Adapting Supplementary Materials For Ielts Training

which are, of course, raw and intact, and start to develop from them. This further suggests that writing learning materials require skills of selection.

Along the same line, Mishan and Timmis (2015), by drawing on previous literature, identify an eight-step process to design a fine product of materials. The writing process includes: statement of beliefs, needs analysis, aims and objectives, syllabus design, drafting, piloting, production, and revision. In the current framework, it is ideal for material writers to state their “core methodological principles and belief” (p. 164). That is, they have to have a clear view of the knowledge of the subject and context. As a result, even with professional writers, beliefs still play a significant role in materials development.

2.3.3. Adapting supplementary materials for IELTS training

Although supplementation is not purposefully a part of adaptation, which has been discussed in earlier sections, it is vital to mention adaptation as an additional or integral part of selecting and designing process. When choosing a supplementary material, it is nearly impossible to find an ideal one due to constraints of resources or time. In this case, adaptation is needed to alleviate the drawback of the material. After the material has been used in an actual classroom, it can be adjusted to conform with the latter classes.

There has been a consensus among professional literature of material-adapting purposes, and they are very much alike those in material design regarding “a better match for a specific learning context” (McGrath, 2013, p. 70) as Graves (2000) comments that “no textbook was written for your actual group of students, and so it will need to be adapted in some way” (p. 176). Hutchinson and Waters (1987) note that material adaptation is the combination of evaluation (which can be pre-use, whilst-use or post- use of materials) and design process. These processes are intertwined with each other. When adapting an available material, teachers should have knowledge of material

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writing and evaluating so that they are able to understand how it works and where it needs adjusting. Other factors in relation to evaluation, such as teaching contexts, are also taken into consideration. This sentiment is similar to the two steps of “using textbooks as a tool” in Graves (2000). The first is “getting inside,” which requires teachers to put themselves in material designers’ shoes and then discover the content, organizing principle(s), the sequence of content, unit objectives, and unit organization. A straightforward method is to examine the contents pages of ELT textbooks “as they reveal the underlying principles and assumptions on which the writers have based their material” (McDonough et al., 2013, p. 12). With this perspective, it is essential to have sufficient insight into writing and evaluating materials, or else this would be like no more than an instinctive activity. The next step suggests a number of choices of adaptation at the “activity level, unit level, and book/ syllabus level” (p. 176-188). As a result, teachers will be able to adapt anything from the input, to language or content and to tasks.

The techniques of material adaptation vary in terms of teachers’ experience with the materials they are using. It is because some of them are effortless, while others demand a substantial investment of time, profound knowledge, and necessary skills (McGrath, 2013, p. 70). However, perspectives on adaptation techniques appear to be identical among scholars about the premise of adaptation which involves adding, eliminating, and modifying. For example, Graves (2000) describes these techniques in the three levels mentioned earlier, which consist of “change, supplement, eliminate activities (the activity level); change the order of activities and adapt existing activities (the unit level); and change, add to or eliminate parts of the syllabus (the book/syllabus level).” Meanwhile, McDonough et al. (2013) see the adaptation in relation to “adding (including expanding and extending), deleting (including subtracting and abridging), modifying (including rewriting and restructuring), simplifying, and reordering” materials (p. 70).

Teachers' beliefs

Contexts

2.4. Theoretical framework from literature review

Experiences

Knowledge

Personalities

Adaptation

Selection

Design

Supplementary materials

The framework of the current study comprises two main parts in which one illustrates the factors affecting teachers’ beliefs, while the other depicts the components of the supplementing process. The relationship of these two parts was represented in correspondence with that of beliefs and practice. In this case, teachers’ beliefs act as precursors guiding how supplementary materials are developed.

The factors affecting teachers’ beliefs were drawn on the six sources of teachers’ belief in Richards and Lockhart (1999) – (1) institutions’ policies and practices, (2) personality, (3) experiences as learners, (4) teaching background, (5) principles derived from training and research, and (6) approach- and method-based principles – and the classification of those sources into subjective or objective factors (Nguyen, 2019), or internal and external sources (Levin, 2015, p. 50). In order to construct a more comprehensive and updated framework, a synthesized list of factors impinging on teacher beliefs was identified as experiences, knowledge, contexts, and personalities.

Regarding the components of supplementary materials development, it was suggested that the process of supplementation is nothing more than “adding something new” (McGrath, 2002, p. 80). So as to supplement core materials, teachers can adopt other sources or generate their own ones (Garinger, 2002; McGrath, 2013). These two elements are recognized as “Selection” and “Design.” Even though supplementation, as discussed in the previous section, is not an inherent part of adaptation, the latter can act as an additional part of the selecting and designing process. This stems from the fact that there are hardly any one-size-fits-all materials, even textbooks or supplementary materials, and thus they should be adjusted to conform well with different classes. Given the indispensability of adaptation, it was realized as the third component in the part of supplementary materials development.

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY

3.1. Research questions

This research aims at finding answers to the following questions:

1. What are teachers’ beliefs about developing supplementary materials for IELTS courses?

2. What are the factors affecting teachers’ beliefs about developing supplementary materials for IELTS courses?

3. How do teachers’ actual classroom practices align with their beliefs about developing supplementary materials for IELTS courses?

