An investigation into teacher's beliefs and practice about developing supplementary materials for ielts learners at language centers in Ho Chi Minh city

IELTS courses? If not, is there any kind of training that you have had or would like to have to help you develop supplementary materials for IELTS courses?

7. Do your institutes offer or provide supplementary materials for teachers and students?

How do those materials match your criteria for selecting and designing supplementary materials? Please give examples.

8. How does your context (school policies and practice, students) influence your choice of the content of your IELTS preparation lessons (i.e., what you teach)?

9. What are the factors you keep in mind when selecting particular tasks and practice materials?

10. Do you often design materials for IELTS yourself? If yes, what kind of materials do you design (probe: in reading, listening, writing, speaking, grammar and vocabulary)? What are the criteria and procedures? If not, what do you do?

11. What do you usually do when the supplementary materials you found comprise some drawbacks based on your criteria?

Some probes used to elicit more information and explanation from participants include: “Tell me more.”

“I need more detail.”

“Could you explain your response more?” “What do you mean by saying?”

In order to close the interview, it is advisable to ask follow-up questions such as: “Who should I contact next to learn more? Or “is there any further information that you would like to share that we have not covered?”

E. Closing instruction

The interviewer should thank interviewees for their time and responses. The anonymity and confidentiality of the interview are assured one more time. Ask the interview if it is possible to contact them if there are points to clarify in follow-up meetings. In case participants are eager to know the result of the study, it is suggested an abstract of the final study be sent to them.

Appendix D: Themes, subthemes, codes, and counts of the qualitative data

Theme

Subthemes	Count	Code	Count
The notion of supplementary materials in IELTS classrooms	Purposes of supplementary materials for IELTS classrooms	12	Providing extra exercises	7
	Purposes of supplementary materials for IELTS classrooms	12	Filling the gaps between coursebooks and learners’ expectations or the examination	5
	Benefits of supplementary materials for IELTS classrooms	20	Compensating for the weaknesses in main coursebooks	8
			Replacing the inappropriate content in coursebooks	1
			Raising interests among learners	3
			Improving lexical and grammatical capacity	3
			Bearing a resemblance to the real test	2
			Improving teachers’ own language knowledge	3
	Sources of supplementary materials for	28	IELTS commercial textbooks	8
	Sources of supplementary materials for	28	Authentic materials	9

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IELTS classrooms		IELTS websites and blogs	5
		Main coursebooks’ addons	1
		Materials from sources other than IELTS	4
		Materials written by test takers achieving a high score	1
Internal and external sources	Teachers' Experience	10	Personal experiences as a learner	6
	Teachers' Experience	10	Personal experiences as a teacher	4
	Teaching Context	19	Learners’ need	6
			Other teachers’ practices	5
			Language centers’ policies	8
	Theoretical Knowledge	3	Knowledge from teacher training courses	3
	Personalities	2	Personal preferences	2
	The washback effect of the IELTS examination	9	Focusing on academic language	4
	The washback effect of the IELTS examination	9	Focusing on the four language skills	5

Teachers’ practice of developing supplementary materials

Selecting supplementary materials	20	Length and level of difficulty	4
		Relevance to the IELTS examination	4
		Quality of the material	6
		Interesting materials	3
		Topics similar to those in main coursebooks	1
		Relevance to real-life situations	2
Designing supplementary materials	15	Materials’ content	10
Designing supplementary materials	15	Materials’ layout	5
Adapting supplementary materials	13	Adding more materials	5
		Eliminating inappropriate materials	2
		Modifying existing materials	6
	Convergence	11	Developing materials to match learners’ need	4
	Convergence	11	Using IELTS commercial textbooks	2

		Using authentic materials	2
		Using supplementary materials to improve lexical and grammatical capacity	1
		Using supplementary materials to compensate for the weaknesses in main coursebooks	1
		Using supplementary materials to raise interests among learners	1
Divergences	2	Influence from other teachers’ practices	1
Divergences	2	Influence from language centers’ policies	1

Appendix E: Coding System of the Interviews (presented with examples)

Codes

Examples
Providing extra exercises	If the supplementary materials are immediately relevant to the topics that I teach in classes, they will be a way of consolidating knowledge and offering extra practice and resources. (P7)
Filling the gaps between the available coursebooks and learners’ needs/ examination	When the coursebooks do not provide ample exercises, they update new trends in society, contemporary news, and topics for learners to practice. These materials are more practical than textbooks. (P8)
Compensating for the weaknesses in main coursebooks	When my students learn how to write an introduction for an essay, the main textbook only presents vocabulary but does not cater to the instruction. I have to prepare those instructions for my students. (P9)
Replacing the inappropriate content in coursebooks	Some coursebooks are not appropriate for the students’ levels of proficiency. For example, while students are only at the elementary level, the coursebooks’ content is too difficult. (P6)
Raising interests among learners	Videos on Youtube are used for listening skills. These are mainly short clips for my students to relax, and they are not really relevant to the teaching content. (P2)
Improving lexical and grammatical capacity	As for such reading texts, I often use them to improve my students' lexical capacity instead of creating a complete set of questions for them to practice reading comprehension. (P5)
Bearing a resemblance to the real test	Secondly, they [supplementary materials] add variety to my teaching. For example, the degree of reliability and resemblance to the actual test. (P10)

Improving teachers’ own language knowledge

They [supplementary materials] help teachers broaden their knowledge. They also provide other information, such as scarce topics in the IELTS test. (P11)
IELTS commercial textbooks	The IELTS examination is designed by Cambridge (UCLES). Therefore, books by the press are accurate and close to the test questions. (P3)
Authentic materials	Besides, articles in magazines or newspapers can be used to help learners improve their reading comprehension skills. (P5)
IELTS websites and blogs	When other textbooks do not have what I need, then I have to go online and search for materials from reliable sources, namely IELTS Simon or IELTS Liz. (P9)
Main coursebooks’ add- ons	Normally, IELTS coursebooks are accompanied by workbooks or other products such as electronic books, online practice websites, or mock tests. (P10)
Materials from sources other than IELTS	Usually, I use materials from PET [Preliminary English Test] and KET [Key English Test] because they are suitable for the pre-IELTS level. (P6)
Materials written by test takers achieving a high score	Books written by teachers who achieve band 9.0 in the IELTS examination (P8)
Personal experiences as a learner	Previously, I was a student of a teacher who specialized in IELTS Writing and developed her own materials for lessons. Therefore, I have a tendency not to use a particular book but synthesize from many books, sources on the Internet, or available worksheets of other teachers to create my own hand-out. (P6)

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