1.

Defining Materials And Materials Development

According to Tomlinson (1998, p. 2) materials development refers to

anything which is done by writers, teachers or learners to provide sources of
language input in ways which maximize the likelihood of intake. In other
words, it also relates to the supplying of information about and/ or experience
of the language in ways designed to promote language learning. In doing so,
materials developers, including teachers, may bring pictures or advertisements
in the classroom, compose a textbook, design a student worksheet, read a
poem or an article aloud. Therefore, whatever they do to provide input, they
also take into account any related principle to make the learners able to learn
the language effectively. Materials development is both a field of study and a
practical undertaking. As a field it studies the principles and procedures of the
design, implementation and evaluation of language teaching materials. As an
undertaking it involves the production, evaluation and adaptation of language
teaching materials, by teachers for their own classrooms and by materials
writers for sale or distribution. Ideally these two aspects of materials
development are interactive in that the theoretical studies inform and are
informed by the development and use of classroom materials.

What Are Materials?

Materials include anything which can be used to facilitate the learning of

a language. They can be linguistic, visual, auditory or kinaesthetic, and they
can be presented in print, through live performance or display, or on cassette,
CD-RoM, DVD or the internet’ (Tomlinson, 2001, p. 66). They can be
instructional, experiential, elicitative or exploratory, in that they can inform
learners about the language, they can provide experience of the language in
use, they can stimulate language use or they can help learners to make
discoveries about the language for themselves. Despite the recent ‘explosion’ of
electronic materials most language learning materials are still published as
books and most of the chapters in this book focus on print materials. Most
materials are instructional (‘instructional materials generally serve as the basis
for much of the language input learners receive and the language practice that
occurs in the classroom’.

2. Current Trends And Issues In Materials Development

Do learners need a course book?
Do learners need published materials at all?
Should materials be learning or acquisition focused?
Should published materials be censored?
Should materials be driven by theory or practice?
Should materials be driven by syllabus needs, learner needs or market needs?
Should materials cater for learner expectations or try to change them?
Should materials aim for language development only or should they also aim
for personal and educational development?
Should materials aim to contribute to teacher development as well as language
learning?
Positive Trends

 There are some materials requiring investment by the learners in order

for them to make discoveries for themselves.
 There are more materials.
 There are more extensive reader series being produced with fewer
linguistic constraints and more provocative content.
 There has been a very noticeable and welcome increase in attempts to
personalize the learning process by getting learners to relate topics and
texts to their own lives, views and feelings.
 There is an increase in attempts to gain the affective engagement of
learners.
 There is an increasing use of the internet as a source of current, relevant
and appealing texts.
 There is evidence of a movement away from spoken practice of written
grammar and towards experience of spoken grammar in use.
 There is a considerable increase in the number of ministries which have
decided to produce their own locally relevant materials

Negative Trends

 There is an even more pronounced return to the ‘central place of

grammar in the language curriculum.
 There is still a far greater prominence given in course books to listening
and speaking than to reading and writing.
 There is an assumption that most learners have short attention spans,
can only cope with very short reading and writing texts and will only
engage in activities for a short time.
 There seems to be an assumption that learners do not want and would
not gain from intellectually demanding activities while engaged in
language learning.
 There is a neglect (or sometimes an abuse) of literature in course books,
despite its potential as a source of stimulating and engaging texts and
despite the many claims of methodologists for the potential value and
appeal of literature.
 There is a continuing predominance of analytical activities and a neglect
of activities which could cater for learners with other preferred learning
styles.
 There is still an ‘absence of controversial issues to stimulate thought, to
provide opportunities for exchanges of views, and to make topic content
meaningful.
 There is a tendency to underestimate learners linguistically, intellectually
and emotionally.
 Despite the increase in publications reflecting the predominant use of
International English as a lingua franca most course books still focus on
English as used by native speakers and prepare the learners for
interaction with them.
3. Who Should Develop The Materials?

