1_1_Materials development for language learning and teaching

1_1_Materials development for language learning and teaching

1. WHAT MATERIALS ARE?

   • MATERIALS
     • anything that can be used to facilitate the learning of a language
       • FOR EXAMPLE
         • coursebooks, videos, graded readers, flash cards, games, websites and mobile phone interactions, though, inevitably, much of the literature focuses on printed materials
     • CAN
       • inform the learner about the target language
       • guide the learner in practising the language
       • provide the learner with experience of the language in use
       • encourage the learner to use the language
       • helping the learner to make discoveries about the language
         • with the porpouse of
           • provide all these ways of acquiring a language for the learners to experience

2. History of publications on materials development

   • At this time, books on language teaching methodology also gave more attention to materials development and illustrated their approaches with samples of published materials; for example, McDonough & Shaw (1998), which is being revised with examples from contemporary materials as McDonough, Shaw & Masuhara .
     • later
       • Publications in the early 2000s include Fenner & Newby (2000) on approaches to materials design in European coursebooks, Richards (2001) on curriculum development with frequent reference to materials development, and 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.

3. MATERIALS EVALUATION

   • Establishing criteria and developing evaluation instruments
     • Rivers (1981) provided categories and criteria for evaluating materials, Mariani (1983) wrote about evaluation and supplementation, Williams (1983) developed criteria for textbook evaluation and Cunningsworth (1984) provided a very detailed checklist of evaluation criteria ‘for evaluating teaching material’ (p. There are exceptions: Matthews (1985)
       • FOR EXAMPLE
         • insists that any evaluation should start from a specification of the teaching situation, Cunningsworth (1995) stresses the importance of determining criteria relevant to the target learners and Byrd (2001) gives priority to the fit between the textbook and the curriculum, students and teachers.

4. Materials adaptation

   • In order to achieve this congruence Madsen & Bowen propose ways of personalising,individualising,localisingandmodernisingmaterials.Otherearlypublications which provided help to teachers when adapting materials include Candlin & Breen (1980), who criticise published communicative materials and suggest ways of adapting them so as to offer more opportunities for communication,
     • Cunningsworth (1984), who focuses on how to change materials so that they get the learners to do what the teacher wants them to do and Grant (1987), who suggests and illustrates ways of making materials more communicative.

5. material production

   • how writers write
     • Reports of how writers actually write materials reveal that they rely heavily on retrieval from repertoire, cloning successful publications and spontaneous ‘inspiration’. (1995) consists of reports by materials writers in South-East Asia of how they wrote materials. My own preference is for an approach to materials writing in which the ongoing evaluation of the developing materials is driven by a set of agreed principles, both universal principles applicable to any learning context and local criteria specific to the target learning context(s).
   • Principled development of materials
     • proposes fifteen principles for materials development which derive from second language acquisition (SLA) research and from his experience, and a number of other writers outline principled approaches to developing ELT
       • materialsinTomlinson(1998a,2011a).Forexample,Bell&Gower(2011)discusstheneedfor authorstomakecompromisestomeetthepracticalneedsofteachersandlearnersandmatch the realities of publishing materials. Al-Busaidi & Tindle (2010) show the effectiveness of writing materials following experiential approaches in Oman, Mishan (2010) reveals the positive results of following a problem-solving approach at the University of Limerick and McCullagh (2010) highlights the effectiveness of published materials which follow an experiential approach in helping over seas doctors to communicate in English
         • inthe UK and Park (2010) shows how process drama materials worked in a Korean middle-school classroom. Hooper Hansen (2011) explores the principles behind the materials produced and inspired by Lozanov, Maley (2011) investigates the principles behind ideas for materials development which empower teachers, Masuhara (2011) considers principles informed by an analysis of the materials needs and wants of teachers and Tomlinson (2011c) examines the principles behind materials which involve the learners in making use of visual imaging.
   • Practical guidance to writers
     • There are very few publications offering practical guidance to materials writers on how to develop effective materials. Tomlinson (2003b, 2003c) proposes a flexible text-driven framework for developing materials and puts forward ways of ensuring that materials are humanistic, and Tomlinson & Masuhara (2004) provide practical advice on developing materials, writing instructions, using illustrations and layout and design.

6. materials exploitation

   • For example, Richards & Mahoney (1996) use questionnaires and observation to find out how teachers in Hong Kong make resourceful http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 16 May 2012 IP address: 131.111.127.89 M ATERIALS DEVELOPM ENT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 157 use of their textbooks
     • Katz (1996) found that the actual use of materials in four teachers’ classrooms depended on the different teachers’ pedagogical needs and goals, Gray (2000) reports how teachers censor or adapt aspects of cultural content in ELT reading materials and Lee & Bathmaker (2007) reveal how teachers using textbooks with vocational students in Singapore secondary schools adapt the materials in accordance with local institutional and classroom requirements.

