2. Teachers are usually trained how to evaluate, select, and create materials rather than how to effectively use a textbook, which is one thing writers must keep in mind. 

This question prompted me to think about how culture affects what activities we as teachers create for our specific students and what we as “writers” must ponder when creating materials for a wide population. 

2. Materials writers could be considered theorists themselves if they further explored how to produce texts that address what learners actually do instead of what learners say. 
 

I think this principle is vital to materials writers.  Perhaps sometimes writers lack the necessary experience to create effective materials or, even more likely, writers get “caught up” in their own world so much that the conceptual ideas look fantastic but are impossible to apply in a real classroom setting.

2. Teachers should write materials based on which kind(s) of learners they know best—in other words, the learners they have the most experience with.

This article addresses what the previous article mentions.  You can’t merely create hypotheses (activities); you must experiment with them as well (try to teach them) in order to modify and improve them!

2. The text, among many other variables (personality, motivation, attitude, etc.), is one of the factors that can influence or be influenced by the classroom management structure.

Again, this quote stresses the need for continual “trialling” and subsequent adaptation of activities in the classroom. 
 

2. Teachers must understand that instructions will probably be more complicated than the language structures introduced in the correlating exercise simply because of the “dual audience.”  Writers are attempting to communicate with teachers as well as students when giving instructions. 

3. English contains an underlying orderly structure; thus, grammar activities should reflect this coherence and order. 

4. The scale of fluency vs. accuracy is a false dichotomy.  We as teachers and materials designers should strive to land in the middle of the “scale,” achieving as much of both as possible.

I can’t recall how many times this has actually happened to me as an instructor.  Thus, I appreciate it when materials writers direct instructions at me or provide many helpful examples. 

“Often, design decisions are based on traditions about grammar materials and their organization rather than on careful rethinking of either the content or its organization.”  (pg. 46)

I hope I never fall into the trap of becoming “lazy” and relying on past work instead of truly considering new possibilities when designing materials for my students.

2. No significant changes (or improvements) will occur in grammar pedagogy until materials writers as well as teachers break away from the “traditional” way grammar has been presented and taught.

3. Corpus linguistics provides a new way for teachers with computer access to analyze large chunks of natural language.

4. Teachers should not assume that their students will have “grammar intuition” to determine if something “sounds right” or not.  Teachers should instead be prepared by researching grammar rules and providing examples for their students. 
 

This quote stresses that there are many factors materials writers and teachers should take into account when designing lessons.  Although this seems obvious, the article states that in the past, teachers and materials writers have chosen to rely heavily upon only one factor (frequency). 

“Most grammar teaching remains unaffected to any significant extent by the advances brought about by corpus linguistics.”  (pg. 556)

I think we should take advantage of the advances that occur in our field—cautiously, without “jumping on the theory bandwagon,” but certainly not ignoring them. 

2. Although grammar activities that occur in context are few, they will increase because of the current pedagogical stress on integrated language teaching. 

3. Activities that contain examples are usually easier to follow; thus, it’s preferable to include examples.

4. Creating grammar activities that cater to different learning styles would help to improve the activities currently available.

Actually, this encourages me as a potential future materials writer.  It shows me where the “unchartered territory” lies…what I can begin thinking about in order to develop materials that incorporate activities for the various learning styles.  Fortunately, I am sitting under this “trend” of teaching at this very moment, so I will be able to directly apply my training.

“In grammar texts, items to be taught are chosen…and then activities to enhance or test their acquisition are chosen…”  (pg. 3)

Remembering this sequence will help me when developing activities for the IEP later in the semester as well as in the future with new students and new situations.

2. “Grammaring” (vs. teaching grammar) should emphasize “skill development” rather than “knowledge transmission.”

3. When presenting grammar, its form, meaning, and use should all be factors of consideration.  These three factors are not isolated; they are all interconnected and contribute to one another. 

4. Sometimes it is helpful to work with students on a specific structure even when it seems they’re not ready because this “premature” work can help to refine their awareness and prepare them for when they are ready. 
 

What an important distinction!  Too often instructors rely on rules when teaching grammar, but giving students reasons will actually enable students to firmly solidify their knowledge of the rules. 

“Knowledge remains inert when it is not available for transfer from the classroom context to the outside world.”  (pg. 258)

We as teachers and materials designers always need to strive to create activities that are as contextualized and meaningful to learners as possible in hopes that they will first retain the information and then actually incorporate it into their everyday language.

2. The Academic Word List (AWL) is a compilation of 570 word families that cover 10% of academic vocabulary.  This can help students with academically oriented goals know what to study. 

3. When compiling words for the AWL, frequency was considered secondary to range to include single-member families that occur less frequently in longer texts.

4. The AWL was created to improve upon the University Word List (UWL), a combination of four previously compiled word lists, which was widely used but lacked consistency. 

This tells me that teaching prefixes and suffixes can easily increase my students’ vocabulary exponentially.

