Nunan, 1990: 79. It means that both teacher and students have to be active during the teaching and learning process in the classroom.
In order to make the students more active in the classroom, teacher may use any activities which encourage the students about the
nature of language and ways to learn. It is more effective then asking the students to memorizing and manipulating the Language.
According to Richards and Rodgers in Richards and Nunan 1990: 84, the roles of the teacher are related to:
1. the types of functions teachers are expected to fulfill, such as, whether that of practice director, counselor, or
model. 2. the degree of control the teacher has over how learning
takes place. 3. the degree to which the teacher is responsible for
content. 4. the interactional patterns that develop between teachers
and learners. Meanwhile, learners’ role depends on the approach used in
teaching and learning process in the classroom. Based on Nunan 2004: 65, there are some categori
es of learners’ roles as follow. a Learner is a passive recipient of outside stimuli.
b Learner is an interactor and negotiator who is capable of giving as well as thinking.
c Learner is a listener and performer who has little control over the content of learning.
d Learner is involved in a process of personal growth. e Learner is involved in a social activity and the social and
interpersonal roles of the learner cannot be divorced from psychological learning processes.
f Learner must take responsibility for his or her own learning, developing autonomy skills in learning how to learn.
From the points above, it can be summarized that roles are the parts which should be considered by teacher and students in
order to carry out the task and maintain the social relationship in the classroom. It is important for teacher to use any activities in
order to make the students become more active rather than asking students to memorize and manipulate the language.
e. Settings Settings refer to the classroom arrangements specified or
implied in the task, and it also requires consideration of whether the task is to be carried out wholly or partly outside in the
classroom. Related to the setting, there are two different aspects of the learning situation. The first is mode, which refers to whether
the learner is operating on an individual or group basis. The second is environment, which refers to where the learning actually
takes place. Considering those two different aspects of the learning
situation, the tasks should have three particular benefits below. a They provide learners with opportunities for genuine
interactions which have a real – life point to them,
b Learners can adopt communicative roles which bypass the teachers as intermediary.
c They can change the in – class role relationship between
teacher and pupils. Stevens in Richards and Nunan, 1990:93 Those are the components of task which should be considered by
teachers and material developers. It can be concluded that the goals and the activities in a task or a learning material should be understand clearly by the
teacher and the students. Besides that, the input should be encouraging to the students. Also, the role of the teacher and students, and the setting in the task
should be understand clearly in order to make the teaching and learning process more effective.
d. Tasks Sequencing
In relevance with developing units, materials developer should consider the underlying principles about language and learning or, about the ‘what’ and
the ‘how’. There are several considerations about which task should come first and which next. Nunan 2004: 31-33 proposes five steps of developing
materials which can be used as the basis for developing units. 1 Schema Building
The first step is to develop a number of schema-building exercises that will serve to introduce the topic, set the context for the task, and
introduce some of the key vocabulary and expressions that the students will need in order to complete the task.
2 Controlled Practice The next step is to provide students with controlled practice in
using the target language vocabulary, structures, and functions 3 Authentic Listening Practice
The next step involves learners in intensive listening practice. This step would expose students to authentic or simulated conversation
4 Focus on Linguistic Elements The students now get to take part in a sequence of exercise in
which the focus in on one or more linguistic elements 5 Provide Freer Practice
The students should be encouraged to extemporize, using whatever language they have at their disposal to complete the task.
Table 2: Phases of Task Sequencing Nunan, 2004: 126 Phases
Steps within Phases
A. Processing comprehension 1. Read or study a text
– no other response required.
2. Read or listen to a text and give a non –
verbal, physical response e.g. learner raises hands every time key words are
heard.
3. Read or listen to a text and give non –
physical, non – verbal response e.g.
check – off a box or a grid every time key
words are heard. 4. Read or listen to a text and give a verbal
response e.g. write down key words every time they are heard.
B. Productive 5. Listen to cued utterances or dialogue
fragments and repeat them, or repeat a complete version of the cue.
Phases Steps within Phases
6. Listen to a cue and complete a substitution or transformation drill.
7. Listen to a cue e.g. question and give a meaningful response i.e. one that is true
for the learners. C. Interactive
8. Role play e.g. have listened to a conversation in which people talk about
their family, students, working from role cards, circulate and find other members
of their family.
9. Simulation discussion e.g. students in small groups share information about
their own families. 10. Problem
– solving information gap e.g. in an information gap task, students are
split into three groups; each group listens to an incomplete description of a family;
students recombine and have to complete a family tree, identify which picture from
a number of alternatives represents the family, etc.
From the explanation above, it can be concluded that developing unit is a process of arranging ‘what to learn’ and ‘how to learn’ into a particular
sequence based on the principles of language and learning. The tasks in a unit should be well structured according to which task should come first and which
comes next. Moreover, Nunan 2004: 128 adds that the regular way to divide any
mini –sequence is into three phases: a pre–task phase, a task–proper phase, and
a follow up phase. The pre –task phase fulfills a similar function as a
schema –building task in larger instruction sequences, whereas, in the
task –proper phase learners complete the task and they get a comment from the
teacher, report of the results of the task back to the class as a whole, and may receive corrective feedback from the teacher, in the follow
–up phase.
Additionally, Richards 2001: 145 states that gradation is concerned with the grouping and sequencing of teaching items in a syllabus. The decisions of
sequencing can be based on the following criteria: a Simple to Complex
Content can be sequenced according to difficulty level, moving from simpler to complex on the later items. For example is reading
texts may be simplified at the beginning of the course then more complex at the later levels.
b Chronology Contents can be sequenced according to the order like what occurs
in the real world. For example opening the lesson, delivering explanation, closing the lesson.
c Need Contents can be sequenced according to the students’ needs in the
real world. For example, the topics are sequenced in order from the importance to students’ lives
d Pre –requisite Learning
The sequence of the content may reflect what is necessary at the beginning to the foundation for the next step in the learning process.
For example, a certain set of grammar items may be taught as a pre
–requisite to paragraph writing. e Spiral Sequencing
This approach involves the recycling of items to ensure that
learners have repeated opportunities to learn them.
e. Materials Evaluation
Learning materials need to be evaluated to find out the reliability of the materials. Tomlinson 1998: 3 defines materials evaluation consists of
attempts to predict whether the students will be able to use the materials without many difficulties and will enjoy doing activities or not. In addition,
Hutchinson and Waters 1987: 96 note that evaluation is a matter of judging the appropriateness of something for a specific purpose. Further, they argue
that the decision finally made based on the evaluation is to make the variable better.
In relation to the materials evaluation, Tomlinson 1998: 3 states that valuable materials are those which the learning points should be potentially
useful to the learners and the learning procedures should maximize the chance for the learners to learn what they want and need to learn. In this
study, the evaluation will be conducted by distributing questionnaires to several evaluators. The questionnaire distributed to the evaluators contains
statements about the materials. The results of this evaluation will be used by the researcher to decide whether the materials need to be revised or not.
This step is important in developing a learning material. It is conducted in order to know the strength and the weaknesses and the effectiveness of the
material itself. Aside from that, evaluation is needed to improve the material which has been arranged and tested. Ellis in Tomlinson 1998: 227
– 231 proposed some steps of material evaluation as follows:
