Making Materials Use in Language Classrooms Visible: Evidence From Two University English Teachers in China

• In Event: Toward Educational Responsibility in Language Education Curriculum and Assessments

Abstract

While the adaptive nature of classroom teaching among teachers, learners, and materials has been well noted, there is little literature on how to represent the activities where teachers selectively leverage material resources to design and enact instruction in language classrooms. This paper proposes an approach to analyzing materials use in language classrooms. By drawing on observational and interview data from two English-as-a-foreign-language teachers in one university in China, we introduced the materials use arc as a unit of analysis to represent one pedagogical episode of a lesson prompted by the teacher and defined by an identifiable pedagogical purpose. The paper concludes with the theoretical and methodological contributions of this innovative analytical tool to the research in materials use across contexts.

Author

• Zhan Li, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law