These days most commercial materials are written by professional

materials writers writing to a brief determined by the publishers from an
analysis of market needs (see Amrani, 2011). These writers are usually very
experienced and competent, they are familiar with the realities of publishing
and the potential of the new technologies and they write full-time for a living.
The books they write are usually systematic, well designed, teacher-friendly
and thorough. But they often lack energy and imagination (how can the writers
be imaginative all day and every day?) and are sometimes insufficiently relevant
and appealing to the actual learners who use them (see Tomlinson et al., 2001;
Masuhara et al., 2008; Tomlinson, 2010; Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2013).
Dudley Evans and st John (1998, p. 173) state that ‘only a small proportion of
good teachers are also good designers of course materials’.

Typically, commercial materials are written over a long period of time by

a pair or small group of writers. The materials usually take a long time to
produce because these days most of the materials published are courses
(supplementary books are generally not considered profitable enough), because
most courses have multiple components.

4. How Should Materials Be Evaluated?

Materials are often evaluated in an ad hoc, impressionistic way, which tends to

favour 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 and
adapted in reliable and valid ways, we need to ensure that materials evaluation
establishes procedures which are thorough, rigorous, systematic and
principled. This often takes time and effort but it could prevent many of the
mistakes which are made by writers, publishers, teachers, institutions and
ministries and which can have negative effects on learners’ potential to benefit
from their courses.

5. Should Texts Be Authentic?

Materials aiming at explicit learning usually contrive examples of the

language which focus on the feature being taught. Usually these examples are
presented in short, easy, specially written or simplified texts or dialogues, and
it is argued that they help the learners by focusing their attention on the target
feature. The counterargument is that such texts overprotect learners, deprive
them of the opportunities for acquisition provided by rich texts and do not
prepare them for the reality of language use, whereas authentic texts (i.e. texts
not written especially for language teaching) can provide exposure to language
as it is typically used. A similar debate continues in relation to materials for the
teaching of reading and listening skills and materials for extensive reading and
listening. One side argues that simplification and contrivance can facilitate
learning; the other side argues that they can lead to faulty learning and that
they deny the learners opportunities for informal learning and the development
of self-esteem. Most researchers argue for authenticity and stress its motivating
effect on learners. However, Widdowson (1984, p. 218) says that ‘pedagogic
presentation of language . . . necessarily involves methodological contrivance
which isolates features from their natural surroundings’; Day and Bamford
(1998, pp. 54–62) attack the ‘cult of authenticity’ and advocate simplified
reading texts which have the ‘natural properties of authenticity’, Ellis (1999, p.
68) argues for ‘enriched input’ which provides learners with input which has
been flooded with exemplars of the target structure in the context of meaning
focused activities and Day (2003) claims there is no evidence that authenticity
facilitates acquisition but that there is evidence that learners find authentic
texts more difficult. Some researchers have challenged the conventional view of
authenticity and redefined it, for example, in relation to the learners culture
(Prodromou, 1992; Trabelsi, 2010), to the learners’ interaction with a text or
task (Widdowson, 1978), to the ‘authenticity of the learner’s own interpretation’
(Breen, 1985, p. 61) and to the personal engagement of the learner (van lier,
1996).

6. Principles and Procedures of Materials Development

Tomlinson (Richards, 2001, p. 263) suggests the basic principles in conducting

materials development for the teaching of language as follows:

 Material should achieve impacts

 Material should help learners to feel at ease
 Materials should help learners to develop confidence
 What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and
useful
 Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment
 Learners must be ready to acquire the point being taught
 Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the
target language to achieve communicative purposes.
 Materials should take into account that the positive effects of instruction
are usually delayed Materials should take into account that learners
have different learning styles.
 Materials should take into account that learners differ in affective
attitudes
 Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction
 Materials should not rely too much on controlled practice
 Materials should provide opportunities for outcome feedback

There are some writers who report starting by articulating their principles. For
example Bell and Gower (2011, pp. 142–6) started by articulating the following
principles which they wanted to guide their writing:
 Flexibility
 From text to language
 Engaging content
 Natural language
 Emphasis on review
 Personalized practice
 Integrated skills
 Balance of approaches
  Learning to learn
 Professional respect

Six principles of materials design identified by Nunan (1988):

1 Materials should be clearly linked to the curriculum they serve.
2 Materials should be authentic in terms of text and task.
3 Materials should stimulate interaction.
4 Materials should allow learners to focus on formal aspects of the language.
5 Materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills, and skills in
learning.
6 Materials should encourage learners to apply their developing skills to the
world beyond the classroom.

