:
Students did a few tasks to gather info on each bar and complete a table like this:
This is the info they needed for the final task, plus I gave them a map so they could give directions. Note, the map was a little bit fake so it made them use more directions.
Looking back now…
Well, I can see the roleplay is a little bit contrived. I guess the listening texts are too. Still, they worked well. I’m pleased I made the effort to create my own. You come to appreciate some of the difficulties materials developers face when writing pseudo-authentic texts.
Note: in making my own texts I was asked about my rationale behind this, and decisions I made during the process (e.g. making the first listening a bit slower). If you make your own then be ready to answer the tutor’s/examiner’s questions…
Feature image akathecoach.com
Categories: DipTESOL tips
ELT Planning 
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