MODULE 5.

MATERIALS FOR DEVELOPING READING AND WRITING SKILLS

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, the students should be able to:

• select appropriate materials for teaching reading and writing;

• design and/or improve (existing) contextualized and localized materials for the identified
K to 12 English competencies; and
• produce language learning materials for the teaching of reading and writing vis-a-vis the K
to 12 learning competencies.
Module Overview

This module provides an overview of the major approaches to teaching L2 reading and
writing materials such as language-based approaches, skills-based approaches, and schema-based
approaches. Also, an alternative approach to materials for teaching reading and writing is presented
in this module.

Lecture
Notes The reading behavior of L2 learners When you read the following quotation from
Auerbach and Paxton (1997), would you be able to guess the ages, levels and
nationalities of the L2 learners mentioned?
many . . . learners . . . feel they have to know all the words in a text in order to
understand it, rely heavily on the dictionary, are unable to transfer positive L1
reading strategies or positive feelings about translation, and attribute their
difficulties to a lack of English proficiency. (ibid., pp. 238–9)

Masuhara (2003) reviewed the literature on the L2 reading difficulties from the 1980s
up to 2002 and noted the striking similarities in the descriptions of unsuccessful
reading behaviors across wide varieties of readers. All these studies reveal that
reading in the L2 seems to mean almost invariably a slow and laborious decoding
process, which often results in poor comprehension and in low self-esteem.

What is remarkable is the fact that the learners in Kim and Krashen (1997), Masuhara
(2000) and Tomlinson (2011b) are proficient L1 readers and yet, even at intermediate
and advanced level in an L2, they seem to retain many of the typical reading
behaviors of unsuccessful readers. As far as language competence is concerned, they
are classified as far above the threshold level of language competence and thus the
transfer of L1 reading skills is expected to occur.

Pang (2008) investigates the studies on L2 fluent and less fluent reader characteristics
in the past 20 years, focusing on 3 dimensions: language knowledge and processing
ability, cognitive ability and metacognitive strategic competence. According to his
literature survey, what separates the two groups seem to be the abilities for automatic
and rapid word recognition, automatic syntactic parsing and semantic proposition
formation. Fluent readers have a vocabulary size of 10,000 to 100,000 and awareness
of text type and discourse organization. Fluent readers also make use of prior
knowledge and L1 skills and are good at monitoring the comprehension process and
at making conscious use of a variety of strategies effectively if they encounter
problems during the reading process.

Grabe (2009) identified four components of L2 reading fluency: automaticity,

accuracy, reading rate and prosodic structuring. The importance of automaticity in
various aspects of language processing seems to echo Pang’s survey (2008). Grabe
explains that fluent reading should not only mean rapid and automatic processing but
also accurate and appropriate assignment of meaning performed at an optimal reading
rate. What is interesting is that Grabe (2009, p. 292) notes recent recognition among
the literature of the importance of ‘prosodic phrasing and contours of the text while
reading’. According to Grabe (2009), good readers process text chunks in ways that
match structural units in continuous prose.

The stark contrast between what fluent readers are capable of and what less fluent
readers can manage makes us wonder what may be causing these persistent L2
reading problems and how reading pedagogy and materials may address these
problems.

An overview of the major approaches to teaching L2 reading materials

The reading comprehension-based approaches

Anderson (2012, p. 220) notes that ‘One concern with reading instruction materials is
that ESL/EFL reading instructional books consist of short reading passages followed
by vocabulary and comprehension tests.’ Wallace (2001) describes traditional reading
pedagogy as an approach which emphasizes ‘comprehension in the form of the
presentation of text followed by post-reading questions on the text.’ The review by
Tomlinson and Masuhara (2013) of six global coursebooks for adult learners
published from 2010–12 confirms that comprehension questions still feature
prominently in most published materials.
Headway (Soars and Soars, 2012) which has been an extremely popular series, so
much so that the current one is the fourth edition, provides classic examples of the
Reading Comprehension-Based Approach. If we consider True or False, gap-filling or
matching exercises as varieties of activities that are meant to test reading
comprehension, all the latest coursebooks reviewed in Tomlinson and Masuhara
(2013) share features of the Reading Comprehension-Based Approaches to a varied
degree.

What could the objectives of the Comprehension-Based Approaches be? Q and A,

True or False, gap-filling or matching activities are all techniques used in assessing
comprehension. How do these testing techniques nurture learners’ reading abilities?
Coursebooks do not explicitly state the objectives or value of these techniques in
terms of second language acquisition.

Williams and Moran (1989) identified three possible aims:

a. to check comprehension
b. to facilitate comprehension
c. simply to ensure that the learner reads the text

Note that (a) and (c) above seem to contribute mainly to teachers’ class management.