Before planning or writing materials for language teaching, there is one crucial
question we need to ask ourselves. The question should be the first item on the
agenda at the first planning meeting. The question is this: How do we think
people learn language?

Hall then goes on to discuss the following theoretical principles which he

thinks should ‘underpin everything else which we do in planning and writing
our materials.

 The need to communicate

 The need for long-term goals
 The need for authenticity
 The need for student-centredness

What Is Materials Evaluation?

Materials evaluation is a procedure that involves measuring the value (or

potential value) of a set of learning materials. It involves making judgments
about the effect of the materials on the people using them and it tries to
measure some or all of the following:

 the appeal of the materials to the learners;

 the credibility of the materials to learners, teachers and administrators;
 the validity of the materials (i.e. Is what they teach worth teaching?);
 the reliability of the materials (i.e. Would they have the same effect with
different groups of target learners?);
 the ability of the materials to interest the learners and the teachers;
 the ability of the materials to motivate the learners;
 the value of the materials in terms of short-term learning (important, for
example, for performance on tests and examinations);
 the value of the materials in terms of long-term learning (of both
language and of communication skills);
 the learners’ perceptions of the value of the materials;
 the teachers’ perceptions of the value of the materials;
 the assistance given to the teachers in terms of preparation, delivery and
assessment;
 the flexibility of the materials (e.g. the extent to which it is easy for a
teacher to adapt the materials to suit a particular context);
 the contribution made by the materials to teacher development;
  the match with administrative requirements (e.g. standardization across
classes, coverage of a syllabus, preparation for an examination).

It is obvious from a consideration of the effects above that no two evaluations

can be the same, as the needs, objectives, backgrounds and preferred styles of
the participants will differ from context to context. An evaluation is not the
same as an analysis. It can include an analysis or follow from one, but the
objectives and procedures are different. An evaluation focuses on the users of
the materials and makes judgments about their effects. No matter how
structured, criterion referenced and rigorous an evaluation is, it will be
essentially subjective. On the other hand, an analysis focuses on the materials
and it aims to provide an objective analysis of them. It ‘asks questions about
what the materials contain, what they aim to achieve and what they ask
learners to do.

Principles In Materials Evaluation

The Evaluator’s Theory of Learning and Teaching

All teachers develop theories of learning and teaching which they apply in their
classrooms (even though they are often unaware of doing so). Many researchers
(e.g. Schon, 1983) argue that it is useful for teachers to try to achieve an
articulation of their theories by reflecting on their practice. In this way
evaluators can make overt their predispositions and can then both make use of
them in constructing criteria for evaluation and be careful not to let them
weight the evaluation too much towards their own bias. At the same time
evaluators can learn a lot about themselves and about the learning and
teaching process.

Here are some theories, which were articulated as a result of reflection by other
teachers’ practice:

 Language learners succeed best if learning is a positive, relaxed and l

enjoyable experience.
 Language teachers tend to teach most successfully if they enjoy their role
l and if they can gain some enjoyment themselves from the materials they
are using.
 Learning materials lose credibility for learners if they suspect that the l
teacher does not value them.
 Each learner is different from all the others in a class in terms of his or
her personality, motivation, attitude, aptitude, prior experience, interests,
needs, wants and preferred learning style.
 Each learner varies from day to day in terms of motivation, attitude,
mood, perceived needs and wants, enthusiasm and energy.
 There are superficial cultural differences between learners from different
countries (and these differences need to be respected and catered for) but
there are also strong universal determinants of successful language
teaching and learning.
 Successful language learning in a classroom (especially in large classes)
depends on the generation and maintenance of high levels of energy.
  The teacher is responsible for the initial generation of energy in a lesson;
good materials can then maintain and even increase that energy.
 Learners only learn what they really need or want to learn.
 Learners often say that what they want is focused language practice but
they often seem to gain more enjoyment and learning from activities
which stimulate them to use the target language to say something they
really want to say.
 Learners think, say and learn more if they are given an experience or text
to respond to than if they are just asked for their views, opinions and
interests.
 The most important thing that learning materials have to do is to help
the learner to connect the learning experience in the classroom to their
own life outside the course.
 The more novel (or better still bizarre) the learning experience is the more
impact it is likely to make and it is more likely to contribute to long- term
acquisition.
 The most important result that learning materials can achieve is to
engage the emotions of learners. Laughter, joy, excitement, sorrow and
anger can promote learning. Neutrality, numbness and nullity cannot.

