Larasati Ramadhani

20170810168/Class A

Assessment 1 (Material Design)

The Use of Teaching Materials in the Classroom: Choosing, Adapting, and Creating

The use of published EFL resources such as textbooks are becoming more popular as they
can make the classroom simpler by supplying teachers with instructions consisting of syllabus,
methodologies, as well as teaching and learning materials. Nonetheless, one of the most
challenging tasks that EFL teachers often face is to choose an acceptable textbook. Because of this,
a thorough review must be carried out to get a good picture of the suitability of a textbook (Hanifa,
2018). Here, teachers create teaching material which is known as the teacher's tools for teaching
which will help students’ learning and increase the progress of students’ learning. Needs analysis
and situation analysis are very important to be done to write and develop teaching materials to read
for the interest of reading lecture for students (Salam, 2017). As in common, the instructional
materials are adapted to the curriculum that the teacher used for the students which also known
that teaching materials have a lot of shapes, types, and sizes but the use to support student learning
is similar. It has been well established that the use of resources to help students learn quickly and
well is one of the most significant aspects for teaching and learning practices and processes. By
having a natural learning environment motivates the students well and makes them engage in the
processes of training, teaching and experience. Since it is necessary to know how teaching material
is worked, we interviewed an English teacher from SMA Negeri 1 Kasihan, and we called her
Miss Ismi. Here is question that we asked: The Use of Teaching Materials in the Classroom:
Choosing, Adapting, and Creating.

The first thing that we asked is about the media that she used for delivering the materials.
She explained that there are many references such as textbook, material resources that already used
before, and also it depends from the basic competencies that the teacher’s needed. As for Building
knowledge, Miss Ismi used textbook because it wasn’t updated anymore. Authentic resource is
also concluded for her resource such as the material from British Council’s website, and also there
are many recommended resources from the teacher colleagues. It is also mentioned that the
authentic resources can be found from the surrounding environment such as announcement text
(functional text). As for the most important information, Miss Ismi creates modelling texts
(handout) and also compilation handout. This handout works to help the students to be active
analyze the material that is given by Miss Ismi and in the end, the materials that are analyzed will
be chosen by Miss Ismi and later it will be constructed. The aim for analyzing the material is to
make the students understand that they need to find social function, structure of the texts, and the
linguistic from the material that they learnt. It is also important to know that the students’ texts are
different from each class and Miss Ismi will choose the texts from the good, average, even the bad
one. These action is taken to know which texts that can help students’ understanding.

When creating the material, Miss Ismi stated that it is really difficult and almost impossible
to create a pure teaching material because she as a teacher doesn’t have many free time to do that.
The criteria is also complicated since it must prioritize the students’ need. Speaking of Adapting,
Miss Ismi said that it is a win –win solution. When implementing the materials, it doesn’t mean
the materials will work for every class. It depends form the students’ itself whether they feel that
the material is challenging and they excited to do that or not. In the end, it is a situational condition.

When it comes to the reason why Miss Ismi creates the handout, she explained that she
never use certain textbook as a reference and her students also are not obligated to buy English
book (LKS). The reason is because her handout suit the students’ need and it helps to understand
the materials better. Miss Ismi also explained that the material is already implemented in the class
and it is given each chapter for each semester. In addition, Miss Ismi’s class not only for offline
class, but also is provided for online class which can help the students to do the assessment outside
the class.

In creating the material, it surely bring positive benefits for the students because the
learning step is easy to understand, but Miss Ismi also faces some trouble by implementing the
materials. When using online tools such as Kahoot! and Edmodo, it is difficult to do the work since
it takes time to make the assessment in the online media and also the time is not much enough to
deliver the material completely. The trouble is also come from the students itself when they are
not excited enough because the assessment took their internet data. When we asked about the
updates and the information of the online tools, Miss Ismi said that they are coming automatically
from the Miss Ismi’s email and the authentic materials also can be found in the public. When Miss
Ismi use online class and online tools to support the teaching learning materials, the other teachers
in SMA Negeri 1 Kasihan stated that online tools was a little bit complicated to use although they
seems interest to know it more. When using online class and online tools, the students already
aware and know how to operate the tools since it is already explained at the beginning and Miss
Ismi also said that the students nowadays can operate the tools better than the teacher. Although
facing various problem, Miss Ismi stated that the teaching materials bring benefit for both of the
teacher and the students and mostly the students also get excited to learn with the teaching
materials.

In conclusion, after explaining how the teaching material is made and the use of teaching
material itself, it can be concluded that teaching materials indeed help students’ learning and
increase the progress of students’ learning. It also attracts students’ interest to work more
effectively from the analysis activity. The teacher also has a big role to make students feel excited
to face the materials that has been made through the handout. The handout itself really helps the
students to get a proper and a suitable material that can reach their understanding. As becoming a
good teacher, teacher need to minimize the testing activity because teacher works to teach and help
the students to learn.
 REFERENCES

Hanifa, R. (2018). EFL Published Materials: An Evaluation of English Textbooks for Junior High
School in Indonesia. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 9(2), 166-174. DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.9n.2p.166

Salam, S. (2017). Developing needs analysis based-reading comprehension learning materials: A

study on the Indonesian language study program students. Advances in Language and
Literary Studies, 8(4), 105-113. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.8n.4p.105

Retrieved from https://education.gov.gy/web/index.php/teachers/tips-for-teaching/item/2036-the-

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