Teachers may say that they would like (a) ‘to check comprehension’ so that if there
are any misunderstandings, they can help the learners. In this sense, checking
comprehension may be said (b) ‘to facilitate comprehension’, whose focus appears to
be on helping learners achieve a higher level of understanding of the texts.

We might like to ask ourselves, however, in what way comprehension questions help
the learners understand the texts better. The failure to respond appropriately to
comprehension questions may tell the teacher and the learner that there might have
been some problems during the reading process but the comprehension questions do
not give information about the nature of the problems. Furthermore, comprehension
questions come after learners have read the text. If there are problems during the
comprehension process, then it is before and/or during reading that learners need
help, not afterwards. What is worse, expecting comprehension questions after
reading often nurtures an inflexible studial reading style regardless of the texts or
purpose.

The underlying assumption of the Comprehension-Based Approaches seems to be

that a text has only one meaning – one that is intended by the writer. Grabe (2009),
however, argues how readers change their reading processes according to the purpose
of reading, based on a significant number of studies in L2 reading studies and in
educational psychology. In this sense, Widdowson’s observation (1979) still seems
pertinent in that texts have potential for meaning, ‘which will vary from reader to
reader, depending upon a multitude of factors.’ Urquhart (1987) maintains that it is
impossible even for L1 proficient readers to agree completely on the meaning of a
text due to each individual’s experiences and he casts a strong doubt on the validity
of setting up the writer’s intended meaning as the readers’ target. According to his
view, what readers can achieve is ‘interpretation’ rather than ‘comprehension’. His
claim seems to accord with the research findings investigating ‘mental representation’
in cognitive psychology and neuroscience in recent years (Masuhara, 2000;
Gazzaniga et al., 2009). Mental representation roughly corresponds to the ‘meaning
of the text’ constructed in the reader’s mind. The mental representation of a reader
depends on connecting the information gained through decoded linguistic data with
the knowledge that already exists in the reader’s mind. Since each individual’s
knowledge is the result of constant conceptual reformulation through various
experiences, even simple word knowledge like ‘a dog’ would not mean the same
thing to different individuals. For example, when reading about ‘a dog’ in a text, you
might be visualizing a dog that resembles your pet whereas another person may be
thinking of a fierce dog next door. In the Reading Comprehension-Based Approaches,
comprehension questions immediately follow a text as if to signal to the learners that
they should be able to achieve accurate comprehension of all the details straight
away. Reading research, however, indicates that the reading process is gradual and
that it requires constant renegotiation between the reader and text (Grabe, 2009;
Bernhardt, 2011).

The real issue, it seems to me, is not whether achieving an ideal comprehension of the
writer’s intended meaning is possible or not but when and why we might need to
approximate our meaning closely to that intended by the writer. In L1, we vary the
degree of our interpretation according to our reading purpose.

Approximating to the reader’s intended meaning would be of vital importance when

reading legal documents or job specifications because of the potential effect on our
lives. However, we might be much more relaxed when reading novels or magazines
which allow us to enjoy idiosyncratic interpretations. The problems arise if L2
reading materials are to demand certain reading styles and the attainment of accurate
reproduction of the writer’s meaning regardless of the genre and the reading
purposes.

The language-based approaches

Verbal protocol studies of L2 learners’ reading problems give numerous examples of

how language processing, especially of vocabulary, gets in the way of achieving
comprehension. Recent literature on Reading in a second language seems to
acknowledge the vital importance of nurturing learners’ automatic language
processing ability in order to facilitate successful reading (Pang, 2008; Grabe, 2009;
Barnhardt, 2011; Maley and Prowse, 2013). Reviewing current coursebooks
(Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2013) reveals how vocabulary and grammar exercises
have a strong presence not only in the general language sections but in the reading
sections, too. Many coursebooks have a two-page reading section with a text and
activities. Pre-reading vocabulary activities seem popular, reading sections often start
with vocabulary activities related to the texts and many reading units feature short
texts used mainly for teaching grammar.

The Language-Based Approaches to reading seems to have gained support at least

twice in ELT: first in the 1950s–60s, then in the 1980s–present. The dominant view
around the 1950s and 1960s was that once learners acquired the habit of language use
through learning grammar and lexis, they would become able to read fluently (e.g.
Fries, 1963). Such behaviorist views led to reading being treated as a means of
language practice through the use of simplified texts and graded readers. Readability
studies in the 1960s showed that word difficulty and sentence length seem to provide
plausible indices for predicting text accessibility (Klare, 1974; Alderson and
Urquhart, 1984, pp. xxi–xxv). As Alderson and Urquhart (1984, p. xxii) point out,
readability studies in effect confirmed the layman’s view, ‘simple English is written
in short easy sentences with not too many long words’. It is interesting to note that a
recent evaluation of coursebooks (Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2013) detected texts
with linguistic simplification in many contemporary courses sometimes even at
upper-intermediate level.

