It is evident from the narrative data that material selection and development was a task of any participant teacher but not all of them learned new knowledge and skills by doing it. Among the ten participant teachers, Thu and Hong showed their better awareness of this issue. Specifically, Thu admitted that she and her team members did not strictly follow backward course design but resorted to choosing an available commercial textbook as the core course material. She said:
We did not follow that approach [backward design] completely as we chose a ready-made textbook which was not in line with that approach. However, we could develop a project that was implemented throughout the semester to gradually build up skills for students, and at the end of the semester students would have a sense of achievement. Students would feel that they went to class not only for doing exercises but they could learn by doing something.
(Excerpt 80, Thu, Wn2)
It could be implied from the excerpt that her decisions on the materials and the assessment project were mostly based on her own experience and expectations on learners. Instead of focusing on the course objectives and how those objectives could be fulfilled, Thu put more emphasis on task completion and students’ sense of achievement when developing the 1B course. Thu even explicitly admitted:
I based on my own experience. I told you before that I was not good at theories. Moreover, no one told us what we should do. We were just required to design an EAP course at B1 and B2 levels and integrate the language skills.
We based on those requirements to complete the design tasks, yet we did not have anything but our experience for reference. (Excerpt 81, Thu, On1)
After experiencing the real classroom lessons using the chosen textbook and the developed project as well as sharing this experience with the other teachers, she and her team realized that they did not match all of the pre-determined objectives. Then, she decided to better material selection and development for the 2B course. She said:
When we [Thu’s team] started designing the 2B course, we felt less confused than before as we had some experience in course development and we had
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better understanding of the can-do statements. We read carefully the can-do statements [in CEFR] before we selected a textbook for this course. For the 1B course, even we also selected a textbook based on an evaluation checklist;
we read the can-do statements later after the book was selected. (Excerpt 82, Thu, Wn2)
It was revealed that Thu’s struggle to develop the materials for the 1B and 2B courses helped her understand the importance of course objectives in course development and of the coherence between the materials and the those objectives. She also told about her experience in material selection before this project to emphasize such importance (excerpt 30). In the same vein, involving the course design project created opportunities for Hong to experiment with a textbook designed by her colleagues, listen to another colleague’s idea about lesson coherence, and critically analyze the available materials for her course. All of these actions helped to better her awareness of the linkage between the prepared materials and her skill of ordering the course contents.
Besides reviewing her own course’s materials, Hong analyzed carefully the materials of the 4B course. Then she figured out how to link the contents within Reading- Writing subcourse as well as between Reading-Writing subcourse and Listening- Speaking subcourse in a reasonable way. Moreover, listening to her colleague’s comments on a novice teacher’s lesson and reflecting on her own teaching experiences helped her to realize how to make the lesson objectives and activities coherent with each other.
When I heard him [Hong’s colleague] talk about how to make the activities go around the focus of the lesson, it seemed I was alert about what I had done.
He just explained the idea theoretically, and I think he could not be aware of how deep the knowledge he provided at that time… I understood that lesson objectives were the foundation for the lesson contents and activities;
however, my lessons were not in line with the pre-determined objectives all the time. Before listening to his comments, I did not realize it as the reason why my lessons were sometimes not smooth. I planned my lessons and
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implemented the plans instinctively, so sometimes they were quite good, and at the other times they were not. (Excerpt 83, Hong, Wn2)
It can be said that thanks to the opportunities of listening to her colleague’s comments and teaching the course designed by another colleague, Hong reviewed her own theoretical knowledge as well as better her practical knowledge of selecting and organizing instruction materials. Meanwhile, Duong and Diem did not refer to any theoretical grounds while designing the Listening-Speaking materials; they just resorted to their prior knowledge as language learners, the collective practical experience, or their own belief. Specifically, Duong was an industrious language learner who was passionate about learning new words and had a large repertoire of vocabulary. In the design project, she made full use of this strength and provided students with a collection of topical words and idiomatic expressions that she believed to be essential. Duong admitted:
I think I was quite comfortable with designing vocabulary exercises because I had a quite large repertoire of it. However, when it comes to collocation, I often needed to refer to dictionaries to know whether I was precise or not…
I think the professional challenges I encountered was whether I provided the vocabulary students might need to talk about a topic. Therefore, when I designed vocabulary exercises, I usually envisaged how the topic would be discussed to choose relevant and useful items. However, sometimes it was hard to know how students might approach a topic. (Excerpt 84, Duong, Wn2)
It could be implied from this quote that Duong was good at learning vocabulary and the procedure she employed in designing vocabulary exercises were similar to that she followed as a language learner. In other words, her prior knowledge and experience with vocabulary was the primary resource during her design process, and she did not learn theoretical knowledge of vocabulary selection and exercise design.
In the same vein, Diem found the time when she sat on her own designing the speaking activities more relaxing to her.
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About speaking [activities], it was not difficult. I designed them quickly. If I do not need to search information anywhere and all that I need is in my mind, I can finish the task quickly. Whenever I have to do a search the do a selection, I do it slowly; moreover, I was quite lazy to do it (Excerpt 85, Diem, On1).
It is revealed from this excerpt that Diem fulfilled her task by making use of what had already been in her mind instead of referring to the other resources when she designed speaking activities for the course. In other words, further theoretical knowledge of designing instructional activities seemed to be hardly gained in this case.