Advantages of being a material designer in ELT

 As regards all the activities, resources and skills that are involved in teaching, we could mention a great number, such as the ones showed in the following picture: 

  Actually, one of the most important roles an English teacher plays is that of material designer.

  Even though designing materials could have some drawbacks -for example it’s highly time consuming and also the quality of the resources created probably is not the best-, we consider that creating the materials for English lessons has a lot of benefits. Let’s list some of them:

• Contextualisation: English coursebooks contain many situations that probably students don’t feel identified with since they are not part of their culture. On the contrary, when we design our supplies, we have in mind a specific group of learners, taking into account their needs, interests, levels and learning styles.
• Individual needs: They are related to one idea previously mentioned, that of taking into consideration our learners in order to develop the resources for each lesson.
• Personalisation: Creating our own materials gives a personal touch that students appreciate and, as a consequence, they become more motivated and engaged in their learning.
• Timeliness: When developing new activities and tasks, we could bear in mind events that are context-related, i.e. that are happening at the moment of dealing with them and are meaningful to students.

  Having mentioned some advantages, we would like to say that creating materials is a good opportunity to take profit from all the resources we have available nowadays, such as the internet, which could be a really helpful tool for educators. Although sometimes it’s a really demanding activity, we think that teachers should implement material designing to their teaching so as to enhance language learning.

Source:
Howard, J., & Major, J. (2005). Guidelines for Designing Effective English Language Teaching Materials.
Kumar, S. (2012). What is the Role of Teacher in Teaching, Guiding Children, Community Relations, and Administration? Retrieved June, 2016, from http://www.publishyourarticles.net/knowledge-hub/education/what-is-the-role-of-teacher-in-tteaching-guiding-children-community-relations-and-administration/5391