At times
material design could be seen as really time-consuming and highly incompatible
with the routine of a busy teacher, but according to what I have learnt, it is
surely worthwhile. The reasons behind
such a statement lay on the words written by Jocelyn Howard and Jae Major in
the work: “Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials”.
As the authors claim, making your own
material allows you to contextualize it and up-date it paying special attention
to your students’ needs and socio-cultural setting. Moreover, it also offers
you the opportunity to give a personal touch to your teaching, something the
students will certainly appreciate.
There are,
however, as I mentioned before, some disadvantages when designing materials.
One of them is that teachers' materials may be hard to organize, and that could 
As nothing
can be perfect, I believe designing material is a way to improve our teaching. Consequently,
it is totally worthwhile, rewarding and a “necessary evil”.
Hi, Marión!
ResponderEliminarI really liked your post! And I've got to say I completely agree with you when you say creating materials is time-consuming. When I was doing my teaching practices, designing worksheets could take me hours! And sometimes I didn't even had time to use them during the lessons.
However, as you also say, creating our own materials gives our lessons a personal touch besides taking into account our particular students' needs. Also, if we are working with the task-based approach, it is unlikely we find much material that is useful for our project.
Maybe we could strike a balance between the use of ready available material and creating our own. We could complement the former with the latter, therefore practising and presenting certain topics and structures we believe are necessary.
Hi there, Marión. I absolutely agree with you and Lu. Even though designing your own material can be time consuming, it is definitely worthwhile. I still remember how my students enjoyed the pictures in my worksheets and asked me to colour them. When creating your own material you end up having the exact thing you were looking for and your students appreciate working with something especially made for them, different from the traditional worksheets they are used to.
ResponderEliminar