Instructional Materials Appreciated By EFL Teachers at Elementary Schools

It is an undeniable fact that teaching a foreign language is a hard task for foreign language teachers as it requires a well prepared teacher who is up to date. To facilitate this task both teachers and learners need to use a lot of instructional materials in EFL classes. Due to the rapid advancement of technology, several technological devices have appeared to be utilized for the benefit of language teaching. Most of the learners, digital natives, expect to be provided with these instructional materials as well as the traditional ones. This paper stresses on the question “what kind of instructional materials are employed by the foreign language teachers at elementary schools?” To do this, during the course of School Experience, 128 prospective English teachers majoring at ELT department observed 38 teachers of English working at 14 elementary schools. While observing, they were required to fill in the Classroom Evaluation Form which included the items regarding the use of instructional materials that a foreign language teacher should use. The descriptive results have revealed that most of the teachers are still reluctant to use many of the materials because of some reasons (excuses) such as overcrowded classes, lack of time for preparation, time constraint of the curriculum, working load, burnout etc. It is unfortunately true that coursebook still remains the only indispensible instructional material that most of the teachers posses whereas some other materials are rarely appreciated. The study suggests that apart from coursebooks teachers should use other instructional materials to motivate learners and offer an interactive teaching atmosphere