Teaching materials

By teaching materials we mean the materials which the teacher can use to help pupils learn a foreign language through visual or audio perception. They must be capable of contrib­uting to the achievement of the practical, cultural, and educa­tional aims of learning a foreign language. Since pupils learn a foreign language for several years, it is necessary for the teacher to have a wide variety of materials which make it possible to progress with an increasing sophistication to match the pupils’ continually growing command of the foreign language. Good teaching materials will help greatly to reinforce the pupils’ initial desire to learn the lan* guage and to sustain their enthusiasm throughout the course.

The following teaching materials are in use nowadays: teacher’s books, pupil’s books, visual materials, audio mate­rials,' and audio-visual materials.

A teacher's book must be comprehensive enough to be a help to the teacher. This book should provide all the recorded material; summaries of the aims and new teaching points of each lesson; a summary of all audio and visual materials required; suggestions for the conduct of the lesson and examples of how the teaching points can be developed.

Pupil’s books must include textbooks, manuals, supple­mentary readers, dictionaries, programmed materials.

Textbooks. The textbook is one of the most important sources for obtaining knowledge. It contains the material at which pupils work both during class-periods under the teacher’s supervision and at home independently. The textbook also determines the ways and the techniques pupils should use in learning the material to be able to apply it when hearing, speaking, reading, and writing.

The modern textbooks for teaching a foreign language should meet the following requirements:

1. The textbooks should provide pupils with the knowl­edge of the language sufficient for developing language skills, i.e., they must include the fundamentals of the target language.

2. They should ensure pupils’ activity in speaking, reading, and writing, i.e., they must correspond to the aims of foreign language teaching in school.

3. The textbooks must extend pupils’ educational horizon,

1. e., the material of the textbooks should be of educational value.

Visual materials.

Objects. There are a lot of things in the classroom such as pens and pencils of different sizes and colours, books, desks and many other articles which the teacher can use in presenting English names for them and in stimulating pupils’ activities to utilize the words denoting objects they can see, touch, point to, give, take, etc. Toys and puppets may be widely used in teaching children of primary schools, which is the case in the specialized schools.

Flashcards. A flashcard is a card with a letter, a sound symbol or a word to be used for quick showing to pupils and in this way for developing pupils’ skills in reading and pro­nunciation. Flashcards are usually made by the teacher or by the pupils under the teacher’s direction, though there are some ready-made flashcards. ¹⁹ • Sentence cards. They bear sentences or sentence patterns which can be used with different aims, e. g., for reading and analyzing the sentences, for using these sentences in speak­ing, for compiling an oral composition using the sentence as a starting point, for writing a composition.

These cards are prepared by the teacher and distributed among the pupils for individual work during the lesson. The teacher checks his pupils’ work afterwards.

Wall-charts. A wall-chart is a big sheet of paper with drawings or words to be hung in the classroom and used for revision or generalization of some linguistic phenomenon. Such as “English Tenses”, “Passive Voice”, “Ing-Forms”, “Rules of Reading”.

Posters or series of illustrations portraying a story. They are used as “props” in retelling a story read or heard. The teacher himself, or a pupil who can draw or paint, prepares such posters.

Pictures. There are at least three types of pictures which are used in teaching a foreign language: object pictures (e. g., the picture of a bed), situational pictures (e. g., the picture of a boy lying in bed), topical pictures (e. g., the picture of a bedroom). They may be big enough to be hung in the class­room or small to be distributed among the pupils for each one to speak on his own. Pictures may be utilized separately (as single units) and in sets to be used as “props” for oral com­position or re-telling a story

Slides. A slide is a glass or plastic plate bearing a picture. Slides are usually coloured and used in sets to illustrate a story; the teacher can utilize slides for developing hearing and speaking skills.

Filmstrips. A filmstrip ²⁰ represents a series of pictures, as a rule, situational pictures in certain sequence which a learner sees while listening to a story from the teacher or the tape to reproduce it later. Special filmstrips are available. They last about 5—10 minutes and can be used with synchro­nized tapes. When a picture appears on the screen, the tape is heard. See, for example, “Great Britain”, “London”.

Audio materials. Tapes and records or discs belong to audio materials. Tapes are usually prepared by the teacher (he selects the material and the speaker for recording). Tapes and records²¹ are used for teaching listening comprehension, speaking, and reading aloud.

Audio-visual materials. Sound film loops and films are examples of audio-visual materials:

Chapter VIII Teaching Hearing and Speaking

The previous chapters dealt with the teaching of various aspects of the language, namely, phonetics (pronunciation), vocabulary, and grammar. The knowledge of each of the aspects is of great importance to learners. However, when we say a person knows the language we first of all mean he under­stands the language spoken and can speak it himself.

Language came into life as a means of communication. It exists and is alive only through speech. When we speak about teaching a foreign language; we first of all have in mind teaching it as a means of communication.

Speech is a bilateral process. It includes hearing, on the one hand, and speaking, on the other. When we say “hearing” we mean auding or listening and comprehension.

Speaking exists in two forms: dialogue and monologue.