STATE OF ART: MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

STATE OF ART: MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

1. MATERIALS FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING

   • Anything that can be used to facilitate the learning of a language
     • Ideal
       • Aim to provide all the ways of acquiring/learning a language
     • Reality
       • Are focused on
         • Informing about language features
         • Guiding the user to use language features
     • Matrials development process
       • Evaluation
       • Adaptation
       • Design
       • Production
       • Exploitation
       • Research
   • Materials
     • Informative
     • Instructional
     • Experiential
     • Eliciting
     • Explanatory

2. AS A PRACTICAL ACTIVITY

   • Production
     • How writer write
       • They rely on
         • Retrieval from repertoire
         • Cloning successful publications
         • Spontaneous ‘inspiration’
       • Influence by principles of language acquisition
       • Replicating previous materials
       • 'Coursebook writing is a creative rather than a mechanical process'
     • Principled developing materials
       • Some writers do describe establishing principles prior to writing
         • Hall (1995)
           • ‘How do we think people learn languages?’
         • Tomlinson (1998;2011)
           • Proposes fifteen principles for materials development which derive from second language acquisition.
         • Tomlinson (2003)
           • Ways of humanising the coursebook
         • Harwood & Richards
           •  language materials need to suit the contexts in which they are used
         • Kervin & Derewianka (2011)
           •  making use of new technologies in effective materials
         • Tomlinson (2008)
           • Proposed principles
             • The language experience needs to be contextualised and comprehensible
             • The learner needs to be motivated, relaxed, positive and engaged
             • The language and discourse features available for potential acquisition need to be salient, meaningful and frequently encountered
             • The learner needs to achieve deep and multi-dimensional processing of the language
     • Practical guidance to writers
       • The expertise needed to be a good task designer
       • To become an L2 storywriter
       • Ways of ensuring that materials are humanistic
       • Tomlinson & Masuhara (2004)
         • Advice on
           • Developing materials
           • Writing instructions
           • Using illustrations
           • Layout and design
   • Evaluation
     • Establisihng criteria and developing instruments
       • Schemes
         • To measure internal/external value in textbooks
         • Evaluation and selection texbooks
       • Checklists
         • To evaluate coursebooks
       • Criteria
         • To evaluate materials
         • Developing materials
         • TOMLINSON
           • Universal criteria
             • To evaluate materials for any learner anywhere
           • Local Criteria
             • Specific to the context in which the materials are going to be used
       • Categories
         • For evaluating materials
     • Reporting evaluations
       • Effectiveness of materials
         • Predictive reviews
         • Post-used reviews
           • Journals
             • ELT
             • RELC
             • TESOL
   • Adaptation
     • Madsen & Bowen (1978)
       • Congruence between
         • Materials
         • Methodology
         • Learners
         • Objectives
         • Target language
         • Teacher personality and teaching style
       • Propose ways of
         • Personalising
         • Individualising
         • Localising
         • Modernising
     • Grant (1987)
       • Suggest making materials more communicative
     • Nunan (1999)
       • Procedures for making materials more interactive
     • McDonough & Shaw
       • Focus on the principles and procedures of adaptation
       • Give advice on
         • Adding
         • Deleting
         • Modifying
         • Simplifying
         • Reordering
     • Saraceni (2003)
       • Proposes materials
         • Written with learner adaptation in mind
         • Learner-centred
         • Flexible
         • Open-ended
         • Relevant
         • Universal
         • Authentic

3. AS A FIELD

   • Principles and procedures
   • Writing
   • Implementation
   • Evaluation
   • Analysis

4. MATERIALS EXPLOITATION

   • How to make the most effective use of materials
     • Lin & Brown (1994)
       • Provide guidelines for the production and use of in-house self-access materials
     • Tomlinson (2003)
       • Proposes classroom procedures to help teachers to humanise their coursebooks
     • The actual use of materials in four teachers’ classrooms depended on the different teachers’ pedagogical needs and goals
     • Adapt the materials in accordance with local institutional and classroom requirements

