Critical Reflections 1


Critical Reflections

Materials Design Experience


In designing the materials for the syllabus design, we take into accounts who are the learners that will be joining the English Camp. As the learners are schoolchildren aged 10-12 years of age, we try to find materials that suit them. Having a previous camp with the learners really gives us quite an experience on how to develop the flow of the syllabus for them, and what kind of materials that really suitable for them.

Movie watching is one of the activities that we decide for the learners. In the previous camp, we brought along a few animated movies for them to watch. Surprisingly, they said that they had watched the movie for several times from the satellite TV that they have. Having very limited information about the learners, we failed to find their needs for the first camp.

Now that we already know who the learners are, in what kind of situation do they lived in and what are the facilities that they have, we can prepare another different set of syllabus design for them. In designing the materials for the second camp for the learners, we still include the movie watching slot. But this time, we find an animated movie that has not yet being played in any TV station. “Spirited Away” is a Japanese animated movie that tells a story about a girl named Chihiro who tried to save her parents that has turned into pigs after eating without permission in a mysterious town of spirits. We chose this movie because it contains a lot of adventure and also moral values for the learners. The language of the movie is English. So, we think that if a movie were to be chosen as one of the activities for the learners, we would play this animated movie for them to watch.

Another materials that we find interesting to be included in the syllabus design is the board game. In the board game, the learners will learn to communicate with each other. They will also learn how to work in groups.

Designing all the materials needs a very careful planning. This is to ensure that the materials that we have is suitable with the learners and their language needs. After having the first camp with the learners, we finally think of a new thing to be included in the syllabus. In the second camp, we decided to find materials that includes all the language skills in learning English language. There are listening, speaking, reading and writing activities designed for them. However, the syllabus is not the one that is typically taught in classrooms. We adapted some outdoor activities found on the internet, books and also through our own experience while handling our class into this syllabus design. Keeping in mind that this is a language camp, we try to put interactive activities for the learners. Our aim is that the learners would use English language in their daily activities after the camp ends.

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