Language Teaching Materials

Language Teaching Materials

1. LTM are cultural artefacts, no less rooted in a particular time and culture than any other instance of human activity, and, as such, are shaped by the context in which they occur.

2. ELT materials: the 1950s to the 1980s

   • 1950's a period reflecting the birth of modern-day language teaching.
     • The 1950s/60s and the Cold War
       • The 1958 National Defense (Foreign Language) Act was swiftly ushered in, providing massive funds for the development of language programmes.
       • “English Pattern Practice”
     • The late 1960s to the late 1970s
       • Humanistic methodologies. A well-known book from this time was Stevick’s (1976) “Memory, Meaning and Method,” which featured methodologies such as Gattegno’s Silent Way (Gattegno, 1972) and Lozanov’s Suggestopaedia (Lozanov, 1978).
     • The 1970s to the mid 1980s
       • individual’s particular needs through models such as those proposed by Munby (1981) .‘Special Purposes’ as a distinct branch of syllabus design.
       • “The Good Language Learner” study (1978) seemed to take up the decade’s sentiment in showing how language learning was a person-centred activity, thereby kick-starting a major new strand of materials development: learner training. A well-known example of this is Ellis and Sinclair’s “Learning to Learn English,”
   • New imperatives on materials design: the mid 1980s onwards
     • The variety of experimental and new approaches through the 1970s–1990s has now been superseded by a sameness throughout commercial publishing.
       • McDonaldization
         • Materials are routinely packaged into ‘chunks’ of two-page workplans often known as ‘units,’ ‘modules,’ ‘blocks,’ ‘themes’. ‘warm up’ activities may be routinely followed by some reading.
         • which may be followed by grammar work, which may give way to written practice, before ending with some ‘freer work’ (the traditional PPP model)
       • Neo-liberalism
         • relates to a much broader analysis of the social context in which language teaching takes place, that of the nature of society as a whole
         • the commodification of language knowledge is showing extensive development is in the area of language certification, e.g. Cambridge University
         • The proliferation of language examinations may constitute a good example of how neoliberalism and the market is shaping language teaching materials, a much more significant development from within the language teaching profession itself
     • The real danger we are facing is that centrally determined decisions, far removed from the teachers and learners concerned, will attempt to impose a uniformity on what happens in classrooms

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