The language-based teaching of reading was questioned when it became evident in

the 1970s that understanding the linguistic meaning of a text does not equal
understanding of the textual meaning (Goodman, 1976; Schank and Abelson, 1977;
Smith, 1978; Hymes, 1979) and we became more aware of the active role that the
reader plays in the reading process, for example, in making use of prior knowledge
and metacognitive strategies in the 1980s onwards.

Later on, strong support for the Language-Based Approaches to reading came from
eye movement studies. Adams (1994, p. 845) maintains that a text in English seems to
be read by fluent readers in ‘what is essentially a left-to-right, line-by-line, word-
byword process’. She explains that:

In general, skillful readers visually process virtually each letter of every word they
read, translating print to speech as they go. They do so whether they are reading
isolated words or meaningful connected text. They do so regardless of the ease or
difficulty of the text, regardless of its semantic, syntactic, or orthographic
predictability. There may be no more broadly or diversely replicated set of findings in
modern cognitive psychology than those that show that skillful readers visually
process nearly every letter and word of text as they read.

Research also negates the claim that skillful readers use contextual guidance to
preselect the meanings of the words they are going to read. Although it appears as if
contexts pre-select the appropriate meanings, research demonstrates that in reality
meaning is selected while the language is being processed. The speed of solving the
ambiguity of the text gives the impression of the context pre-selecting the meaning.
Note, however, the difference between this current understanding and the bottom-up
processing view in the 1970s: proponents of bottom-up processing in the 1970s (e.g.
Gough, 1972) thought the process was linear and serial from the bottom to the top.
The description of the reading process in the late 1980s–1990s, however,
hypothesizes parallel occurrence of both bottom-up and top-down operations at the
same time (e.g. Rumelhart et al., 1986; Adams, 1994). The interactive view of
reading is still widely accepted with new insights revealing the complex and dynamic
nature of the reading process (Dehaene, 2009; Grabe, 2009; Bernhardt, 2011).

The Language-Based Approach to reading appears to have regained support in

claiming that in order to read fluently the learners need general language ability and,
especially, automatic word recognition. In L2 reading research, there are verbal
protocol studies which seem to suggest that vocabulary knowledge is of primary
importance in reading and that learners are unable to pay due attention to other
linguistic aspects of texts until they have coped with vocabulary (Davis and
Bistodeau, 1993; Laufer and Goldstein, 2004). Vocabulary studies (e.g. Nation, 2006;
McCarthy et al., 2009; Schmitt, 2010) also seem to indicate that fluent reading
requires:

• fast and automatic word identification;

• extensive knowledge of the lexicon;
• the ability to attribute the most appropriate meanings to lexical items
in relation to their context and co-text.

Many current coursebooks still seem to use the Presentation, Practice, Production
Approach (PPP) to teaching grammar and vocabulary and to make use of reading
texts for language teaching (Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2013). The current PPP
Approach seems to combine the teaching of formal grammar with communication
activities. Grammar structures or rules are first presented. Then they are practiced in a
mechanical or controlled manner. Finally, freer communicative activities (sometimes
involving reading) follow.

The reasons why we learn to read in L1 may mainly be attributed to obtaining

nonlinguistic outcomes: we read for getting information to suit our different purposes
at the time of reading, for gaining pleasure and stimuli, for attaining social
advancement, etc. We read for purposes and vary the degree of how carefully we
read. L1 adults do not read a text so as to acquire extensive knowledge of, say,
hyponyms or synonyms, to practice some syntactical structure such as reduced
relative clauses or to analyze the discourse structure of a text. We might start to dread
reading if it meant being tested immediately afterwards for instant and perfect
comprehension or for displaying newly acquired linguistic knowledge. In L2,
however, reading is often taught as a means of learning language.

If L2 reading pedagogy is intended to nurture reading ability, I would argue that there
should be a clear separation between teaching reading and teaching language using
texts. Most of the reading materials try to kill two birds (language and reading) with
one stone and seem to fail to hit both targets.

Hedgecock and Ferris (2009) summarize studies which investigate the ‘threshold
level’ in reading below which the reader cannot engage meaningfully with a text.
Tomlinson (2000) recommends delaying reading at the initial stage of language
learning because the learners do not yet have enough language to read experientially.
This is interesting in that, in L1, there is a fairly clear divide between aural–oral
language acquisition and reading acquisition. When formal reading instruction begins
at school, L1 children have more or less established:

• Flexible and extensive aural/oral vocabularies

• Intuitive knowledge of English syntax

Furthermore, preschoolers may have had considerable opportunities for relaxed,

secure proto-reading experiences, such as listening to bedtime stories in which most
of the vocabulary in the text is likely to be known and the unknown can be inferred,
explained either visually or verbally in interaction with a parent or just ignored until
the preschoolers’ needs and wants arise. Such an environment resembles what
Krashen (1982) advocates as an ideal condition for language acquisition.