7. Issues in materials development

   • The value of textbooks
     • For years there has been debate about whether or not the textbook is the best medium for delivering language-learning materials. It has also been argued that textbooks are invested with so much authority that it is difficult for teachers or students to challenge or adapt them (Luke, deCastell&Luke1989;Dendrinos1992),thoughApple(1992),Hutchinson&Torres(1994)
       • and
         • Canagarajah (2005) have demonstrated that such challenges do take place. My own view is that we need textbooks to save time and money and many teachers want a coursebook which provides everything they need in one source. Based on my experience of talking to teachers and to learners, and of observing teachers using materials in over thirty countries, I would like to see more localised textbooks and more global textbooks which are designed to be flexible and to offer teachers and students opportunities for localisation, personalisation and choice.
   • The need for published materials
     • For example, Al-Busiadi & Tindle (2010) describe a project at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman on the http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 16 May 2012 IP address: 131.111.127.89 M ATERIALS DEVELOPM ENT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 159 teachingofwritingskills,Jones&Schmitt(2010:225)reporton‘thedevelopmentandpiloting ofdiscipline-specificvocabularymaterialsonaCD-ROMsoftwareprogram
       • attheUniversity of Nottingham, Hewings (2010) reports on a scheme for teaching academic writing at the University of Birmingham, Mason (2010) discusses the effects of delivering a British Culture course at a Tunisian university with teacher-developed paper, video and internet materials, Trabelsi (2010) analyses the results of developing authentic in-house materials for business students at a Tunisian university and Troncoso (2010) comments on the effectiveness of teacher-developedmaterialsfordevelopinginterculturalcompetenceforlearnersofSpanish.
   • pedagogical approach
     • Tomlinson (2003c) has advocated a text-driven approach in which learners first respond to a text personally before exploiting it for creative and analytical activities and Prabhu (1987), Ellis (1998, 2003, 2011), Van den Branden (2006), Willis (1996) and Willis & Willis (2007) have advocated task-driven approaches in which the learners’ target is task completion and the teacher’s objective is language development.
       • 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).

8. materials devepolment projects

   • Only a few of these projects have been written up in the literature, but some of the more innovative include:
     • • the CBSE-ELT Project in India in which the College of St Mark and St John (Plymouth, UK) assisted the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in helping teachers to develop communicative and task-based textbooks.
       • • a secondary school textbook project in Bulgaria in which two textbooks were developed by small teams of teachers and one of them (which focused on helping students to explain Bulgarian culture to overseas visitors) chosen for publication (Tomlinson 1995).
         • • an institution-specific project in which a small group of teachers produced materials for Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat to help EAP students develop writing skills through an innovative experiential approach which combined text-driven, discovery and process approaches (Al-Busaidi & Tindle 2010).

9. research in materials development

   • He admitted that very few materials producers are also academic theorists and researchers and that there is very little research into the design and effects of materials, going on to suggest ways of connecting research and materials development. These reports focus on research on the value of extensive reading, in-house materials designed for university students, locally developed materials for http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 16 May 2012 IP address: 131.111.127.89 170 BRIAN TOM LINSON
     • languagelearnersanddifferenttypesofmaterials.Interestingly,noneoftheprojectsreported was conducting research on the effects of global coursebooks, though many were reporting on projects to find replacements for them. Another new book which does focus on the application of applied linguistics research and theory to materials development is Tomlinson & Masuhara (2012), which reports recent research on different areas of applied linguistics, for each one investigating the match between research and materials and proposing ways of achieving effective applications.

10. conclusion

    • AsCanniveng&Martinez(2003),Lyons(2003),Popovici&Bolitho(2003),Tomlinson(2003d) andBolitho(2008)havetoldus,suchcoursesandprojectsareidealforstimulatingteachersto think about how best to facilitate language acquisition and development, to gain self-esteem andconfidenceandtodeveloppersonallyandprofessionallyinwayswhichhelpthemtohelp others. 10.2 Gaps in the literature Very little of the existing literature on materials development tells us much about the actual effectofdifferenttypesofmaterialsonlanguageacquisitionanddevelopment,norabouthow to encourage teachers and learners to try new types of materials (although see Tomlinson 2005),
      • aboutwaysinwhichcommercialpublisherscanachievefacevaliditywhilstintroducing principled innovative approaches or about approaches which help learners to develop their own learning materials. These are gaps which I would hope to see filled in the near future. http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 16 May 2012 IP address: 131.111.127.89 M ATERIALS DEVELOPM ENT FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 171
        • The future of materials development What I think will happen in the future is that materials will increasingly be delivered electronically through computers and smartphones, that commercially produced materials will continue to provide users with the materials they expect and that more and more institutions and countries will decide that the only way to develop locally appropriate materials is to do it themselves.