Types Of Materials Evaluation

There are many different types of materials evaluation. It is possible to

apply the basic principles of materials evaluation to all types of evaluation but
it is not possible to make generalizations about procedures which apply to all
types. Evaluations differ, for example, in purpose, in personnel, in formality
and in timing. You might do an evaluation in order to help a publisher to make
decisions about publication, to help yourself in developing materials for
publication, to select a textbook, to write a review for a journal or as part of a
research project. As an evaluator you might be a learner, a teacher, an editor, a
researcher, a Director of Studies or an Inspector of English. You might be doing
a mental evaluation in a bookshop, filling in a short questionnaire in class or
doing a rigorous, empirical analysis of data elicited from a large sample of users
of the materials. You might be doing your evaluation before the materials are
used while they are being used or after they have been used. In order to
conduct an effective evaluation you need to apply your principles of evaluation
to the contextual circumstances of your evaluation in order to determine the
most reliable and effective procedures.

Pre-use evaluation

Pre-use evaluation involves making predictions about the potential value

of materials for their users. It can be context-free, as in a review of materials for
a journal, context influenced as in a review of draft materials for a publisher
with target users in mind or context-dependent, as when a teacher selects a
course book for use with her particular class. Often pre-use evaluation is
impressionistic and consists of a teacher flicking through a book to gain a
quick impression of its potential value (publishers are well aware of this
procedure and sometimes place attractive illustrations in the top righthand
corner of the right-hand page in order to influence the flicker in a positive way).

Whilst-use evaluation

This involves measuring the value of materials while using them or while
observing them being used. It can be more objective and reliable than pre-use
evaluation as it makes use of measurement rather than prediction. However, it
is limited to measuring what is observable (e.g. ‘Are the instructions clear to
the learners?’) and cannot claim to measure what is happening in the learners’
brains. It can measure short-term memory through observing learner
performance on exercises but it cannot measure durable and effective learning
because of the delayed effect of instruction. It is therefore very useful but
dangerous too, as teachers and observers can be misled by whether the
activities seem to work or not. Exactly what can be measured in a whilst-use
evaluation is controversial but the following are included:

 Clarity of instructions
 Clarity of layout
 Comprehensibility of texts
 Credibility of tasks
 Achievability of task
 Achievement of performance objectives
 Potential for localization
 Practicality of the materials
 Teachability of the materials
 Flexibility of the materials
 Appeal of the materials
 Motivating power of the materials
 Impact of the materials
 Effectiveness in facilitating short-term learning

Most of the above can be estimated during an open-ended,

impressionistic observation of materials in use but greater reliability can be
achieved by focusing on one criterion at a time and by using pre-prepared
instruments of measurement. For example, oral participation in an activity can
be measured by recording the incidence and duration of each student’s oral
contribution, potential for localization can be estimated by noting the times the
teacher or a student refers to the location of learning while using the materials
and even motivation can be estimated by noting such features as student eye
focus, proximity to the materials, time on task and facial animation.