Compare this with how L2 learners may learn to read. In L2 reading, instruction
begins simultaneously with L2 language learning. Or more accurately, no reading
instruction per se is given but the learners are expected to read texts on the
assumption that once we learn a language system we should be able to read well.

Obviously, the important question to ask is, ‘Does pre-teaching of linguistic

knowledge help the learners to read better?’ Grabe (2009, p. 265), in summarizing
studies investigating the relationship between vocabulary and reading in both L1 and
L2, states, ‘most publications addressing vocabulary learning make strong
connections between reading and the learning of written forms of words. There are,
of course, good reasons for this connection between vocabulary and reading’.
Hedgecock and Ferris (2009) also confirm the ‘extraordinary strong statistical
relationships between reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge.’ Note
here, though, that the details of the causal link are unclear. A literature search on the
nature and directionality of the vocabulary and reading connection left Hedgecock
and Ferris (2009) to state, ‘Although the questions about the effects of vocabulary
instruction on reading development have been raised among L1 literacy
researchers......, the relationships have been “difficult to demonstrate,” and scant L2
research is currently available’ (Grabe, 2004).

It seems the awareness of the importance of automatic accessing of vocabulary has

led many coursebooks reviewed in Tomlinson and Masuhara (2013) to present
prereading vocabulary exercises so that:

• explicit pre-teaching of vocabulary can help learners acquire or recall

language knowledge;
• doing vocabulary work before reading can help learners to comprehend
the text better.

But we might like to ask the following questions:

• Can we assume that explicit teaching of vocabulary results in vocabulary
being learned?
• Are the pre-selected vocabulary items necessarily the ones that
learners will have problems recognizing during the reading of the text?
• Does language work focus the learner’s mind on language when reading,
thus reinforcing the text-bound L2 learner’s typical reading style?
• By being asked to display vocabulary knowledge before reading, are
learners with limited knowledge of vocabulary made aware of their weaknesses rather
than their strengths?
• Does pre-teaching of vocabulary deprive learners of opportunities to guess
the meaning of unknown words from the context?

With regard to syntax, Alderson and Urquhart (1984, p. 157) state that ‘the
experimental findings suggest that, at least for L1 readers, syntax only becomes a
problem when it interacts with other factors.’ Such factors could be related, for
instance, to vocabulary overload or lack of background knowledge. Davidson and
Green (1988) confirm in their reappraisal of readability studies that sentence
structures do not seem to cause major problems in L1 reading comprehension. In L2
reading research, however, the results are more mixed as to the significance of syntax
to reading. Alderson and Richards (1977) conducted multicomponential studies
investigating the relationship between reading ability and various factors such as
vocabulary and syntax. Syntax gave the lowest correlation with reading ability.

What seems to be lacking in these studies, however, is understanding of what kinds of

syntax the reading process requires. Many of the multicomponential studies
investigating the effect of learners’ syntactic ability on reading tend to measure
general syntactic ability in grammar tests and then correlate the scores with
comprehension tests.

Can we assume that if a person can successfully transform, for instance, the active to
the passive then he/she has the ability to comprehend a passage in which the passive
is used? Or that a person, for example, who cannot transform the active to the passive
cannot understand the passive when they are reading. I would agree with Adams
(1980, p. 18) in that, in reading, ‘Syntax is the primary means by which we can
specify the intended relation among words . . . not only by disambiguating the
referents of words, but also by new relationships among them.’ Likewise, when
Grabe (2009) argues for the often overlooked role that syntactic parsing plays during
the reading process, he is referring to the syntax that is crucial in forming semantic
propositions in meaning comprehension.

The Language-Based Approaches to reading pedagogy seems to hypothesize an

equation between the ability to manipulate syntactic operations outside a discourse
context (i.e. what grammar tests tend to measure) and the ability to disambiguate
syntactical patterns during the reading process. If this often unchallenged equation
proves to be invalid, then we might like to reconsider the value of explicit grammar
teaching in the reading sections of coursebooks.

