CHOOSING APPROPRIATE MATERIALS

Lecturer
Mr. Koko Djoko Purwanto M.Pd.

Group 9th
Lisda Nurhayati : 202012500367
Elistiani : 202012500054

ENGLISH EDUCATION PROGRAM FACULTY OF

LANGUAGE & ARTS UNIVERSITY OF INDRAPRASTA
PGRI 2023
 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

A. Background
An important problem that is often faced by teachers in learning activities is choosing or
determining the appropriate learning materials or teaching materials in order to help students
achieve competence. This is due to the fact that in the curriculum or syllabus, teaching
material is only written in an outline in the form of "main material". It is the teacher's job to
describe the main material so that it becomes complete teaching material. Besides that, how
to use teaching materials is also a problem. The intended use is how to teach it from the
teacher's side and how to learn it from the student's side. With regard to the selection of this
teaching material, in general the problem in question includes how to determine the type of
material, depth, scope, order of presentation and treatment of learning material. Another
problem with regard to teaching materials is choosing the source where the teaching
materials are obtained.
Usually both students, parents and teachers tend to think that the source of teaching
materials only focuses on books. The existence of books is indeed very helpful in the
learning process, but don't just stick to books. Because there are many other sources of
teaching materials besides books that can be used. Books do not have to be of one type and
do not have to change frequently, as has happened so far. Various books can be selected as a
source of teaching materials. But besides books, other sources of teaching materials can be
obtained from the internet, journals, magazines, newspapers, interactive CDs, the
environment and many more which are used as learning resources.
Including the problems that teachers often face with regard to teaching materials are
teachers providing teaching materials or learning materials that are too broad or too little, too
deep or too shallow, the order of presentation is not right, and the types of teaching materials
are not in accordance with the competencies to be achieved students. With regard to source
books, it often occurs every semester change or change of year to change books.
In this connection, it is necessary to arrange signs for the selection and use of teaching
materials to help teachers to be able to choose learning materials or teaching materials and
use them appropriately. These signs include, among others, the concepts and principles for
selecting learning materials, determining the scope, sequence, criteria and steps for selecting,
utilizing, and learning material sources. So that teachers will have more convenience in
delivering material to their students. Likewise, students will more easily accept the subject
matter. In addition, students can get broader insights and knowledge than before because the
source of teaching materials is not only one type.
In this chapter, it concerns to discuss about how to choose appropriate materials by doing
materials evaluation. there are some techniques and terms of ideas to evaluate the existing
materials.
B. Problem Formulation
1. What is choosing appropriate materials?
2. Why do we evaluate materials?
3. How do you evaluate materials?
C. Purposes
1. To know choosing appropriate materials.
2. To find out why we evaluate materials.
3. To find out how do you evaluate materials.
 CHAPTER II
DISSCUSION

1. Definition of Materials Evaluation

As we all know, learning and teaching English is a complex business. The local
context strongly influences how this learning and teaching gets done. There are a number of
specific aspects of this local context that must be considered when choosing materials: the
age of the students, the number in the class, the learners’ level(s), how learning is usually
managed (teacher-fronted or experiential or something in between), motivations for learning,
and available finances, to name but a few.
Choosing materials is essentially finding the best match between the local conditions
and the materials available. Before materials can be chosen, it is sensible to conduct a needs
analysis. Traditionally associated with English for specific purposes (ESP), a needs analysis
helps the teacher to identify the key features of the local context that must be addressed by
the materials (and which will feed into the selection criteria discussed below). As the teacher,
you can provide much of the basic contextual information for the needs analysis, such as the
course hours, class numbers, and age of students. Other information, such as suitable topics
of study or the money available to pay for materials, may have to come from other
informants, such as the school administration or the students themselves.
A key aspect of the needs analysis should be a consideration of the systems and skills
the students need to meet their goals. Systems are composed of grammar, vocabulary,
phonology, and discourse, while skills are composed of listening, speaking, reading, and
writing. In many situations, students must pass exams that assess knowledge of grammar and
vocabulary but put less emphasis on students’ pronunciation, for example. In other contexts,
students might be learning English for a specific purpose, to study a subject through English
or to develop their academic English skills. For these students, developing strong reading and
writing skills will be of particular importance. A needs analysis will identify the learners’
needs in these areas so that materials can be selected that support successful learning In this
chapter, it concerns to discuss about how to choose appropriate materials by doing materials
evaluation. there are some techniques and terms of ideas to evaluate the existing materials.

