ASSIGNMENT 1

Instructional Materials and strategies

INTRODUCTION
The teaching of English emphasizes the four basic language skills and one of the
basic language skills is reading. Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the readers and
the text, resulting in comprehension. Instructional materials are essential tools in the English language
arts classroom. They allow students to interact with words, images, and ideas in ways that develop their
abilities in multiple literacies such as reading, listening, viewing, thinking, speaking, writing, and
technology. Because instructional materials are a primary resource for English language arts teachers,
they must be selected

DRAMATIZATION
Using drama to teach English results in real communication involving ideas,
emotions, feelings appropriateness and adaptability; in short an opportunity to use language in operation
which is absent in a conventional language class. Such activities add to the teachers' repertoire of
pedagogic strategies giving them a wider option of learner-centered activities to chose from for classroom
teaching, thereby augmenting their efficiency in teaching English.
An attractive alternative is teaching language through drama because it gives a
context for listening and meaningful language production, forcing the learners to use their language
resources and, thus, enhancing their linguistic abilities. It provides situations for reading and writing. It is
very useful in teaching literary texts as it helps in analyzing plot, character and style. It also involves
learners more positively and actively in the text. As Wilga Rivers (1983) states, "the drama approach
enables learners to use what they are learning with pragmatic intent, something that is most difficult to
learn through explanation." By using drama techniques to teach English, the monotony of a conventional
English class can be broken and the syllabus can be transformed into one which prepares learners to face
their immediate world better as competent users of the English language because they get an opportunity
to use the language in operation. Using drama techniques also fulfills socio-affective requirements of the
learners. Moreover, this learner centered approach makes the syllabus personally fulfilling.

There are many reasons in favour of using drama activities and techniques in the
language classroom. First of all it is entertaining and fun, and can provide motivation to learn. It can
provide varied opportunities for different uses of language and because it engages feelings it can provide
rich experience of language for the participants. Maley (2005) listed many points supporting the use of
drama and these are: 1- It integrates language skills in a natural way. Careful listening is a key feature.
Spontaneous verbal expression is integral to most of the activities; and many of them require reading and

writing, both as part of the input and the output. 2- It integrates verbal and non verbal aspects of
communication, thus bringing together both mind and body, and restoring the balance between physical
and intellectual aspects of learning. 3- It draws upon both cognitive and affective domains, thus restoring
the importance of feeling as well as thinking. 4- By fully contextualizing the language, it brings the
classroom interaction to life through an intensive focus on meaning. 5- The emphasis on whole-person
learning and multi-sensory inputs helps learners to capitalize on their strength and to extend their range.
In doing so, it offers unequalled opportunities for catering to learner differences. 6- It fosters selfawareness (and awareness of others), self-esteem and confidence; and through this, motivation is
developed. 7- Motivation is likewise fostered and sustained through the variety and sense of expectancy
generated by the activities. 8- There is a transfer of responsibility for learning from teacher to learners
which is where it belongs. 9- It encourages an open, exploratory style of learning where creativity and the
imagination are given scope to develop. This, in turn, promotes risk-taking, which is an essential elements
in effective language learning 10-It has a positive effect on classroom dynamics and atmosphere, thus
facilitating the formation of a bonded group, which learns together. 11-It is an enjoyable experience. 12-It
is low-resource. For most of the time, all you need is a 'roomful of human beings'.
Role of the Teacher In using Drama in the classroom , the teacher becomes a facilitator rather than an
authority or the source of knowledge. Hoetker (1969) warns that " the teacher who too often imposes his
authority or who conceives of drama as a kind of inductive method for arriving at preordained correct
answer, will certainly vitiate the developmental values of drama and possibly its educational value as
well."

Drama is an appealing teaching strategy which promotes cooperation, collaboration, self-control, goaloriented learning as well as emotional intelligence skills. Drama bridges the gap between course-book
dialogues and natural usage, and can also help to bridge a similar gap between the classroom and real life
situations by providing insights into how to handle tricky situations.

MNEMONICS
A mnemonic , mnemonic device, or memory device is any
learning technique that aids information retention in the human memory
In the literature of English language teaching and learning a recurring theme has been the neglect
of vocabulary. It was often given little priority in language programs and was often left to look
after itself and received only incidental attention in textbooks and language programs (Hedge,
2008; Richards and Renandya, 2002).French (1983) believes that vocabulary has been neglected
in the past decades because 1) those who were involved in the teacher-preparation programs
during the past few decades felt that grammar should be emphasized more than vocabulary,
2)specialists in methodology believed that students would make mistakes in sentence
construction if too many words were learned before the basic grammar had been mastered, and

3)those who gave advice to teachers said that word meanings can be learned only through
experience and can not be taught in the classroom
Mnemonic devices have been differently classified by different scholars.
A. Linguistic Mnemonics
1. Peg word method Through peg word method unrelated items can be remembered
easily by relating them to easily memorizable items which act as pegs or hooks. Peg
word method has two stages. At first students are asked to remember 10 numberrhyme pairs like one is bun or john, two is shoe, three is tree ( in my classes I usually
continue it in this way: four is door, five is hive, six is cheeks, seven is heaven, eight
is gate, nine is pine, ten is hen). In the second stage the students are asked to visualize
the word and try to link it to rhyming words
2. The key word method
Key word method according to Hulstijn (1997) requires three stages. At first An L1
or L2 word that has acoustic similarity to the target word is given to the learner to act
as the key word. In the second stage the learner is asked to make an association
between the target word and the keyword. Finally he is asked to make a mental image
of the combination of the keyword and the target word. For example the word shear
means to cut the wool off a sheep and it is acoustically similar to the Persian word
(shir), lion in English.
B. Spatial Mnemonics
1. The loci method Loci method is actually the oldest mnemonic device. Using this method
entails imagining a very familiar place like a room or a house and then associating each new
word to a part of it to be remembered
2. Spatial grouping The idea behind this method is that instead of writing words in a column,
students can be asked to form patterns like a triangle with them
C. Visual Mnemonics 1. Pictures New words are usually paired with their definitions or
equivalents. They can be, however, better, learned if they are paired with pictures (Thompson,
1987). Gians and Redman (1986) believe that objects and pictures can facilitate recall

REFERENCE
1. Aitchison, J. (2002). Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon (3rd Ed.).
Blackwell Publishers: Great Britain.