The skill/strategy-based approaches

Alderson (2000, p. 110) states, ‘the notion of skills and subskills in reading is
enormously pervasive and influential, despite the lack of clear empirical justification.’
When the term ‘skill learning’ was used by the proponents of the Communicative
Approach in the 1970s, the word was often contrasted with knowledge or conceptual
learning. In knowledge learning, for example, learners learn words in the target
language consciously and verbally. In skills learning, on the other hand, learners
acquire the sensor, motor and cognitive abilities necessary for using a language in an
accurate, fluent and appropriate manner. Williams and Moran (1989, p. 223) note that
‘With respect to the terms “skill” and “strategy” . . . both research literature and
teaching materials display considerable terminological inconsistency.’ After listing
some varieties and confusions between ‘skill’ and ‘strategy’, they summarize that ‘In
principle, one may distinguish the terms by defining a skill as an acquired ability,
which has been automatized and operates largely subconsciously whereas a strategy
is a conscious procedure carried out in order to solve a problem’ (cf. Olshavsky,
1977). Researchers have tried to identify the numbers, kinds and nature of ‘skills’
(e.g. Williams and Moran, 1989; Alderson, 2000) but there are considerable
unresolved differences between their views. The kinds of skills which seem to attract
agreement among materials writers include: ‘guessing the meaning of unknown
words’, ‘inferring what is not explicitly stated in the text’ and ‘identifying the main
idea’. Williams and Moran (1989, p. 224) point out a tendency that ‘Although no two
lists of reading skills are identical, casual inspection suggests that the skills might be
grouped roughly into “language-related” skills, and “reason-related” skills’.
‘Guessing the meaning of unknown words’ seems to be a typical example of
language-related skill (lower-order skills), whereas ‘inferencing’ or ‘identifying the
main idea’ may be called a more reason-related skill (higher-order skills).

The value of teaching discrete reading skills is controversial but coursebooks

continue to provide activities designed to nurture these skills. Nuttall (1985, p. 199),
in her review of reading materials, says ‘That it is possible to promote reading skills
and strategies . . . is still largely a matter of faith, but the number of materials
produced show that it is a faith widely held.’

The notion of ‘strategy’ started to emerge in the materials of the mid-1980s. In these
materials readers are considered to be active agents who direct their own cognitive
resources in reading. Readers’ cognitive resources include knowledge of the reading
process and use of a variety of reading strategies (e.g. scanning for specific
information).

What the Skill/Strategy-Based Reading Approaches seem to share in common are:

• a view that in order to read effectively, readers need a range of skills and
strategies;
• an awareness that different readers may have different reading problems;
• a view that guided practice will help learners learn necessary skills and
strategies.

The procedures for teaching skills/strategies invariably seems to include a phase in

which explicit teaching of a specific skill/strategy takes place followed by some more
practice (e.g. Greenall and Swan, 1986; Tomlinson and Ellis, 1987).

Studies analyzing successful and unsuccessful readers through verbal protocols added
insights to the reading process and the readers’ use of effective and ineffective
strategies. Just like psychoanalysts trying to gain access to the subconscious level,
researchers used introspection of varied immediacy to tap the readers’ minds in
operation. The research suggests that successful readers are those who are aware of
the kinds of texts and the kinds of suitable strategies, and who are able to monitor and
control their own strategy use according to the particular purpose of reading
(Hosenfeld, 1984). Anderson (2012, p. 220) comments:

We have learned much over the past 30 years about how effective comprehension
strategies can be taught to improve reading comprehension. The challenge is that the
research that has been carried out on the effectiveness of reading comprehension
instruction is not making its way into the instructional materials that are used in
classrooms.

A lot of studies have been carried out to explore the usefulness of strategy instruction.
The experiments typically involve providing direct explicit instruction of a reading
strategy for a certain period of time and its effect is then measured. In L1, consistent
positive results have been reported (for recent summaries of studies see Grabe, 2009
and Hedgcock and Ferris, 2009). In L2 reading, however, studies have revealed
conflicting results. Some studies reported strategy instruction to have been effective
(e.g. Carrell et al., 1989; Kern, 1989). Others reported strategy instruction to have
fallen short of the expected results (e.g. Barnett, 1988; Kimura et al., 1993).

Reading is a complex operation which could involve many potential skills/strategies.

Each skill or strategy may involve a number of subskills and sub-strategies. Take an
example of the commonly recognized strategy of ‘guessing the meaning of an
unknown word’. According to Nation and Coady (1988), possible strategic options
include: identifying parts of speech of the word, analysing morphological components
of the word, making use of any related phrases or relative clauses in the nearby
context, analysing the relationships between the surrounding clauses and sentences,
etc. The list is far from complete and those listed are strategies related only to
vocabulary. In addition, learners might need grammar-related strategies, discourse-
related strategies, strategies solving ambiguity by inferencing, etc. The difficulty a
learner might face in reading could be any combinations of various skills/strategies.
Materials writers have to predict and choose the major ones but there is no guarantee
that their selections are the ones each individual needs.

Skills/strategies training seems to be based on an assumption that conscious, explicit

and direct teaching of strategies will eventually nurture automatic execution of
reading strategies through practice. However, Barnett (1988) points out that being
aware of the strategies does not guarantee the readers’ ability to use effective skills/
strategies at appropriate times.

