Materials development for language learning and teaching

Materials development for language learning and teaching

1. That article is really interesting because we can observe how material development provide us different ways to learn and teaching a language and the literature focuses on printed materials and show us that materials can be:

   • 1. Informative: informing the learner about the target language
     • 2. Instructional: guiding the learner in practicing the language
       • 3. Experiential: providing the learner with experience of the language in use
     • 4. Eliciting: encouraging the learner to use the language
       • 5. Exploratory: helping the learner to make discoveries about the language.

2. Materials development refers to all the processes made use of by practitioners who produce and/or use materials for language learning, including materials evaluation, their adaptation, design, production, exploitation and research. Ideally, all of these processes should be given consideration and should interact in the making of language-learning materials. However materials development also is a field of academic study.

   • As a practical activity it involves: Production of materials Evaluation of materials Adaptation of materials
   • As a field it investigates: The principles and procedures of the design, Writing Implementation Evaluation Analysis of materials

3. . History of publications on materials development

   • 1. 1978-19801. Madsen & Bowen (1978) and Swales (1980), who asserted that the good teacher is constantly adapting materials, and Candlin & Breen (1980), who were concerned with evaluating and designing materials, but most references to materials development came in books and articles on methodology, which exemplified methods and approaches by quoting extracts from coursebooks
     • 2. 1986-1987 Dubin & Olshtain’s (1986) book on course design and Grant’s (1987) book on making the most of your textbook. There were articles on specific aspects of materials development in the seventies and eighties in such journals as ELT Journal and Modern EnglishTeacher
     • 3. 2000-2002 McGrath (2002) on materials evaluation and design, which was probably the first book to not only provide applications of theory to the practice of evaluating, adapting and supplementing materials but also to make principled suggestions for systematising materials design.
       • 5 .2003-2006 (Tomlinson 2003a) provided courses on materials development with a possible textbook, as it contains chapters on most aspects of materials development, including such practical considerations as design and illustration. Practical guidance is also a feature of Tomlinson & Masuhara (2004), a book written in English for inexperienced teachers in South-East Asia but since translated into Korean and Portuguese.
         • 6. 2010-2012 Tomlinson & Masuhara (2012), explores the application to materials development of the research findings of numerous areas of applied linguistics, as well as the implications of practice for the development of theory. Each chapter begins with a review of current research, followed by an evaluation of published materials in the light of research findings, with suggestions and illustration how to apply these findings to materials development

4. Materials evaluation

   • HOW TEACHERS AND MATERIALS DEVELOPERS CAN EVALUATE AND SELECT MATERIAL
     • Tucker (1975) proposed a four-component scheme for measuring the internal and external value of beginners’ textbooks,
       • Davison (1976) proposed a five-category scheme for the evaluation and selection of textbooks and Dauod & Celce-Murcia (1979) provided checklistsOf criteria for evaluating coursebooks.
         • Williams(1983)developed criteria for text book evaluation and Cunningsworth (1984)provided a very detailed checklist of evaluation criteria ‘for evaluating teaching material’.
           • Questions for evaluating criteria by Tomlinson & Masuhara : a) Is each question an evaluation question? b) Does each question only ask one question? c) Is each question answerable? d) Is each question free of dogma? e) Is each question reliable in the sense that other evaluators would interpret it in the same way?
             • Tomlinson (2003b: 16) recognizes that evaluation is inevitably subjective, that it ‘focuses on the users of the materials’ and attempts to measure the potential or actual effects of the materials on their users
               • McGrath (2002: 31) distinguishes between: ‘GENERAL CRITERIA (i.e. the essential features of any good teaching-learning material) SPECIfiC OR CONTEXT RELATED CRITERIA in relation to choosing a course book proposes a procedure which includes materials analysis, first-glance evaluation, user feedback, evaluation using situation specific checklists and, finally, selection.
   • Reporting evaluations:
     • The focus of much of the literature on materials evaluation is on the principles and procedures of conducting evaluations.
       • MICRO EVALUATIONS Many reports on micro-evaluations of materials are written for sponsors of projects or for publishers and are, understandably, confidential. Some reports of evaluations of materials in action are dotted throughout the literature but are rarely collected in one volume or issue. Ellis(2011:234),who adds that such micro-evaluations are ‘often seen as too localized and too small scale, and so theoretically uninteresting’. Tomlinson (2008a) there are reports of macro-evaluations of current materials for young learners, for self-access learning, for EAP and for General English, as well as of nine valuations of materials currently used in different parts of the world.
         • Course books Donovan he advocates the continuing use of piloting as a very effective way of obtaining feedback on the effectiveness of materials in development, but does concede that the increasing expense and decreasing time available might result in publishers making less use of piloting

5. MATERIALS ADAPTATION

   • ADAPATATION: Material adapted to the context, applied according to a methodology, theme,
     • Grant 1987 suggessts materials designed more for communication. McDonough y Shaw: Add, delete, modofy simplify, and reorder. Tasks: Do not merely immerse Ss into context which doesn’t make it attractive to stiudents. Materials designed has to be student minded. Learner center flexible,, relevant and authnentic. Published material: Stereotypical, notmotivating and trivial. Teachers: Materials desginers. Materials writters.
   • . MATERIALS PRODUCTION Materials writters influenced by principles of language acquisition. Writing is a sporadeous process. Wriitte as ideas come to you. CVoursebook writing is a creative rather than mechanical process which is influenced by prior experience of teaching and writing.
     • Practical guidance to writters Use of materials may depend of the teachers pedagogical learning goals and needs. Katz, 1996 Teachers: Use the coursebook depending on their experience and the value of the coursebook in their teaching learning context. Emphasis on textbook adapatation on the initial training for teachers.

6. ISSUES IN MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

   • The value of textbooks Proponents of the coursebook argue that it is a cost-effective way of providing the learner with security, system, progress and revision, whilst at the same time saving precious time and offering teachers the resources they need to base their lessons on. It also helps administrators Mukundan 2009 Provides an illusion of system of control and procgress: go to page 46. We need textbooks to save time, money, and get the centre of resources all in one. Copursebooks not specifyc, contextualized and ss centre
   • The need for published materials Dogme movement Conversation driven rather than materials driven. Confidence, creativity and respect from the ss to make a textbook free class
   • PEDAGOGIC APPROACHES My own preference is the text-driven approach, in which an engaging written or spoken text drives a unit of materials in which readiness activities activate the learners’ minds in relation to the text, initial response activities stimulate engagement whilst experiencing the text, intake response activities encourage articulation of personal responses, input response activities invite exploration of features of the text and development activities encourage learner production (Tomlinson 2003c).

7. RESEARCH IN MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

   • In materials development we can find some theories about the language, language use and language acquisition, but what about the research theories? The research also has been published on materials development, which can also be said of research on the development and use of materials. In majority books on language acquisition yo can find a lot of empirical investigation but it’s difficult to find the role that materials play in this process, this is because this research is a little difficult and it needs a lot of aspects such as money and time. However there is already quite an extensive literature on research and materials development that provides empirical evidence of the effects of materials on their uses.

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