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Intro-to-materials-deve (1)

The document discusses the significance of instructional materials in language teaching, highlighting their roles as resources for presentation, practice, and reference. It emphasizes the need for materials development to be driven by the needs of learners, teachers, and administrators, while also addressing issues such as evaluation and the balance between learner expectations and innovative approaches. Additionally, it outlines the various forms materials can take and the importance of thorough and systematic evaluation processes.

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8 views

Intro-to-materials-deve (1)

The document discusses the significance of instructional materials in language teaching, highlighting their roles as resources for presentation, practice, and reference. It emphasizes the need for materials development to be driven by the needs of learners, teachers, and administrators, while also addressing issues such as evaluation and the balance between learner expectations and innovative approaches. Additionally, it outlines the various forms materials can take and the importance of thorough and systematic evaluation processes.

Uploaded by

R Renegade
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS

Nunan (1992, p . 227) states that teaching materials are often the most substantial
and observable component of pedagogy. They determine the quality of language
input and the language practices during the learning process in the classroom.

MATERIALS (particularly textbook) IN LANGUAGE (Cunningsworth)


• a resource for presentation materials (spoken and written)
• a source of activities for learners practice and communicative interaction
• a reference source for learners on grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
• a source of stimulation and ideas for classroom activities
• a syllabus (where they reflect learning objectives that have already been
determined)
• a support for less experience teachers who have yet to gain in confidence.
1. It refers to an academic field which ‘studies
the principles and procedures of the design,
implementation and evaluation of language
teaching materials’ (Tomlinson, 2001, p, 66)
What is
materials
development?
2. It refers to the actual carrying out of the
procedures of designing, developing,
monitoring, revising, producing and using
language teaching materials.
MATERIALS include anything which can be used to
facilitate the learning of a language.

- can be linguistic, visual, auditory or kinesthetic,

What are
and they can be presented in print, through live
performance or display, or on cassette, CD-ROM,

materials?
DVD or the internet’ (Tomlinson, 2001, p. 66).
- can be instructional, experiential, elicitative or
exploratory
- can inform learners about the language
- can provide experience of the language in use
- can stimulate language use or they can help
learners to make discoveries about the language
for themselves.
Issues in materials
development
1. What should drive materials?
The obvious answer to this question is that the needs and wants of the learners
should drive the materials.

But teachers have needs and wants to be satisfied too (Masuhara, 2011) and so do
administrators, with their concerns for standardization and conformity with, for
example, a syllabus, a theory of language learning, the requirements of examinations
and the language policies of a government.

These needs and wants are not irreconcilable and. They can best be satisfied by
localized materials development projects in which learners, teachers and
administrators are consulted before, during and after the materials writing process.
2. Who should develop the materials?

Commercial materials written by professional materials writers versus teacher-


designed materials
3. How should materials be developed?
4. How should materials be evaluated?
Materials are often evaluated in an impressionistic way which tends to
favor materials which have face validity (i.e. which conform to people’s
expectations of what materials should look like) and which are visually
appealing.

In order to ensure that materials are devised, revised, selected, adapted


and used in reliable and valid ways, we need to ensure that materials
evaluation establishes procedures which are thorough, rigorous, systematic
and principled.
5. Should materials be driven by syllabus needs,
learner needs or market needs?
Most published materials are driven by perceived market needs, but many
large institutions are beginning to publish their own materials because of
the mismatch between the courses available and their local institutional
needs.

And many researchers are arguing that learners are suffering because
courses are designed primarily to appeal to the administrators and
teachers who are responsible for buying them.
6. Should materials cater for learner expectations or
try to change them?

Traditionally it has been argued that it is important to provide learners


with what they expect or else you risk rejection of the materials.

Recently though researchers (e.g. Tomlinson, 2005) have pointed out that
it is usually teachers rather than learners who are resistant to change and
that learners often welcome innovative approaches which have the
potential to engage them.

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