TEACHING LEARNING MATERIALS (English)

TEACHING LEARNING MATERIALS

Introduction:

Name the different types of Teaching Learning Materials:

1. Resource centre
2. Language games
3. Language lab
4. NITE (Newspaper in Teaching English)
5. Blackboard Sketches
6. Use of Radios, T.V. for teaching English
7. Internet for Teaching English
8. Use of ICT for Teaching English

RESOURCE CENTRE

In this Computer age, Language resources become necessary and inevitable for the successful classroom management and effective interaction. So, every school should have a resource centre for teaching, learning and self-learning. A resource centre must have many teaching learning materials. It includes a language lab, a library and a variety of audio and videos materials. The following materials will be more useful in a classroom teaching. They are

1. Paper-bag puppets
2. Glove puppets
3. Hand puppets
4. Finger puppets
5. Class mascot
6. Paper dolls
7. English corner for speaking
8. Picture cards with different items
9. Word/Sentence cards for display and for flannel graph.
10. Calendar for birthdays & important days
11. Clock for interactive or individual practice tasks
12. Weather chart with different types of days (rainy day, cloudy day….etc.,)
13. Books display
14. Borrowing cards
15. Radio
16. Television
17. Computer
18. Maps of local area
19. Wall charts
20. Toys
21. Building blocks
22. Cassette recorders
23. Overhead Projector
24. Transparencies
25. Albums
26. Learner’s profile

2. LANGUAGE GAMES

Language is a tool of Communication. Everyone needs a language to express one’s feelings and emotions. Language games help the learners to learn the language in an interesting manner. It develops self confidence and skills of LSRW i.e., listening, speaking, reading and writing. These games can be used in many different settings. In the classroom situation it helps to improve teaching and learning. It improves the Communication skills of students. It also develops the social skills in children. Skilled teachers determine the quality of games to be used in the classroom. These games can be changed according to the taste of the children in the classroom. The following language games can be successfully used by the teacher in the classroom to develop the skill of communication.

1. The teacher uses the class register. He picks out few names. He asks meaningful language questions. The students answer the questions.
2. Grammar based questioning.
3. The students are asked to identify the sound words in sentences. Pill-peal; ear-hear.
4. Students frame sentences by comparing themselves with other students.
5. Study of cognates or borrowed words from English within two minutes and framing sentence by pairs of students.
6. Students stand in order in small groups of 5 or 10. Each one states his name and names of other students.

My name is ——————-

His name is ——————-

1. Imaginary classroom : The students are asked to frame sentences using prepositions.
2. By describing a picture the students compose single grammatical utterances.
3. Describing and guessing game.

Ex: It has two doors. We keep books in it. What is it?

“ The cupboard”

3. LANGUAGE LAB

The language lab is a aid in modern language teaching. It is an audio or audio visual installation. It is used for language teaching and remedial English classes. The students are exposed to a variety of listening and speaking skills. It builds self-confidence in using English language.

There are two types of language labs. They are:

1. Traditional System
2. New System

1. TRADITIONAL SYSTEM: The traditional language lab system has a master position which was electrically connected to the students booths. Each student is provided with a tape recorder and a boom arm. The entire tape recorder system was controlled from the master position. The teacher can control the students tape recorders like recording, stopping, rewinding etc., This helped easy distribution of the master programme material to the learners. Once the programme was transferred on to the student recorders, the student took control of their machines. By pressing the record key in the booth, the student would hear the playback programme.

1. NEW LANGUAGE LAB. SYSTEM: The new language lab. System is a resource centre and the Central focus of a school language department. Multi numbers of activities are provided in the new system. It is a combination of traditional system and the modern technology. It is provided with Computers, video, electronic testing. It has other facilities like reading English periodicals, bulletin boards, language games, word games, quizzes, debates, skits etc.,

CHARACTERISTICS OF TASK-BASED ACTIVITIES IN THE LANGUAGE LAB:

There are three main characteristics of task-based activities. They are:

1. The activities have a purpose that requires the use of the target language. Ex(story telling).
2. It makes use of the special facilities of the language lab which are not available in the class room situation.
3. The activities motivate the students. The students are involved in the activities. The activities create a desire to excel.

The objective of task-based activities is to provide learners with opportunities to use English effectively. The learner explores the language through situational activities. Duplication is avoided in the teaching process.

The role of a teacher is very important in the preparation of task based activities. The teacher has to

• Develop software.
• Make use of computer assisted instruction.
• Organize activities.
• Prepare learning materials.
• Maintain equipment.
• Organize lab.
• Provide task based activities.
• Interact with students.
• Co-ordinate activities.

TRADITIONAL CLASSROOM VERSES MULTIMEDIA LAB:

	Traditional Classroom	Multimedia Lab
Teaching Tools	Chalk, Blackboard, Audio tapes	Computer Network, Video
Teaching Materials	Text Book	Interactive Computer Software
Communicative Activities	Imaginative role-play	Real Computer based situation
Students teacher	Direct contact with teacher	Less intimacy

4. NEWSPAPER IN TEACHING ENGLISH (NITE)

Newspaper can play an important role in the classroom. The students are motivated to develop the reading skill. So, the teacher must judiciously (wisely) use the newspaper activities, very carefully. There are four key ways teachers can use newspaper materials successfully.

1. Pre-activity preparation
2. Material selection
3. Task designing
4. Material

Pre-Activity Preparation:

1. It involves familiarizing the materials with the students.
2. It prepares students for any difficult language.

Selection of Materials:

Newspaper materials strengthen the skills of the students

• Reading skill with comprehension.
• Creative writing.
• Improve knowledge of structure.
• Reinforcing grammatical items.

Reading a newspaper may be a boring task. But selecting small item like headlines, news columns, pictures in the newspaper, advertisements, business column, sports columns can be successfully used by a resourceful teacher. Selecting easy and small items in the paper would help the learners in developing skills.

Designing of Tasks:

Collect old newspapers and cut according to different columns. (sports, business etc.,)

• Frame questions
• Make negative sentences
• Write degrees of comparison
• Direct speech
• Indirect speech Sentences

TASK:

1. The role of the press in this century – Discuss.
2. Arranging the jumbled Headline words.
3. Frame sentences with punctuation marks.
4. Frame meaningful grammatical sentences.
5. Read out the sentences & discuss their accuracy.

Task – 3: Expansion of Headlines into a meaningful paragraph.

Task – 4: Preparing News bulletin with the help of Headlines.

Task – 5: Answering questions from the advertisements.

PROJECTS:

1. Compare two English newspapers.
2. Discussion on the introductory para of an article.
3. Finding factual information from newspaper on an article.
4. Creation of a class newspaper and writing new items.