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In teaching English for the EFL student, we have many course books to follow. They are from many different publishers in the world. We need to consider carefully and choose the suitable one for each of our classes. Like many other teachers I have to create my own materials to either supplement the course book, or replace sections that are not suitable for the class. There are a number of common created materials, such as crosswords, word search puzzles, role – play cards, flashcards, gap fill activities, picture stories. We could pick the one which is applicable to the class and the student’s age. For example, in lesson about shapes for the very young learners who are often pre-schoolers aged seven and less, we could use sandpaper to make shapes. Why should we do that? Kids are always curious. After teach them about names of shapes, we cover their eyes and let them use their hands to touch the shape and find out what the shape is. It’s supper fun. Or when teaching them – the kids about vocabulary of clothing, we can use color paper sheets to make some clothes in different colors. Then we can teach them about clothes and color at the same time. Furthermore, they know how to order adjectives and nouns in a sentence through practice some sentences with the teacher, e.g. “I like a long coat”, “I like a short pink skirt” Another great way to teach them vocabulary is using flashcards. All you know, kids really love coloring. So we could print pictures of what we are going to teach the kids that day and let them color those pictures. They are sure excited and deeply impressed. And one important thing you need to notice is not text the word on them same side of the picture, we should text the word in the other side of that paper sheet because the kids will create in their mind all details in the picture they’re looking at. For the pre-teen age learners who are from 8-12 years olds we could use picture stories. We may let them color the pictures and then write some short sentences below the picture. For example, when we learn about family, we could print some pictures about a family and some activities each member of that family does everyday. We can use some simple sentences like “This is my family. This is my mom. This is my dad. And this is me”, “My mom loves cooking”, “My dad loves gardening”, etc, with suitable picture for each sentence. When teaching early teen age learners who are above 13 years old, we might use role - play cards or crosswords. There are some good resources to make your own materials on these areas. You can take them from those resources and make the best ones for your class. Don’t forget to change the materials often to stop making your students bored. An easy way to help improve your student’s listening skills is using songs. We choose a song with good lyrics and fun melody. Then we print that song lyrics with some blank spaces. Then we let the students listen that song three times and fill them with the words that they listened. Even some supper simple things still make your students interested in. for example, we could use the bottle to force our students speak English more. We ask students to sit in a circle and one will start to spin the bottle. Which student the bottle is pointing at will answer the question from the student who has just spun the bottle. There are many more ways to make materials for our teaching. I'm really into making materials by my own. It makes me feel creative and fun. More than that I can focus on what I want to teach my students and make my students have fun while learning English.
