Teaching Materials

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. 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 bookmust be must be comprehensive enough to be a help to theteacher. 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 bookmust include textbooks, manuals, supplementary readers,dictionaries, programmed materials.

Textbooks.The textbook is one of the most important source:; of obtainingknowledge. 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 ensure pupils activity in speaking, reading and writing, i.e., they must correspond to the aims of foreign language teaching in schools

3. The textbooks must arouse pupils' interest and excite their curiosity

4. The textbooks must extend pupils' educational horizon, i.e., the material of textbooks should be of educational value.

5. They should have illustrations to help pupils in comprehension and in speaking.

6. The textbooks must reflect the life and culture of the people whose language the pupils study.

Every textbook for learning a foreign language should contain exercises and texts.

The textbooks should provide the revisions of words in texts, drills and speech exercises. Exercises for developing oral language should constitute 40-50 % of the exercises of the textbook. The other 50 % will be those designed for assimilating vocabulary, grammar, the technique of reading etc.

Manuals.It is a handbook which may be used in addition to thetextbook.

Selected reading.There is a great variety of supplementary readers gradedin forms and types of schools.

Dictionaries.For learning English there are some English-Russian,English-Uzbek, English-Karakalpak dictionaries available.
Programmed materials.They are necessary when programmed learning isused. The main features of programmed learning are as follows

1. Learning by small easy steps. Every step or frame calls for a written or an oral response which requires both attention and thought.

2. Immediate reinforcement by supplying a correct answer after each response. The pupil is aware that his response is right. The steps are so small and the their arrangement is so orderly that he is likely to make very few errors. When an error occurs, he discovers his mistake immediately by comparing his response with the one given in "the feed-back",

3. Progression at the learning rate of each individual pupil. Each pupil can work at his pace.

Visual materials. Objects (Realia).There are a lot of things in theclassroom 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 the 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) Picture flashcards b) word flashcards. A flashcarcl is a cardwith a letter, a sound symbol, or a word to be used for a quick showing to pupils and in this way for developing pupils' skills in reading and pronunciation. Picture flashcards have the advantage that the teacher can prepare them at his/her leisure at home. In this way, they can be made more

attractive and colorful an can include details impossible to include in a hastily drawn blackboard picture. Although, they will probably be used in much the same sort of way and for much the same sort of purpose as blackboard drawings, they have the advantage of cutting down greatly on time as well as providing variety. One can also make double sided flashcards to use when drilling certain contrasting language items, e.g.

Side one: She usually drinks tea.

Side two: But now she is drinking champagne.

Wall-charts:A wall-chart is a big sheet of paper with drawing or words to behung in the classroom and used for revision or generalization of some linguistic phenomenon, such as "English Tenses", "Passive Voice", "Rules of Reading" and so on.

Postersor series of illustrations portraying a story. They are used as "props" inretelling a story read or heard.

Pictures.a) Object pictures (a bed, a cat, a table)

b) Situational pictures (the picture of a boy lying in bed)

c) Topical picture (a picture of a bedroom)

Printed pictures, magazine pictures.Printed and magazine pictures areone of the most useful visual aids available to teachers. The students can be presented with completely unusual situations in magazine pictures, which at the same time are stimulating and colorful. Magazine pictures are also easily accessible to everyone-they are cheap and easy to find.

Photographs.They are of two kinds: black-and-white and colorful e.g.

"Views of London" and etc.

Albums.An album is a book of pictures or photographs which is used fordeveloping pupils' language skills.

Maps and plans.In teaching English the maps of Great Britain, the USA, andother countries where English is spoken may be used. The plans, for example, of a house, building.

Slides.A slide is glass or plastic plate bearing a picture.

Audio materials.Tapes and records or discs belong to audiomaterials. Tapes and records are used for teaching listening comprehension, speaking, and reading aloud.

Audio-visual materials.Sound film loops and films, are examples of visualmaterials.

Sound film loopsare becoming popular with the teachers. They are short (1,5-1,7 min.) and the teacher can play the film loop back as many times as necessary for the pupils to grasp the material and memorize it.

Films.Specially prepared educational films for language teaching haveappeared, e.g., "Australia", "New York", "Winter Sports1' and

other.

Teaching aids used in various combinations allow the teacher to develop his pupils' oral-aural skills: These materials are valuable for presentation, exercised, revision, testing. Visual materials have an important role to play in the development of hearing and speaking skills.

Teaching materials can also be used to assist in the general development of the pupil's personality, and 'his is of great educational value.

Teaching materials acquire special importance in gaining cultural aims. In this connection it is necessity to mention the qualities teaching materials should possess:

1. Authenticity

2. Clarity

3. Practicality

4. Appropriateness

According to A. Spicer, "The purpose of teaching materials is not to usurp the role of the teacher, nor even to make his work easier. Their main purpose is to make it possible for the teacher to teach more effectively, more interestingly and more economically. It is equally important that the material should help the pupil to learn more easily and more rapidly."