Developing English language materials to learn, think and act: a proposal
Keywords:
Communicative Language Teaching. English Language Learning. Materials development.Abstract
The development of English language teaching materials represents a great challenge for English teachers, considering its goals: language acquisition and the use of the English language in everyday life. Based on the principles of Communicative Language Teaching, a unit of English language teaching was produced, having as the target audience young adults and adults who have already reached the B1 level of linguistic competence. The unit aims to promote language learning in its syntactic, morphological, lexical, phonological, and semantic aspects, addressing the skills of oral and written production and reception in an integrated way to meet the learners’ needs in real communication situations. The unit’s theme is pervasive in our society and was chosen to lead instructors and learners to reflect on our habits of complaining in several situations. Authentic materials were used as input to enhance the development of learners’ communicative competence. The use of several digital tools throughout the proposed activities aimed to motivate, increase the exposure to the target language beyond the classroom, and operate as a learning facilitator. Added to the instructor’s qualifications and ability to deal with the sociocultural context of their learners, it is hoped that this material can be an ally in the process of English language teaching and learning for its users.
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