Masuhara et al. (1994) argue that the constant positive results in L1 strategy teaching
may be due to the fact that these unsuccessful L1 readers are able to shift their
attention to efficient reading strategies because bottom-up processing is automatized.
High scorers on the pre-test in their studies tended to welcome the strategy training
whereas the low scorers found the extra metacognitive attention taxing to their
language processing load during the reading process. They suspect that strategy
training may cause cognitive overload and interfere with the reading process in the
case of L2 learners who still require conscious attention to bottom-up processing.
They observe that the majority of L2 learners are tackling two things at a time:
processing language and constructing meaning of the content. Strategy training
imposes a third cognitive load: monitoring the use and control of strategies. The
verbal protocol data of L2 learners revealed that they were paying more attention to
metacognitive processing than to the meaning construction which is the whole point
of reading. The low scorers’ reaction seems understandable if we take the limited
capacity of working memory into account (Grabe, 2009).

The efficacy of the Skills/Strategies Approaches solely depends on the premise that
the conscious training will eventually transfer to become subconscious skills. If a
person learns consciously how to play tennis well, will (s)he become a good tennis
player? Perhaps, if only (s)he has enough experience of playing tennis. The majority
of procedural skills are learned subconsciously just as the majority of cognitive skills
are.

The schema-based approaches

From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, researchers of Artificial Intelligence and
Cognitive Psychology devoted a large proportion of their attention to the nature and
organization of a reader’s knowledge (e.g. Minsky, 1975; Rumelhart, 1980; Schank,
1982; see also Bartlett, 1932). Their interest came from their discovery that a
computer cannot understand natural language without equipping it with extensive
knowledge of the world. There are some varieties in the terms, definitions and
functions in the relevant literature but, in sum, schema theory is a theory about
knowledge in the mind: it hypothesizes how knowledge is organized in the mind and
how it is used in processing new information. Comprehension, according to
schematists, happens when a new experience (be it sensory or linguistic) is
understood in comparison with a stereotypical version of a similar experience held in
memory. Whether we subscribe to schema theory or not (summaries of criticisms of
schema theories can be found in Alba and Hasher, 1983; Alderson, 2000), the reading
process cannot be explained without acknowledging the vital importance of the
knowledge systems in readers’ minds.

Williams and Moran (1989) point out the influence of schema theory on the
ubiquitous pre-reading activity in EFL materials in the 1980s. Typical pre-reading
activities include:

• asking learners to discuss, in pairs or in groups, their personal

experience related to the theme or the topic of the lesson;
• asking learners to consider statements, text titles, illustrations, etc.

Some materials tried to provide learners with a series of texts designed to achieve a
critical mass (Grabe, 1986) (i.e. sufficient background knowledge about a certain
theme to enable readers to achieve successful comprehension). Thus, combined with
the emphasis on situations and contexts in the Communicative Approach, teaching
materials which group texts by topics seem to have become popular and this practice
still continues to this day (Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2013).

Some researchers have investigated the significance of schemata in the L2 reading

process (Carrell, 1987; Carrell and Eisterhold, 1988). Constant results have
confirmed that activating content information plays a major role in learners’
comprehension and recall of information of a text. Carrell and Eisterhold (1988), for
example, emphasize that the lack of schemata activation is one major source of
processing difficulty with L2 learners. Hudson (1982) argues that a high degree of
background knowledge can overcome linguistic deficiencies. Carrell et al. (1989)
showed significant improvement in L2 reading comprehension after schema
instruction. Even though there are some studies which alert us to the potentially
negative effects of premature commitment to schemata (Steffenson and Joag-Dev,
1984), L2 researchers seem to agree that, if students do not have sufficient prior
knowledge, they should be given at least minimal background knowledge from which
to interpret a text (Carrell et al., 1989; Dubin and Bycina, 1991).
Comprehension, according to the schematists, happens when a new experience (be it
sensory or linguistic) is understood in comparison with a stereotypical version of a
similar experience held in memory. For example, a schema of a French restaurant
may involve subschemata of a menu, waiter, wines, starters, main course, etc. If a
particular group of students is not familiar with a French restaurant schema, should
materials writers offer pre-reading activities for all the lacking subschemata? If we
take the schematist hypothesis literally, no texts will be comprehended unless the
reader has the right and sufficient schemata. The reality is, however, that readers do
manage to understand texts even without having corresponding schematic knowledge
(Alba and Hasher, 1983).

Cook (1994) argues that authentic texts are too complex to allow readers easily to
select and apply appropriate schemata. A schema is a pre-packaged system of
stereotypical knowledge and such a fixed structure may not meet the demands
imposed by the ever-changing context we find in authentic texts. And Alderson
(2000,
p. 17) notes that ‘many psychologists and psycholinguists now question the
usefulness of schema theory to account for, rather than provide a metaphor of, the
comprehension process’. Schema theories do not explain well how the mind creates,
destroys and reorganizes schemata or how schemata are retrieved from the memory
during the comprehension process. The question remains how can we help the
learners to activate the relevant memories to achieve comprehension.