2. Why Evaluate Materials?

According to Hutchinson &Waters (1987) stated that evaluation is a matter of judging
the fitness of something for a particular purpose. Evaluation concerns on the relative merit.
There is no absolute good or bad, only degrees of fitness for the required purpose. It means
that, when the teacher does materials evaluation, the evaluation is based on the required
purpose or goal that would be reached by the students.
In another word, according to Hutchinson &Waters (1987) stated that in any kind of
evaluation, the decision finally made is likely to be the better for being based on a systematic
check of all the important variables. In doing the evaluation materials, the writer probably get
a negative and positive impact. The negative side of evaluation materials is the teacher
probably spent a lot of expense, time, and probably getting frustrated. On the other hand, the
positive side ofevaluation materials is; it can also help in justifying request of the sponsors or
other members of an ESP team for money to buy materials or time to write them.

3. How do you evaluate materials?

Hutchinson &Waters (1987) stated that“evaluation is basically a matching process:
matching needs to available solutions”. In order to match the needs and solutions, the
matching should be done as objective as possible. It means that teachers have to look the
needs of students and the solution separately. In the final analysis, any choice will be made on
subjective grounds. However, if subjectivity influence your judgement, it may blind you to
possible alternatives. For example: teacher might reject a particular textbook, because the
teacher does not like the picture on the cover or dislike functional syllabuses but it does not
mean that the book does not suit the needs of parties. Thus, teachers should not let
subjectivity too much influence their judgement in the early stages of analysis when
evaluating materials to be taught. Process of evaluation can be divided into four major steps:
a. Defining criteria
b. Subjective analysis
c. Objective analysis
d. Matching
The fist two stages will be done in course dsign stage. While the other two stage is
done as the continuation of the subjective analysis where teacher have to evaluate or develop
their material thrrough objectve analysis. From these process, teacher will be easier to know
how far the material match the needs.
The Material Evaluation Process :

The selection of ESP materials should depend on the needs of the learners in relation
to their future or present jobs. Materials should focus on the appropriate topics and include
tasks and activities that practice the target skills areas. As Ellis and Johnson (1994: 115)
emphasize," the choice of materials has a major impact on what happens in the course. This
impact is determined by what kind of language the learners will be exposed to, and as a
consequence, the substance of what they will learn in terms of vocabulary, structures, and
functions because it has implications for the methods and techniques by which the learners
will learn the subject or content of the materials is an essential component from the point of
view of relevance and motivation." Another important criterion that should be taken into
account when selecting materials is the level of language competence. Students come to the
course, since they feel like to improve their language which they can use in a certain
situation. After students are analyzed about their needs, teachers have to prepare and choose
the right materials for them.
According to Lewis and Hill (2003) "students' considerations include the following: -
Will the materials be useful to the students? -Do they stimulate students' curiosity? -Are the
materials relevant to the students and their needs? - Are they fun to do? -Will the students
find the tasks and activities worth and challenging?" After analyzing learner needs and setting
objectives for the course, the ESP teacher has to select materials that will help the students
achieve the course objectives. These materials should also relate closely to the learners'
specific skills and content needs.
The techniques utilized to cover materials to be taught can be varied in order to suit
the language learners' interest and proficiencies, which can be accomplished through varying
the speed, the number of repetitions, assigning some parts of the lesson as homework, or by
creating parallel situations to those in the course book to provide extra practice. Once the
course book has been chosen the teachers may wish to make the substantial changes to it, for
which there could be such reasons as responding to the environment, taking needs into
account, or putting principals into practice (Nation & Macalister, 2010). Nation and
Macalister (2010) make the following more detailed book: exhaustive account of the reasons
for teachers' manipulating the course.
1) The course book does not include all the activities the teacher has already used
successfully.
2) The course book material is not proportionate to the time available for the
course.
3) The course book contains the content which is not suitable to language
learners' current level of proficiency.
4) The learners' knowledge and skills do not match that involved in the course
book.
5) The course book does not contain strategies, ideas, skills, and knowledge that
learners need.
6) The course book does not contain the principles that are thought by the teacher
to be applied.

The solutions to these problems are as follows:

1) Omit or add content.
2) Change the sequencing of content.
3) Change the presentation.
4) Change the format.
5) Add or omit monitoring.
6) Add or omit assessment.
As an example of teacher adding content we can refer to the addition of an extensive
reading component to the course, which may be done because the teacher does not feel the
course book is applying the principles that are believed by him or her to be important (Nation
& Macalister, 2010)
 CONCLUSION
There are some points can be summarized from materials evaluation. We observed the
materials evaluation as one ways of exploiting a course design. The evaluation process should
be systematically. Evaluation process is the best seen as matching exercises: matching our
analyzed with available Solution. It can be save a lot of duplication of effort by possibly
revealing materials that can be provide all or part of our materials need.