How To Write Secondary Materials

By Fiona Mauchline

In this book Fiona Mauchline examines the many challenges involved in writing successful material for the secondary classroom. Before getting down to practical suggestions and ideas, of which there are many, Fiona provides much food for thought in the form of a fascinating look at the teenage brain and the different stages of cognitive development. She then considers the implications of this on the choice of topics and types of activity that work best for this age group. A rich resource for anyone wishing to write better secondary materials.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ELT Teacher 2 Writer
• Release date: Mar 29, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370045099

Book preview

HOW TO WRITE

SECONDARY MATERIALS

Fiona Mauchline

TRAINING COURSE FOR ELT WRITERS

SMASHWORDS EDITION

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Other titles by ELT Teacher 2 Writer

Core modules

How ELT Publishing Works

How To Plan A Book

How To Write And Deliver Talks

How To Write Audio and Video Scripts*

How To Write Critical Thinking Activities*

How To Write Primary Materials

How To Write Reading and Listening Activities*

How To Write Speaking Activities*

How To Write Vocabulary Presentations And Practice*

How To Write Writing Activities*

Market-specific modules

How To Write Business English Materials

How To Write Corporate Training Materials

How To Write EAP Materials

How To Write ESOL Materials

How To Write ESP Materials

How To Write Exam Preparation Materials

Component modules

How To Write Film And Video Activities

How To Write For Digital Media

How To Write Graded Readers

How To Write Teacher’s Books

How To Write Worksheets

Our paperbacks

How To Write ESOL Materials

How To Write Reading and Listening Activities

How To Write Excellent ELT Materials: The Skills Series (This title is a compendium containing the six titles asterisked in the list above.)

For further information, contact us via our website at eltteacher2writer.co.uk

How To Write Secondary Materials

By Fiona Mauchline

© 2017 ELT Teacher 2 Writer at Smashwords

www.eltteacher2writer.co.uk

We would like to thank the following for permission to reproduce their material:

The British Council’s LearnEnglish Teens website and Wonky Films; EFL Magazine.

Although every effort has been made to contact copyright holders before publication, this has not always been possible. If notified, ELT Teacher 2 Writer will endeavour to rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Contents

About The Author

Aims

Secondary Materials: Before You Start Writing

The Writing Process: The Starting Point

The Planning Stage

Writing The Input

Writing Set-Up Activities

Writing Practice Materials: The Output

The Final Stages: Feature Boxes And Artwork

Checklist

Task Commentaries

Glossary

About The Author

As a teenager, I wanted to be a writer or an actor. I was painfully shy and lacking in self-confidence, so stories on paper or on screen seemed the best places to hide. I hated school, and was labelled ‘difficult’; if my teachers knew I’ve spent most of my adult life teaching, training teachers and writing materials, they would choke on their coffee.

I hated school so much, I decided not to go to university and went to work in France for a while. Campsite maintenance turned into reception work, which morphed into deciding to get a degree in Modern Languages so I could go back to work in tourism. As part of my course, I wound up at university in Granada, Spain, where they needed two teachers and I found myself ‘volunteered’ to teach. These were the worst ever classes, certainly in my life, and probably in my students’, but after the university went on strike, I found myself teaching in the bars and cafés in town – and loving it.

Back in the UK, I was offered a job as a teacher of business French with a bit of ELT thrown in in the summer. I warmed to the latter and enjoyed being able to break through the cladding to the sulky and wild alike – by remembering what my teachers HADN’T done when I was that age. I then went off to get a Prep Cert, as it was in the day, and off I went to Spain. I was hooked.

I took the Diploma at IH Barcelona in 1992–93, and something about the course and the materials we used pulled me in even further. Tenerife was next, where I worked as DoS in a large academy and where I gave myself the ‘difficult’ classes. Although playing in English with three-year-olds was messy fun, it was the remedial, ‘failing’ teens and the grumpy, music-obsessed 17s that really appealed. I started creating materials and experimenting with my approach. I began to research motivation and management strategies, such as the Fish! Philosophy and apply them to my classes. (The Fish! Philosophy was born in Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, when John Christensen noticed that, despite having a potentially unpleasant, boring, repetitive job, the fishmongers not only enjoyed their work but made their customers happy too. He analysed what he saw and identified four ‘ingredients’ that can be applied to management, and which I applied to the classroom. They are: choosing your attitude (i.e. actively deciding whether to be positive or not); encouraging an atmosphere of play and fun; ‘making someone's day’, i.e. focusing on the individual and making them feel they matter, and being present at all times. This applies to the teacher and students alike.) Most importantly, I began to reflect on why I had been so demotivated myself, what my teachers (some) had done to cause that, and how to implement the opposite strategy. I wrote articles, gave workshops at conferences and set up a magazine.

After a couple of years of this, Pearson offered me editing work on a project for primary, round about the same time as OUP invited me to write an article on Natural Grammar and then to do editing work for the Grammar department. This editing led to being asked to write, and things just went from there. I’ve now written for Pearson, OUP, Macmillan, CUP, Cengage and Richmond, amongst others. I have written courses for lower and upper secondary, components for primary, secondary and adults, and a resource book on using graded readers. Recently, I have also branched out into writing teacher training/development courses.

I have also started to study the teen brain, mental health, the role of narratives and norms, and the effects of literature in reducing anxiety. All this is feeding into my work.

I continued to teach until summer 2016, when I left Spain after 28 years and moved back to the UK. I will go back into the classroom, but for now I divide my time between writing and training teachers on a freelance basis.

It was a long and winding, probably unexpected road to becoming the writer I’d always wanted to be, but the novel is still to come. And I wonder if I’ll ever be an actor.

Aims

The aims of this module are:

- to provide an overview of the issues involved in writing for secondary.

- to encourage you to think critically about writing for secondary students.

- to provide tips to help you at each stage of the planning process.

- to provide tips to help you at each stage of the writing process.

- to provide practical suggestions for activity types that are suitable for teens.

- to help you reflect on and evaluate the materials you create.

- to encourage you to consider the importance of visuals and other stimuli/prompts.

- to provide an engaging series of tasks, leading to the creation of a lesson.

Secondary Materials: Before You Start Writing

In this module, I will take you through the different stages involved in writing materials, whether for your own classroom or for a publisher. There is a series of tasks for you to get your teeth into, with commentaries. I’ve organised the sections following the order in which I carry out the process; other writers may do things in a different order, but this one works for me. In this first section, however, we’ll have a look at the ‘back story’, that is, the whys and the ‘what to keep in mind’.

First of all, here’s something to think about: why is it that the second biggest ELT teaching sector (primary teachers count for the highest proportion, on a global scale) produces so few ‘famous names’ or ‘experts’? Perhaps it’s because primary classes are ‘fun’, and adult classes are ‘meaty’, ‘challenging’, ‘thought-provoking’ and so on, but teens are more often collocated with the word ‘grotty’. Poor teens.

Primary and Adult are far more populated sectors in terms of researchers and specialists or ‘big names’,