An alternative approach to materials for teaching reading

The overview of the approaches used in reading materials in the last two decades
seems to leave us with some unanswered questions regarding the universal reading
problems of L2 learners which were identified at the beginning of this chapter:

1. How can materials developers help L2 learners to tackle language problems

in reading materials?
2. How can materials developers help L2 learners to have higher self-esteem
and start enjoying reading fluently?

An alternative approach to teaching reading embodies the following principles:

Principle 1: Engaging affect should be the prime concern of reading materials

‘In the absence of interesting texts, very little is possible’, noted Williams (1986, p.
42). I would support this view very strongly in that the quality of texts should be
given far more weight in reading pedagogy and materials production. In L1 we read
because the text is worth reading. We read on because the texts are useful, interesting,
engaging, involving, important and relevant to our lives. In materials for teaching L2
reading, however, texts often seem to be selected because they yield to teaching
points: vocabulary, syntax, discourse structures, skills/strategies, etc. Sometimes,
certain texts are selected because they are easy or they fit the theme of the unit.

A much stronger argument comes from the fact that good texts work on learners’
affect, which is vital for deep processing and creates reasons and motivation to read
on. Affect is occasionally mentioned in the literature as an additional or peripheral
factor, but I would argue that the engagement of affect (e.g. interest, attitude,
emotions) should be given prime importance in reading materials production.
Mathewson (1994) makes an interesting observation on the sharp contrast between
the teachers’ positive interests in affect and the seeming lack of interest among
researchers. He compared the contents and titles in teachers’ journals against those in
research publications. Articles that deal with affect proved to be most predominant,
for example, in The Reading Teacher from 1948 to 1991 (survey results can be found
in Dillon et al., 1992). Yet, affective influences on reading do not appear to have
stimulated similar interest among researchers.

Principle 2: Listening to a text before reading it helps decrease linguistic

demands and encourages learners to focus on meaning

Masuhara (2007, 2009) points out that the established view of reading in cognitive
psychology and neuroscience that ‘. . . writing systems are in fact coded spoken
language’ (Masuhara, 2009, p. 73) seems to have been somewhat overlooked in the
literature of Applied Linguistics and reading research. Tallal (2003) emphasizes that,
‘Written language must stand on the shoulder of oral language’. During the same
interview she says, ‘. . . the brain is programmed to process the sensory world, turn
that into phonological representations and turn those into syllables, words, phrases,
and ultimately allow us to develop a written code which is the orthography or letters
that go with those sounds.’

Masuhara (2009, p. 73) argues that ‘. . . sufficient oral language proficiency is a pre-
requisite for L2 fluent reading. In L1, the initial 5 years of life is spent on aural/oral
language acquisition. Even then L1 children can only learn to read gradually with a
lot of difficulty.’

A major difficulty for L2 learners beginning to read is the fact that reading requires
learners to decode visual stimuli, chunk syntactic and semantic units, extract meaning
from the text and integrate it with their relevant memories in order to create the
overall meaning of the text. A teacher reading the text to the students can make it
accessible to the learners by:

• taking away the cognitive load of processing scripts and sounds at

the same time;
• chunking a text into meaningful and manageable lengths to help
the learners gradually interpret the meaning;
• adding prosodic features such as prominence that mark
situationally informative pragmatic meaning;
• achieving impact through reading a text with suitable affect (e.g.
humour, anger).

Principle 3: Reading comprehension means creating multidimensional Mental

Representation in the Reader’s Mind

In this principle, do the three brief experiments:

Experiment 1. Read the following definition of the Japanese word ‘sho’: ‘a wind
instrument made of groups of slim and void bamboo stems. Used in traditional
Japanese music’. Reflect upon what effect the definition of the word had on you.

Experiment 2. Read the following definition of a Japanese fruit: ‘a round fruit which
grows on a tree and which has a smooth red, yellow or green skin and firm white
flesh inside it’. What can this fruit be?

Experiment 3. Imagine an apple. What has happened in your minds?

The first and second experiments are what we call uni-dimensional processing: you
extract the meaning from linguistic code. For the first experiment using the word
‘sho’, not many readers would have previous direct or even indirect experience of the
instrument. Lack of relevant knowledge might have left a very unsettling feeling
regarding what the instrument may look like or what kind of sounds it may produce.

The second experiment is slightly more tangible if the association is made between
the definition and the memory of an apple. Still, linguistic definition might have left
some feeling that you may be wrong. We would predict that the third experiment with
a word ‘apple’ sparked off all sorts of reactions in your minds. Visions of its color,
size and appearance. Texture. Smell. Associated personal memories. Cognitive
memory such as ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’. This experience that the
word ‘apple’ induced in your minds is what we call multidimensional mental
representation.