Post-use evaluation

Post-use evaluation is probably the most valuable (but least

administered) type of evaluation as it can measure the actual effects of the
materials on the users. It can measure the short-term effect as regards
motivation, impact, achievability, instant learning, etc., and it can measure the
long-term effect as regards durable learning and application. It can answer
such important questions as:

 What do the learners know which they did not know before
starting to use the materials?
  What do the learners still not know despite using the materials?
 What can the learners do which they could not do before starting
to use the materials?
 What can the learners still not do despite using the materials?
 To what extent have the materials prepared the learners for their
examinations?
 To what extent have the materials prepared the learners for their
post-course use of the target language?
 What effect have the materials had on the confidence of the
learners?
 What effect have the materials had on the motivation of the
learners?
 To what extent have the materials helped the learners to become
independent learners?
 Did the teachers find the materials easy to use?
 Did the materials help the teachers to cover the syllabus?
 Did the administrators find the materials helped them to
standardize the teaching in their institution?

In other words, it can measure the actual outcomes of the use of the
materials and thus provide the data on which reliable decisions about the use,
adaptation or replacement of the materials can be made. Ways of measuring
the post-use effects of materials include:

 tests of what has been ‘taught’ by the materials;

 tests of what the students can do;
 examinations;
 interviews;
 questionnaires;
 criterion-referenced evaluations by the users;
 post-course diaries;
 post-course ‘shadowing’ of the learners;
 post-course reports on the learners by employers, subject tutors, etc

The main problem, of course, is that it takes time and expertise to measure
post-use effects reliably (especially as, to be really revealing, there should be
measurement of pre-use attitudes and abilities in order to provide data for
post-use comparison). But publishers and ministries do have the time and can
engage the expertise, and teachers can be helped to design, administer and
analyse post-use instruments of measurement. Then we will have much more
useful information, not only about the effects of particular courses of materials
but about the relative effectiveness of different types of materials. Even then,
though, we will need to be cautious, as it will be very difficult to separate such
variables as teacher effectiveness, parental support, language exposure outside
the classroom, intrinsic motivation, etc.

Brainstorm A List Of Universal Criteria

Universal criteria are those which would apply to any language learning
materials anywhere for any learners. So, for example, they would apply equally
to a video course for 10-year-olds in Argentina and an English for academic
purposes textbook for undergraduates in Thailand. They derive from principles
of language learning and the results of classroom observation and provide the
fundamental basis for any materials evaluation. Brainstorming a random list of
such criteria (ideally with other colleagues) is a very useful way of beginning an
evaluation, and the most useful way I have found of doing it is to phrase the
criteria as specific questions rather than to list them as general headings.

Examples of universal criteria would be:

 Do the materials provide useful opportunities for the learners to think

for l themselves?
 Are the target learners likely to be able to follow the instructions?
 Are the materials likely to cater for different preferred learning styles?
 Are the materials likely to achieve affective engagement?

Here are the universal criteria used in Tomlinson and Masuhara (2013) to
evaluate six current global coursebooks. To what extent is the course likely to:

 Provide extensive exposure to English in use?

 Engage the learners affectively?
 Engage the learners cognitively?
 Provide an achievable challenge?
 Help learners to personalize their learning?
 Help the learners to make discoveries about how English is typically
used?
 Provide opportunities to use the target language for communication?
 Help the learners to develop cultural awareness?
 Help the learners to make use of the English environment outside the
classroom?
 Cater for the needs of all the learners?
 Provide the flexibility needed for effective localization?
 Help the learners to continue to learn English after the course?
 Help learners to use English as a lingua franca?
 Help learners to become effective communicators in English?
 Achieve its stated objectives

Monitor And Revise The List Of Universal Criteria

Monitor the list and rewrite it according to the following criteria:

Is each question an evaluation question?

If a question is an analysis question (e.g. ‘Does each unit include a test?’) then
you can only give the answer a 1 or a 5 on the 5-point scale which is
recommended later in this suggested procedure. However, if it is an evaluation
question (e.g. ‘To what extent are the tests likely to provide useful learning
experiences?’) then it can be graded at any point on the scale.

Does each question only ask one question?

Many criteria in published lists ask two or more questions and therefore cannot
be used in any numerical grading of the materials. For example, Grant (1987)
includes the following question which could be answered ‘Yes; No’ or ‘No; Yes’:
‘1 Is it attractive? Given the average age of your students, would they enjoy
using it?’ (p. 122). This question could be usefully rewritten as:
1 Is the book likely to be attractive to your students?
2 Is it suitable for the age of your students?
3 Are your students likely to enjoy using it?