5. ISSUES IN MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

   • The value of textbooks
     • Debate about whether or not the textbook is the best medium for delivering language-learning materials
       • Saving precious time and offering teachers the resources they need to basset heir lessons on
       • Standardise teaching
       • Disempower teacher and learners
       • Superficial
       • Uniform
       • ‘designed primarily to satisfy administrators and teachers but in doing so often ignore the needs and wants of learners’ (Tomlinson 2010)
       • Many global coursebooks are not considered to be sufficiently engaging or relevant for their actual users
   • The need for published materials
     • Teachers have replaced published materials with home-made materials in order to achieve greater relevance and engagement
     • Effectiveness of teacher develops materials for developing intercultural competence for learners of Spanish
     • There is a move away from reliance on textbooks
     • The methodology recommended is conversation-driven rather than materials-driven
   • Pedagogic approaches
     • 60’s teaching the language directly
     • 70’s communicative approach
     • Natural approaches
     • Last forty years PPP approaches
       • Discrete forms
       • Frequent use of listen-repeat activities
       • Dioalogue repetition
       • Matching
       • Filling the blanks
     • Language awareness approach
       • First experience a text holistically
       • Analyse it making discoveries about language use.
     • Text-driven approach
       • Respond to a text personally
       • Creative and analytical activities
     • Task given approaches
       • Learners' target: task completion
       • Teachers’ objective is language development
     • - Multi-dimensional approaches to materials development
       • Learners make use of sensory imagery
       • Motor imagery
       • Inner speech
       • Emotion
       • Thought
       • To respond to text and carry out tasks
   • Authenticity of texts and tasks
     • Authentic materials can
       • Provide meaningful exposure to language
       • Motivate learners
       • Help to develop a range of communicative competencies
       • Enhance positive attitudes towards the learning of a language
     • Ellis (1999) and Day (2003)
       • Claim that authentic materials can pose too many problems for learners
       • They put forward arguments for contriving materials that will simplify and facilitate learning
     • Widdowson (1984)
       • ‘pedagogic presentation of language...necessarily involves methodological contrivance which isolates features from their natural surroundings’
     • Day (2003)
       • Attacks what he calls the cult of authenticity
         • Saying: there is no empirical evidence that authenticity facilitates language acquisition
         • Citing evidence that learners find authentic texts more difficult than simplified or elaborated texts
     • Trabelsi (2010
       • Raised the issue of authenticity in relation to the learners’ culture
       • Be authentic for one location (or for one learner)
       • It is not the text or the task which is authentic but the learner’s interaction with it
     • VanLier (1996)
       • Authenticity ‘is basically a personal process of engagement’
     • Tomlinson
       • An authentic text is one which is produced to communicate rather than to teach
       • An authentic task is one which involves the learners in communication to achieve an outcome, rather than practice the language
   • Acceptability
     • Related to the topics
       • Acceptable in cultures
       • Authors have to avoid (Taboo topics)
         • Sometimes included in coursebooks with permission of the government
           • Namibia
             • Marital violence
             • Drug abuse
           • Argentina
             • Gay marriage
             • Child abuse
             • Divorse
             • Single parenting
     • Tomlinson (2001)
       • ‘it is arguable that provocative texts which stimulate an affective response are more likely to facilitate learning than neutral texts which do not’
   • Humanising materials
     • Refer to learning theories
     • The need to help learners to personalise, localise and make meaningful their experience of the target language
     • The need for materials to be affectively engaging and cater for all learning style preferences.
     • Gross (1992)
       • We can accelerate and enrich our learning, by engaging the senses, emotions, imagination’
     • Tomlinson (2003) agrees with Berman (1999)
       • ‘We learn best when we see things as part of a recognised pattern, when our imaginations are aroused, when we make natural associations between one idea and another, and when the information appeals to our senses’
     • Hooper Hansen (2011)
       • Advocates helping the learner to achieve ‘a state in which the mind is optimally relaxed and fully expanded’
     • Without affective and cognitive engagement there is little possibility of deep processing (Craik & Lockhart 1972) and therefore little hope of enduring acquisition.
   • Ideology in materials
     • The role of English language teaching in a globalisation process which they see as promoting western, capitalist, materialistic values
     • Ferguson (2003)
       • Uses the term ‘Angloglobalisation’ to identify what he sees as a positive connection between the British Empire, English and globalisation
     • Whitehead (2011)
       • Discusses ways in which materials can help to ‘develop counter-hegemonic discourses’ by encouraging critical engagement with issues relating to globalisation.
     • Gray (2010)
       • Points out how English has become ‘a form of linguistic capital, capable of bringing a profit of distinction to those speakers with the ability to access it (or more accurately, its socially legitimated varieties), and as an increasingly commodified dimension of labour-power’
     • Wala (2003)
       • Views the coursebook as a communicative act, ‘a dynamic artefact that contributes to and creates meaning together with other participants in the context of language teaching’
   • New technologies' roles
     • Mukundan (2008)
       • Teaching courseware ‘directs teaching in a prescriptive manner’
     • IT
       • ‘for the freeing of teachers and learners alike from the constraints of the coursebook’
       • For providing ‘rapid and flexible access to unlimited information resources’.
     • Distinguish between
       • CALL materials
       • web sources of language experience
       • CT applications which can be made use of both to deliver materials and to facilitate interaction
     • Benefits of electronic materials
       • Facilitating reading
       • Organisational advantages
       • Localised adaptation of materials
       • Collaborative problem-solving activities inside and outside the classroom

6. MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

   • Sponsored by governments dissatisfied with commercial publishers
     • the CBSE-ELT Project in India
       • o helping teachers to develop communicative and task-based textbooks
     • a secondary school coursebook in Namibia
       • made use of nationwide surveys of student and teacher needs and wants
     • a secondary school textbook project in Bulgaria
       • helping students to explain Bulgarian culture to overseas visitors
     • an institution-specific project
       • help EAP students develop writing skills through an innovative experiential approach which combined text-driven, discovery and process approaches

7. RESEARCH IN MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

   • the effects of materials on their users
   • report research findings which demonstrate the positive power of free, voluntary reading in facilitating language acquisition
   • evaluate language-learning materials
   • experiments on the effects of task-based materials in action
   • Relation of materials development with the neurolinguistic processes involved in early reading