In terms of material development, we need to consider two key questions, namely what should be

provided for learners as materials and how to give them to learners. Materials designers may say that
the key of material development is intuition or tacit knowledge which they know what work and what
won’t work based on their experiences. Although this seems to be good for developing materials,
another point which need to be aware of is subjective, especially from conservative teachers who
generally might not want to change. Therefore, it had better to listen to teachers and learners’ voices to
see what they’re interested in and what are their opinions toward materials.

What we think good ELT materials should be, or shouldn’t be ?

week 3

At the beginning of the class, Paul gave us small pieces of paper with one statement on each, and he
asked us to read and discuss in groups what all these statements mean. Each group got different
statements. Then we had to explain to the other groups about the statements which we’ve got.

All these statements are basic principles of second language acquisition relevant to the development of
materials for teaching of language compiled by Brian Tomlinson, namely

1. “Materials should achieve impact.” which means they should have attractive presentation and
appealing content to target learners.

2. “Materials should help learners to feel at ease.” which means texts & illustration in materials should
make learners feel comfortable, relaxed and being supportive.

3. “Materials should help learners to develop confidence.” which means they should make learners feel
successful and push learners to develop their skills.

4. “What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful.” which means materials
should convince learners that teaching points are useful whereby teachers need to find what the
learners are interested in.
5. “Materials should require & facilitate learners self-investment.” which means they should encourage
learners to invest their interests, efforts and attentions.

6. “Learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught.” which means using materials to prepare
learners to focus on features of target language which they haven’t learnt yet, so they might be
attentive to learn these features.

7. “Materials should expose learners to language in authentic use.” which means they should provide
learners with advice and instructions for their activities, spoken language and written text.

8. “The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input.” which means materials
should include grammar and how the language is actually used.

9. “Materials should provide learners with opportunities to use target language to achieve
communication process.”

10. “Materials should take in account that learners differ in learning style.” which means they should
provide a variety of activities and should support all learning styles, such as, visual learners, auditory
learners, kinaesthetic learners, studial learners, experiential learners, analytic learners, global learners,
dependent learners and independent learners.

11. “Materials should take in account that learners differ in affective attitudes.” which means they
should provide different types of text and activities, as well as should be aware of cultural sensitivities of
target learners.

12. “Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction.” which means they should
not force learners to speak until they are ready.

13. “Materials should maximise learning potential by encouraging inellectual, aesthetic & emotional
involvement which stimulates both right and left brain activities.”
14. “Materials should not reply too much on controlled practice.” which means they should focus on
language use.

15. “Materials should provide opportunuties for outcome feedback, especially feedback on the
effectiveness of use of language rather than accuracy of language.”

(pp.8-23)

Having discussed all these principles, Paul asked us to write down our own thoughts about what we
think the good materials should have or should be, then share them and discuss together. After that we
had to put them into group with the principles and range them in order to see which one we think is the
most important principles of the good materials. We agreed to range them in three groups which we
thought they were so important.

The first group of the principles which was the most important was namely,

– Materials should be engaging and motivating.

– Materials must be challenging.

– Materials do not have to be serious.

– Materials should be clear and systematic but flexible enough to allow for creativity and variety.

– Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve
communicative purpose.
– Materials should provide authenticity.

– Materials should be student-centredness.

The second group of the principles was namely,

2 middle

– Materials should help learners to develop confidence.

– Materials should engage students to talk and share with their peers.

– Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment.

– Balance of approaches

– Materials must include various activities to appeal to different kinds of learners (visual, etc.)

– Materials should make people think.

The last group of the principles which was important was namely,

3 bottom

– Materials should allow learners to develop learning skills, and skills in learning.
– Materials should encourage learners to apply their developing skills to the world beyond the
classroom.

– Materials should keep up to date.

– Materials should provide sufficient knowledge which learners need.

– The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of input.

– Materials should encourage learners to learn more.

In conclusion, this discussion seemed to be like a process of course book evaluation which we needed to
listen to each other about what each of us thought and we found that everyone had different
experiences of teaching in different contexts. Therefore, we needed to talk and shared our own ideas
toward what a good material should be. In the future, when I work in a school or a language institution,
I’m going to apply this evaluation process to choose or develop materials for my classes.

Reference: Tomlinson, B. (2011) Materials development in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

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