Is each question answerable?

This might seem an obvious question but in many published lists of criteria
some questions are so large and so vague that they cannot usefully be
answered. Or sometimes they cannot be answered without reference to other
criteria, or they require expert knowledge of the evaluator.
For example:

 Is it culturally acceptable?
 Does it achieve an acceptable balance between knowledge about the
language and practice in using the language?
 Does the writer use current everyday language, and sentence structures
that follow normal word order?

Is each question free of dogma?

The questions should reflect the evaluators’ principles of language learning but
should not impose a rigid methodology as a requirement of the materials. If
they do, the materials could be dismissed without a proper appreciation of
their potential value. For example, the following examples make assumptions
about the pedagogical procedures of coursebooks which not all coursebooks
actually follow:

 Are the various stages in a teaching unit (what you would probably call
presentation, practice and production) adequately developed?
 Do the sentences gradually increase in complexity to suit the growing
reading ability of the students?

Is each question reliable in the sense that other evaluators would

interpret it in the same way?

Some terms and concepts which are commonly used in applied linguistics are
amenable to differing interpretations and are best avoided or glossed when
attempting to measure the effects of materials. For example, each of the
following questions could be interpreted in a number of ways:

 Are the materials sufficiently authentic?

 Is there an acceptable balance of skills?
 Do the activities work?
 Is each unit coherent?

Categorize The List

It is very useful to rearrange the random list of universal criteria into categories
which facilitate focus and enable generalizations to be made. An extra
advantage of doing this is that you often think of other criteria related to the
category as you are doing the categorization exercise.
Possible categories for universal criteria would be:

 Learning Principles
 Cultural Perspective
 Topic Content
 Teaching Points
 Texts
 Activities
 Methodology
 Instructions
 Design and Layout

Develop Media-Specific Criteria

These are criteria which ask questions of particular relevance to the medium
used by the materials being evaluated (e.g. criteria for books, for audio
cassettes, for videos, etc.). Examples of such criteria would be:

 Is it clear which sections the visuals refer to?

 Is the sequence of activities clearly signalled?
 Are the different voices easily distinguished?
 Do the gestures of the actors help to make the language meaningful in
realistic ways?

Develop Content-Specific Criteria

These are criteria which relate to the topics and/or teaching points of the
materials being evaluated. ‘Thus there would be a set of topic related criteria
which would be relevant to the evaluation of a business English textbook but
not to a general English coursebook; and there would be a set of criteria
relevant to a reading skills book which would not be relevant to the evaluation
of a grammar practice book and vice versa.

 Do the examples of business texts (e.g. letters, invoices, etc.) replicate l

features of real-life business practice?
 Do the reading texts represent a wide and typical sample of genres?

Develop Age-Specific Criteria

These are criteria which relate to the age of the target learners. Thus there
would be criteria which are only suitable for 5-year-olds, for 10-year-olds, for
teenagers, for young adults and for mature adults. These criteria would relate
to cognitive and affective development, to previous experience, to interests and
to wants and needs.

 Are there short, varied activities which are likely to match the attention
span of the learners?
 Is the content likely to provide an achievable challenge in relation to the
maturity level of the learners?

Develop Local Criteria

These are criteria which relate to the actual or potential environment of use.
They are questions which are not concerned with establishing the value of the
materials per se but rather with measuring the value of the materials for
particular learners in particular circumstances. It is this set of criteria which is
unique to the specific evaluation being undertaken and which is ultimately
responsible for most of the decisions made in relation to the adoption, revision
or adaptation of the materials.
Typical features of the environment which would determine this set of
materials are:

 the type(s) of institution(s);

 the resources of the institution(s);
 class size;
 the background, needs and wants of the learners;
 the background, needs and wants of the teachers;
 the language policies in operation;
 the syllabus;
 the objectives of the courses;
 the intensity and extent of the teaching time available;
 the target examinations;
 the amount of exposure to the target language outside the classroom