We have been watching a significant expansion in the area of teaching English as a foreign language (FL) to young learners (CAMERON, 2003) in public schools in Brazil (ROCHA, 2007; TONELLI, 2007). But, this same expansion hasn't been noticed in the designing of teaching materials (TOMLINSON, 2012) to the referred context. Thus, teachers have to face the challenge of designing their own materials. However, most of them don't feel confident and prepared enough for such work. We intend to present a study which had as context a teacher development course conducted with 18 teachers on designing English teaching materials to teach English to young learners. The aim was to investigate the possible impacts the process of designing meaningful, contextualized teaching materials would have on teachers' approaches to teach English to young learners. The main objective of the course was to help the participants to elaborate teaching materials to be used in their lessons. The course was composed of teaching and learning languages theory discussion, the designing of teaching materials and the implementation of those materials in the teachers' classrooms. We aimed at helping teachers to understand and be able to produce teaching materials which could be meaningful (Vigotsky, 1962, 1978) contextualized. We believed that teaching materials along with a process of reflective development (SCHON, 1983, NOVOA, 2009) could potencialize the opportunities for acquisition (KUMARAVADIVELU, 1994). The study was based on the qualitative approach (ERICKSON, 1981) with an emphasis on exploratory and interpretative methods. For producing and collecting data, we used: questionnaire answered by the participants, participants' written field notes and participants' written reflective activity. The results indicate that the great majority of the participants changed their views about teaching a foreign language to young learners, from a very strong grammatical approach to a much more meaningful and contextualized practice. A much deeper understanding by teachers about young learners' interests and necessities was observed in the teachers' practices demonstrating that the process of designing such materials can be a powerful way of professional development.
CAMERON, L. Challenges for ELT from the expansion in teaching children. ELT Journal - Oxford University Press, v. 57, 2003, p.105 -112.
ERICKSON, F. "Qualitative Methods in Research on Teaching" In: Handbook of research on Teaching. Macmillan Publishing Company, 1981.
KUMARAVADIVELU, B. The Postmethod Condition: Emerging Strategies for second/foreign language teaching. Tesol Quarterly, n. 28, 1994.
NÓVOA, A. Professores: imagens do futuro presente. Lisboa: Educa, 2009.
ROCHA, C.H. O Ensino de Línguas para Crianças no Contexto Educacional Brasileiro: breves reflexões e possíveis previsões. DELTA (PUCSP. Impresso), v. 23, 2007, p. 273- 319.
SCHÖN, D.A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. London: Temple Smith. 1983.
TOMLINSON, B. Materials Development for language Learning and Teaching. Language Teaching, 45, 2012, pp 143-179
TONELLI, J. R. A.; RAMOS, S. G. M. (org.) O ensino de LE para crianças: reflexões e contribuições. Londrina: Moriá, 2007.
VYGOTSKY, L. S. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1978
VYGOTSKI. L.S.. Thought and language. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1962.
