Can Use Tools To Check The Difficulty Level Of Vocabulary And How To Choose Materials Appropriate

“In my opinion, such exercises as homework is rather limited. The context is that students can only complete them at home. Making those exercises a part of a lesson will be impractical since homework exercises are longer and take more time to accomplish. When I develop supplementary materials, I have to guarantee they are as little time-consuming as possible but still maintain effectiveness. Moreover, they should help consolidate the knowledge learners have acquired in a lesson.” (Teacher P10, 24/08/2020)

4.2.2.2.The washback effect of the IELTS examination

Since the teachers participating in the interview are IELTS trainers, it is reasonable to have their beliefs affected by the washback of the test. Obviously, a number of teachers, as discussed earlier, reported a disposition to use books published by the Cambridge University Press (teachers P3, P5, P7, P8, P9, and P2) because they believed the publishing house was who developed the IELTS examination. In addition, mock tests are also their top priority in developing supplementary materials (at the mean score of

1.60 according to Table 3.1a).

Moreover, when it comes to authentic materials, teachers would rather believe in sources that are academic, namely articles, interviews, or news videos. Even when selecting skills practice books that do not center on the IELTS examination, teacher P9 admitted having chosen an academic writing textbook for supplementing the main coursebooks.

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The washback effect of the IELTS examination was also manifested in teachers P1 and P2’s words when they were asked if the previous experience with supplementary materials as a learner affects her current decision.

“In the past, the supplementary materials were developed with respect to grammar or pronunciation practice. Meanwhile, IELTS examination centers on language skills. These are two different aspects.” (Teacher P1, 09/08/2020)

“Previously, I learned English with a focus on grammar. In the meantime, the IELTS examination centers on the four language skills. As a result, those past experiences hardly have any relation to my current teaching practice.” (Teacher P2, 27/08/2020)

It is obvious that the two teachers perceived IELTS examination tests candidates on the four language skills. Therefore, they have made them the backbone or framework for their beliefs system.

4.2.2.4. Theoretical knowledge

Contrary to what has been anticipated, theoretical knowledge has extremely little impact on teachers’ beliefs. Only three out of twelve teachers participating in the interview had already taken an official course of materials development. When asked how the course influenced the decisions on supplementary materials development, a teacher said, “it has little impact” (Teacher P7, 24/08/2020). Meanwhile, the others found the course rather beneficial.

“Regarding the vocabulary, I am able to know which source of materials is appropriate for the learners’ level [of language proficiency]. I also manage to modify materials properly and change them into tasks… The method to develop questions or adapt inappropriate materials. For example, make the materials more academic by changing the words” (Teacher P8, 24/08/2020).

“After the course, I can use tools to check the difficulty level of vocabulary and how to choose materials appropriate for learners’ level [of language proficiency].” (Teacher P6, 24/08/2020)

According to teacher P8, the knowledge from the materials development course helped her a lot in terms of materials selection, adaptation, and design. More noticeably, she also mentioned the term “tasks.” This suggests the teacher has a tendency to employ Task-based instructions in her classroom practice. The theory in Task-based language teaching may have an influence on her beliefs of supplementary materials development. This somehow echoes what Richards and Lockhart (1999) have asserted as a source of teachers’ beliefs – “principles derived from an approach or method” (p. 31). According to them, teachers may advocate a teaching approach or method and implement it in their classrooms. Consequently, there is a possibility that not only the knowledge in the materials development course but also that in other teaching methodology courses matters. This hypothesis appears to be convinced when two other teachers reported that they implement “a student-centered rather than a teacher-centered approach” (P9, 29/07/2020) or “exercises from controlled practice, semi-controlled practice, then freer practice” (P4, 04/08/2020). Coincidently, these teachers are holders of language teaching Master’s degrees. Another teacher also claimed that her attitude toward supplementary materials changed after participating in a course on curriculum design.

“Previously, I just used materials I believed that are useful and appropriate to my students. After the course, I realize the materials may be good for teachers but difficult for learners. That is, they are not appropriate for learners’ level [of language proficiency].” (Teacher P1, 09/18/2020)

4.2.2.5. Personalities

Personalities (or personal preferences) refer to their enjoyment of conducting particular activities in class (Farrell, 2018, p. 43). Among twelve interview participants, only three teachers expressed their preference toward a strategy in teaching. In particular, teacher P9 admitted she did not like to consistently follow the main textbooks and thus, spent more time using supplementary materials. Teacher P8 said that when she chose a topic for her supplementary materials, she tended to select one that society is concerning. She explained that it was because she “always targeted at the critical thinking ability” of learners.

Teacher P12, on the other hand, seemed to be more comfortable with how to help his students actually use English in their life. When asked whether previous experience with supplementary materials impacts his decisions on materials development, he denied and explained:

“I do not think so. It is because, in the past, I learned English in order to sit in exams and get good marks, but not to use English as effectively as possible… When training in IELTS, my aim is to help learners to use English well. Therefore, I do not follow the way supplementary materials were designed and provided to me in high school.” (Teacher P12, 27/07/2020)

Therefore, teachers’ personal preferences play a role in their teaching approach and guide their beliefs about supplementary materials.

4.2.3. Teachers’ practice of developing supplementary materials

The last three questions of the interview questions centered on how teacher develop their supplementary materials in IELTS classrooms. Data in this section yielded a tendency among teachers that needs of students, and sources of materials were the main

focus of materials development, and most teachers design materials based on sources other than the main textbook. The framework for analysis was based on the determined headings as selection, design, and adaptation.