“Courses that involve direct attention to language features have been found to result in better learning than courses that rely solely on incidental learning.”  (pg. 228)

Just as Decarrico states in her article, incidental learning can only take a student so far.  Teachers must be responsible for explicit classroom instruction as well in order to prepare students to successfully “meet” the words outside class.

2. The ultimate goal of vocabulary teaching is deep level processing, that is, the transfer of the word from the short-term to the long-term memory.

3. A teacher should present language in meaningful chunks.  Later, when the students have processed the use of the “chunk,” the teacher can break it down into its parts for more vocabulary.

4. One way to teach vocabulary is through meaning associations (semantic mapping, associative networks).  This is an effective technique because the associations reflect similar relationships in the mind.
 

Teachers must not solely rely on their students’ abilities to pick up words “incidentally.”  Explicit vocabulary teaching is also necessary and, in most cases, beneficial to the students (especially compared to those students who receive no explicit training at all). 

“The way to avoid cross-associations in closely related semantic groups is to integrate new words with old by teaching the most frequent or useful word first and only after it is well established introduce its less frequent antonym partner.”  (pg. 289)

This is a helpful teaching suggestion for presenting related words.  Teachers must be cautious and very selective in how and when they present these words.

2. Computer Assisted Vocabulary Acquisition (CAVOCA) is a computer program that helps students learn vocabulary by employing a “graded contextual disambiguation” approach.  The program is based on the theory that it is better to introduce words in context rather than in bilingual pairs. 

3. (Groot cites Singleton in note #2.)  It takes 18 years of classroom exposure to equal one year of immersion experience.

4. One advantage of the “paired associates” teaching method is that the learner is already familiar with the concept and only needs to learn the new “label.”
 

As much as professionals in the field promote the use of authentic texts, here is a sound argument why, for vocabulary teaching purposes, we should refrain from doing so until are students are truly ready!

“The number of possible meanings of the unknown word increases proportionally to the number of other unknown words in the context.  .  .For any context to be well understood a dense coverage is required.”  (pg. 63-64)

I have dealt with such ambiguity when reading in a foreign language, so I know the frustration and confusion my students feel.  Thus, I must make careful choices of the texts I will employ in the classroom.

2. One of the main causes of students forgetting words is “interference,” or the simultaneous teaching of similar vocabulary words.

3. Teachers must be aware of those students who attempt to decontextualize vocabulary by examining texts word by word.

4. Presenting related vocabulary together can actually have the effect of “unteaching”!
 

How frustrating!  How, then, are we supposed to develop texts that incorporate vocabulary in a context of unrelated items?  Isn’t the idea of related items embedded somewhere in the definition of “context”?  This will definitely spur some critical thinking on my part. 

“If two or more items share some strongly related common features and they are learned together at the same time, the similar features make them become strongly associated with each other, and the differences interfere with each 
other.  . .Increasing the differences between the items will decrease the strength of the association between them, thus reducing the chances of interference.”  (pg. 8-9)

This seems to be a logical argument.  I don’t think a teacher can completely avoid presenting similar items at the same time, but a teacher can control how the items are presented (through contextual differences). 

2. Students must be exposed to words a multiple number of times in multiple contexts.  A minimum of 12 exposures is required for students to grasp and retain a word.

3. Contextualizing vocabulary is not always the answer, especially if the context itself is contrived to teach the specific vocabulary!

4. There is a false dichotomy between “active” and “passive” vocabulary.  There are actually many degrees of knowledge students have regarding vocabulary that go beyond merely “active” and “passive.”
 

This quote describes the necessity of schema when reading and, consequently, when acquiring vocabulary.  The more general background knowledge students have, the easier it will be for them to match “terms” to concepts they already know.  Otherwise, they must learn the new concept along with the new term. 

“Students’ efficiency in using a dictionary, and knowing when not to use it should be developed…If unguided, dictionary use can have adverse effects on their language development.”  (pg. 32-33) 

I can’t tell you how many problems I’ve had with students who don’t want to learn how to speak English but who want to translate!  That’s why I usually discourage dictionary use in class and encourage monolingual dictionary use at home.

2. Since the ultimate goal of the course is academic writing, any vocabulary and grammar activities we develop should have immediate application to helping improve the students’ writing.

3. As materials writers, we need to know the proficiency level as specifically as possible.  Knowing the level of the program does not necessarily indicate the exact level of the students.

4. When we are linking our activities to web sites (ours or the IEP’s), we must make sure that the activities are as easy to access as possible.  We don’t want the students to get lost because they have to “navigate” so much!

After we develop these activities, students will not only be able to practice their word processing skills, they will also have an opportunity to learn to navigate a new program (Hot Potatoes).  We (as materials writers) must keep in mind to make our activities as easy to follow as possible. 

“Focus on retrieving the words rather than recognizing them.  Every time you retrieve a word the connection between the form of the word and its meaning is made stronger.”  (pg. 2 of the AWL)

When creating vocabulary activities, we must guard against providing recognition-only exercises which don’t reinforce the vocabulary as much as production exercises. 

2. Authentic academic assignments are integrated into the course as much as possible, either as examples to observe or as examples to practice responding to. 

