Selection and Use of Resources and Materials
This domain covers what a teacher brings into the room and why. Keep three categories apart.
Materials
- Coursebook and its teacher's book (notes, answer keys, ideas) and workbook (consolidation).
- Supplementary materials: worksheets, extra practice, graded readers, skills books, games.
- Authentic materials: texts and recordings made for real communication, not for teaching - newspapers, menus, timetables, podcasts, real weather forecasts.
- Reference resources: dictionaries (monolingual and bilingual), grammar reference books, usage guides, corpora, online references - used by teachers and learners.
Teaching aids
Physical and digital tools that support delivery: board, flashcards, posters, realia (real objects such as fruit, clothes, tickets), projector, interactive whiteboard, audio player, puppets, Cuisenaire rods.
Selecting
Judge materials against: relevance to the aim, level, age and interests of learners, cultural appropriacy, length, cost, availability and authenticity.
Adapting
Common techniques: add (extra stage or example), delete (drop an exercise), modify/rewrite, simplify (language or task), reorder stages, replace with your own material. The coursebook is a resource, not a script.
Traps: calling realia "authentic material" - realia are objects, authentic materials are texts; calling a projector a "material"; assuming a coursebook must be followed page by page; confusing the teacher's book with the workbook; missing that learners can use dictionaries as reference resources.
Worked example
A reading text about food waste suits the class but is too hard. Keep the topic, shorten sentences and gloss five words: this is simplification, not replacement.