3.2. Method design

The current study lent itself to the pragmatic paradigm in which both quantitative and qualitative research methods will be sequentially adopted. Indeed, the convergent mixed methods design – concurrent triangulation approach – was employed. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected approximately the same time and then merged and compared to see if findings confirm or disconfirm one another (Driscoll, Appiah-Yeboah, Salib, & Rupert, 2007, p. 24; Creswell, 2009, p. 213). The study was also characterized as QUALITATIVE + quantitative (QUAL + quan). The upper case suggested prominent attention to qualitative data. Meanwhile, the lower case implies a secondary level of significance (Morse, 1991, p. 122).

Since the instruments in this thesis were established based on the theoretical framework which had been presented in the previous section, it is worth articulating the intent of data integration. Moseholm and Fetters (2017) state three approaches to data merging, two of which were acquired, namely the “matching” and “data diffraction” approaches. The former refers to the intention of designing correlated items in

instruments, and both instruments can yield data shedding light on the same phenomenon. On the other hand, the latter aims at collecting other aspects of the central phenomenon (p. 3). Therefore, regarding the quantitative phase, survey research is used to identify what teachers’ beliefs about supplementary materials regarding concepts, reasons, and criteria are. As for the qualitative phase, ethnographic research embracing semi- structured interviews will be adopted to dig deeper into what teachers believe and how those beliefs affect the development of supplementary materials in terms of selection, design, and adaptation.

3.3. Research Setting

The study was conducted in language centers in Ho Chi Minh City. According to the report by the Ho Chi Minh Department of Education and Training, there are approximately 700 licensed language centers in Ho Chi Minh City, which offer numerous courses of different levels, age groups, or demands (Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, 2019). Unlike public schools where official coursebooks must be unquestionably used, teachers at language centers have more room to select, develop their own teaching materials, or supplement the main coursebooks. Although there have been few statistical data on the number of language centers in Ho Chi Minh City that support teachers’ supplementing materials, a study by Pham (2018) suggests most teachers at these language centers were able to deploy such types of material at their will. This concurred well with the result in a study in central Vietnam. This study indicates that IELTS trainers were very keen on using supplementary materials for all the language skills and language areas. The types of materials to be used depended on teachers’ own assessment of the learners’ needs and their relevance to the IELTS test format (Nguyen, Nguyen, & Dao, 2020).

3.4. Participants

3.4.1. Description of the population

The population of this research comprises English language teachers who have experience in IELTS training at language centers in Ho Chi Minh City. The city was selected as the research site because, since 2019, the municipal government has issued the enactment of the “Scheme on foreign language teaching and learning in the national education system in the 2019-2025 period” (People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, 2019). According to the decision, one of the missions of the city is to corporate with international organizations to assess students' and citizens’ language ability based on global standards. This can promote the demand for the preparation of examinations such as IELTS. Therefore, investigating the beliefs and practices of teachers about supplementary materials development may somehow shed light on the reality of IELTS preparation courses and the impact of IELTS on language teaching in this area. Moreover, since this study aims at investigating teachers’ beliefs and practices about selection, adaptation, and design supplementary materials, they must have sufficient experience in the field of IELTS training. Due to the fact that there are about 700 certificated language centers in Ho Chi Minh City (based on the report by Ho Chi Minh Department of Education and Training), it is likely impossible to identify an exhaustive list of teachers who are teaching IELTS.

3.4.2. Sampling method

As the study adopted a mixed approach to collect data, the sampling method for the whole investigation was identified as an identical concurrent sampling design in which the same individuals participated in both quantitative and qualitative phases of the research (Johnson & Christensen, 2014, p. 374). The rationale for this sampling design is that when the researcher compares the two data sets, the more homogeneous they are, the better.

In the quantitative phase, the population size was rather big, and there was a shortage of human and financial resources. This research adopted a non-probability sampling strategy. In fact, purposive and snowball sampling was employed. According to Johnson and Christensen (2014), purposive sampling (also known as judgmental sampling) is a technique that participants with particular characteristics are selected in a study. Meanwhile, in snowball sampling, every participant of a study is required to identify others who qualify for the inclusion of the research (pp, 364-365). The upsides of these sampling methods lie in their low cost and convenience, which is one of the features of non-probability sampling (Ary, Jacobs, Sorensen, & Razavieh, 2010, p. 155). More importantly, purposive sampling enables the researcher to recruit respondents who are most likely to offer useful and fruitful data (Campbell et al., 2020, pp. 653-654). Meanwhile, snowball sampling is deployed when the researcher has difficulty accessing schools (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2018, p. 221), and when compiling a list of the total population is impossible (Etikan, Alkassim, & Abubakar, 2016, p. 6). In order to alleviate the drawback of snowball sampling, the researcher has first contacted numerous respondents and given them clear instructions as well as criteria to recruit informants for the questionnaire. As justified in the previous section, the aim of the present study is to investigate teachers’ beliefs and practice about IELTS supplementary materials development, and with an immeasurable population, purposive sampling and snowball sampling were inclined to be appropriate. Therefore, teachers who have experience in IELTS training in Ho Chi Minh City were purposively recruited. In order to increase the response rate, the researcher has sought assistance from personal network channels to recruit potential participants for the study. According to Bartlett et al. as cited in Cohen et al. (2018), there is hardly any difference in the sample size for populations of more than 2,000, which is as many as 119 in terms of continuous data (p. 207). Since the items in the questionnaire are designed mostly to collect continuous data and the population was unknown, the sample size of this phase of research was intended at about 150.