3. We need to work the activities ourselves in order to “feel” what the students “feel.”  If we encounter any difficulties, we know to either provide clearer instructions / a better format in our activities or to supplement the book’s activities to further develop students’ skills.

4. There’s a page on the instructor’s manual website where we can find charts to help us organize the information that’s presented in each chapter.  We can use this as a starting point for our activities plans. 

In order to incorporate as many learning styles as possible and to make our activities as communicative as possible, we must utilize these videos in conjunction with our activities.

“They're struggling with grammar and vocabulary--but they're almost at that language-learning ‘peak’ that will enable them to conquer college-level work.”  (overview for Looking Ahead Book 2 Instructor’s Manual)

We must constantly keep in mind that the ultimate goal of any created activity is to enable the students to academically perform at a college level.  If we become disconnected from this goal, we’ll be designing activities as an end in themselves.

2. When working in a writing team, members need to know when it’s best to work alone and when it’s necessary to work together. 
 

These excerpts taught me about the various steps involved in writing/publishing materials.  The process is definitely a long and time-consuming one.  There are many “hidden” details.  Thus, I should consider the reality of the job if I ever make a decision to involve myself in such a project. 

2. Using student samples/models in a text makes the material more accessible and “transparent” to other students and also reduces copyright costs. 
 

It’s important to test materials first, and, if possible to have someone else (preferably a stranger) test them as well, just to get a fresh perspective.  This kind of feedback is critical to the success of any material.

2. Decisions about selecting textbooks are usually made by supervisors and/or administrators while decisions about implementing textbooks are usually made by the teacher.  Selecting decisions and implementing decisions are very different because of the factors involved (selecting—money, imposed standards, etc.; implementing—students’ needs and interests, etc.).

3. Textbooks are comprised of four main elements:  content/explanations, examples, exercises/tasks, and presentation/format.

4. ESL/EFL textbooks contain two types of content:  linguistic and thematic.
 

It makes me sad that teachers must comply to the politics of schools, but if that’s the only way to have a say in what’s chosen, then it must be a priority of mine to learn how to do it! 

“A common demand is that teachers be free agents—creating their own materials for their own students.  .  .In this vision, the commercially published textbook is a restraint forced upon teachers that limits their creativity.”  (pg. 422)

I have been in both contextual extremes—having no curriculum and having to create all the materials myself as well as having a strict curriculum forced upon me to accomplish in a short amount of time.  I liked neither extreme and prefer (as most teachers do) to have some kind of structured curriculum to refer to but the freedom to supplement it.  I do not think that published textbooks should be thought of as a “limiting force” with respect to teachers. 

2. Usability testing can be conducted deductively (with a “predetermined focus”) or inductively (to look for patterns in the data).

3. Four methods exist in usability testing:  the think aloud protocol, the co-discovery method, the self-reporting log method, and the follow-up interview.  You can use one exclusively or a combination to compile data.

4. Quality of the materials will probably improve more with students’ input than with colleagues’ or developers’ input. 

I have always agreed with the idea of teachers developing materials (with assistance from outside sources when necessary).  Because we have the most direct access to students, we should utilize their insight and ideas as a way to improve the materials we create.

“It should be made clear to the participants that it is the material that is being tested, not them.”  (pg. 18)

In the case that students become nervous (especially during a think-aloud protocol process), the teacher/evaluator must relieve all their anxiety in order to obtain the most informative evaluation possible.

2. Students must first recognize mistakes in their language output and then seek to correct them.  The implication for materials is that materials must help students notice their errors and provide opportunities to correct them. 
 

This quote is extremely relevant to our discussion on evaluation.  No matter what vision the writer has in his/her head regarding a certain activity, the material must get into the hands of the student so that the ideas “come to fruition.”  It is only at this point that the writer can truly evaluate the activity and then modify it based on the student input.  Of course, something to be considered (which hasn’t been touched on in our discussions) is that each activity will be received differently depending on the audience and the classroom’s student dynamics.  The same activity could fail in one class and succeed in another. 

2. When designing group activities to be completed on the computer, teachers should consider the many types of interactions possible:  with other classmates, with other classes at the same school or anywhere in the world, with community members and experts, and with the teacher.  
 

I am encouraged to know that even if certain programs don’t have an explicit spoken component (either by the computer or by the students), that they can still be beneficial to students' speaking skills by way of transfer (at least partially).

2. Computer technology can be very helpful in assisting teachers with the heavy load of assessment processes.
 

If this is virtually unchartered territory, then I would love to explore it!  Wow!  What a great idea for developing software—create activities that are meant to be completed in student pairs!

2. Students can probably read from a screen as well as from paper, but they need to be taught strategies of how to do so.
 

Personally, I have to have interaction with texts I read in order to “remember” (refer to) the information later.  Many students are probably the same way.  Thus, software programs utilized in the classroom should provide this opportunity.

2. The role of a computer in a learner-controlled classroom is a mere resource to be “explored and exploited.”
 

This quote speaks for itself.  This study set out to define some parameters regarding the level of user control, and the only definite that resulted was that user control is dependent on the situation.