Teaching Teachers to Evaluate and Design Materials
Carol Lethaby: http://clethaby.com/
Helping Teachers to Choose and Adapt Reading and Listening Materials
Ten Things Teachers Need to Know
Carol Lethaby [email protected]
The New School University - UC Berkeley Extension
1 What are suitable texts for learners?
• The difference between ‘authentic’, ‘adapted-authentic’ and ‘pseudo-authentic’ texts.
2 How long should texts for learners be?
3 How do we read / listen?
Sample Task
Discuss: What are the advantages and disadvantages of each type?
Sample Task
Find an authentic text and adapt it for a group of students to use for intensive reading practice. Write a rationale for
why you chose the text, who it's adapted for and how you adapted it. (750 words)
Include the original and your adaptation as appendices. The adaptation can be a pseudo-authentic text or a semi-
authentic text.
It should be of this approximate length depending on the level of student it is intended for.
Approximate text lengths to aim for:
Beginner - 50 -100 words
High beginner / pre-intermediate - 100 - 200 words
Intermediate - 200 - 300 words
Upper Intermediate - 300 - 450 words
Advanced - 450 -600 words
You do NOT need to design activities to accompany the text.
Sample Task
Discuss: How is reading /listening in L1 different from reading / listening in L2?
Teaching Teachers to Evaluate and Design Materials
Carol Lethaby: http://clethaby.com/
4 What does a receptive skills lesson look like?
Sample Tasks
Identify the staging from teaching videos and published materials
1 Watch a teacher working with a reading and identify the stages
New American Horizons (newamericanhorizons.org)
Developing Reading Skills for Intermediate / Advanced Learners
http://bcove.me/5p6grdyb
2 Find an example from a published coursebook and identify the stages.
Teaching Teachers to Evaluate and Design Materials
Carol Lethaby: http://clethaby.com/
[From: Harmer, J, Acevedo A and Lethaby, C (2015) Just Right Pre-Intermediate New Edition Cengage
Learning]
5 How are reading / listening tasks designed?
6 What’s different about reading and listening?
Sample Tasks
1 Look at tasks from published material and talk about the type of processing and
sub-skills they encourage / teach.
2 Design some tasks of your own based around a piece of published material.
3 Compare and contrast with the original.
Sample Task
Discuss: What’s the impact on text selection and task design of these differences?
• Importance of pre-tasks
• Design of tasks – less reading and writing
Teaching Teachers to Evaluate and Design Materials
Carol Lethaby: http://clethaby.com/
7 What kind of listening practice can learners get?
8 What does recorded listening feel like for the learner?
9 Can I adapt and improve published listening tasks?
10 How can I design a complete reading / listening lesson?
Sample Task:
Discuss: What are the differences between live and recorded listening?
Sample Task:
Try out a listening lesson. What things were challenging? What parts
were easy?
Sample Task
Improve the materials and adapt them for a particular group, using the same listening text.