4.2.3.1. Selecting supplementary materials

When asked about the means of selecting materials, most teachers stated the steps they usually conducted in their classrooms. Each has different priorities, but in general, they select IELTS supplementary materials based on three criteria – students’ need, relevance to the test, and quality of materials.

With respect to students’ needs, there was an apparent recognition of student level of proficiency. Teachers P8 and P12 shared the same practice when mentioning the idea of “comprehensible input” – linguistic input containing grammatical forms that are a little more advanced than learners’ current ability (Ellis, 1997b, p. 47; Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p. 104; Brown, 2007, p. 295).

“… the materials must match my students’ levels. That is, they should be a little more difficult students’ current competence. As a result, students can broaden their knowledge…” (Teachers P8, 24/08/2020 and P12, 27/07/2020)

Interestingly, the two teachers have completely different pedagogical backgrounds. While teacher P8 specializes in English language teaching, P12’s major is Business administration.

Likewise, some other teachers, such as P3, P4, P6, and P7, chose materials based on the length and level of difficulty in accordance with their students’ level of language proficiency. For example, when reflecting on their practice of the development of reading materials in classrooms, teachers P3 and P7 were of the same opinion.

“… the supplementary materials must match students’ level [of language proficiency]. Regarding their level, I can consider the length of the reading text. For example, if the students’ level is at band 4.0 IELTS, it will be inappropriate to have them read a seven-paragraph text… Next, I have to take the number of the question into account… With the level at band 4.0, my students can only answer four or five questions at a time.” (Teacher P3, 08/08/2020)

“…reading practice texts in books published in China are much longer. For example, an IELTS reading passage usually covers two pages of an A4 paper. Meanwhile, those from Chinese books are three pages in length… I eliminate such materials.” (Teacher P7, 24/08/2020)

On the other hand, teacher P6 judged the difficulty level of a passage based on the lexical element.

“… it is impossible to choose a reading passage at band 7.0-8.0 for students who are at band 3.5 IELTS… I myself perceive whether students can understand the text… mostly based on the number of vocabularies. If the vocabulary is too difficult, that material cannot be selected… or those complex topics… are not suitable for beginners’ level.” (Teacher P6, 24/08/2020)

The second major criterion of selecting supplementary materials, which teachers P3, P7, P8, and P10 shared the same practice, is the relevance to the IELTS examination. According to those teachers, this is the top priority. For example, in teachers P3’s words:

“Firstly, in order to select a supplementary material, I have to examine the questions to see if they are relevant to the IELTS test.” (Teacher P3, 08/08/2020)

The third widely shared teachers’ practice was the selection of the qualified source of materials also captured much attention from teachers. Teacher P7, who employed

authentic materials in her IELTS classroom, only selected those videos created by native English speakers. She emphasized the inappropriateness of accents such as Singlish, which students can have trouble understanding. As for websites, teacher P11 mentioned the reputation of the pages and the writers of materials. Likewise, teachers, P1 and P2 shared similar concerns when choosing another book as supplementary material. For instance, teacher P2 said:

“First, those books should come from reputable publishers so that precise knowledge is guaranteed.” (Teacher P2, 27/08/2020)

Another typical practice among the interviewed teachers was to select interesting supplementary materials. Teacher P1 revealed that the main textbooks at her language center contain “traditional design” in terms of images, or tasks, which appear to be monotonous to learners. Therefore, this teacher cares much about the attractiveness of materials content. This somehow aligns with the practice of her colleague – teacher P2. Also preferring to select interesting materials, teacher P12 reasoned that if students felt bored, they would not want to come to class.

In addition to commonly shared practice, there are distinct strategies for selecting supplementary materials that teachers employ. These include choosing materials containing tasks that are ranked in accordance with difficulty levels (P1 and P5), information that is relevant to real-life situations so that learners can develop their critical thinking ability or have more motivation in learning English (P8 and P12), and topics that are similar to those in the main coursebooks (P3).

4.2.3.2. Designing supplementary materials

With respect to how teachers design supplementary materials in IELTS classrooms, it has been anticipated that they rarely start from scratch but select materials from sources

other than textbooks and then combine and synthesize them. The final product of the process can be both in the form of handouts or images from slide projectors. This, therefore, may explain why teachers appear to take the content and layout of the designed materials into much more consideration than others (only teacher P10 had other concerns such as the learning outcomes and weaknesses of coursebooks), although they each reported dissimilar procedures of designing. Noticeably, data analyzed from the interview also revealed a general preference for using handouts rather than projectors (only one teacher employs this technology in her classroom – P7).

The most common pattern of teachers’ practice was to deal with the knowledge contents, which will later be incorporated into supplementary materials. Teacher P5 continuously emphasized that “hand-outs must contain adequate content. That is the most important part.” Some teachers were not confident in themselves and thus, merely copied the content from other materials without making any modifications. In other words, they made photocopies of different materials and treated them as supplementary ones. For example, teachers P11 and P2 accounted:

“In terms of IELTS skills, if I find some reading passages suitable and adequate to use as supplementary materials, I will just employ them without designing anything. Especially in reading skills, I cannot create questions by myself.” (Teacher P11, 09/08/2020)

“After the content has been selected, I will incorporate the original version of it into my handouts. For instance, with a reading passage, I will use the original version without any modification.” (Teacher P2, 27/08/2020).

The reason why teachers hesitate to modify the original materials will be explained further in the following section, which focuses more on adaptation, but overall, it can be