Principle 4: Materials should help learners experience the text first before they
draw their attention to its language

In L1 reading we focus on meaning. We believe that reading materials should offer

activities that help the learners focus on the content of the text and achieve personal
experience of it through multidimensional representation. By experiencing the text,
learners are able to:

• activate the sensory, motor, emotional, cognitive areas of their brain;

• self-project and self-invest in the activities which lead to deeper processing
and to fuller engagement;
• have time to make errors and adjustments in connecting verbal codes with non-
verbal mental representations;
• have time to talk to themselves in their L1;
• have time to develop inner speech in the L2 before publicly speaking out or
writing.
The most important principle in providing the experience of the text is to sequence
the activities so that the learners can experience the text first before analysing it.
Regardless of our developmental stage, we never stop processing the L1 in
multidimensional ways, but somehow L2 learners tend to be fed on a diet of
unidimensional, linguistic, analytical approaches to language from beginners’ level to
advanced. No wonder L2 learners are not so successful in achieving multidimensional
mental representation when they use the L2.

MATERIALS FOR DEVELOPING WRITING SKILLS

It is difficult to imagine how we might teach students to develop their writing skills
without using materials of some kind. Defining materials broadly as anything that can
help facilitate the learning of language, we can see that they not only include paper
and electronic resources, but also audio and visual aids, real objects and performance.
Together with teaching methodologies, materials represent the interface between
teaching and learning, the point at which needs, objectives and syllabuses are made
tangible for both teachers and students. They provide most of the input and language
exposure that learners receive in the classroom and are indispensable to how teachers
stimulate, model and support writing. The choice of materials available to teachers is
almost infinite, ranging from YouTube clips to research articles, but their
effectiveness ultimately depends on the role that they are required to play in the
instructional process and on the extent they relate to the learning needs of students.
This chapter will consider both these issues and then go on to discuss using textbook
and internet materials and ways to develop materials.

The roles of writing materials

Materials are used to provide a stimulus to writing, to assist students towards

understanding the language they need to write effectively and to help teachers with
ideas for organizing lesson activities. In many contexts, moreover, language materials
may be the only opportunities students have to study target texts.

1. Models: Sample text exemplars of rhetorical forms and structures of target genres.

2. Language scaffolding: Sources of language examples for discussion, analysis,

exercises, etc.
3. Reference: Online or paper-based information, explanations and examples of
relevant grammatical, rhetorical or stylistic forms.
4. Stimulus: Sources which stimulate writing. Usually paper or internet texts, but can
include video, graphic or audio material or items of realia.

Models are used to present good examples of a genre and illustrate its particular
features. Representative samples of the target text can be analysed, compared and
manipulated in order to sensitize students to the way they are organized and the kind
of language that we typically find in them. Becoming familiar with good models can
encourage and guide learners to explore the key lexical, grammatical and rhetorical
features of a text and to use this knowledge to construct their own examples of the
genre. The key idea of using models, then, is that writing instruction will be more
successful if students are aware of what target texts look like, providing sufficient
numbers of exemplars to demonstrate possible variation and avoid mindless
imitation.

Typically, students examine several examples of a particular genre to identify its

structure and the ways meanings are expressed, and to explore the variations which
are possible. Materials used as models thus help teachers to increase students’
awareness of how texts are organized and how purposes are realized as they work
towards their independent creation of the genre. As far as possible the texts selected
should be both relevant to the students, representing the genres they will have to write
in their target contexts, and authentic, created to be used in real-world contexts rather
than in classrooms. So chemistry students, for example, would need to study reports
of actual lab experiments rather than articles in the New Scientist if they want to
eventually produce this genre successfully. Even fairly elementary learners can study
authentic texts and identify recurring features, then be taught to manipulate and then
reproduce these features themselves. An effective way of making models relevant to
learners is to distribute and analyze exemplary samples of student writing, collected
from previous courses.

Materials which scaffold learners’ understandings of language provide opportunities

for discussion, guided writing, analysis and manipulation of salient structures and
vocabulary. Ideally these materials should provide a variety of texts and sources to
involve students in thinking about and using the language while supporting their
evolving control of a particular genre. Materials which assist learners towards
producing accurate sentences and cohesive texts include familiar staples of the
grammar class such as sentence completion, text reorganization, parallel writing, gap-
filling, jigsaw texts and so on. This does not mean that writing materials are simply
grammar materials in disguise. Writing instruction necessarily means attending to
grammar, but this is not the traditional autonomous grammar – a system of rules
independent of contexts and users. The grammar taught in writing classes should be
selected in a top-down way, derived from the genre that students are learning to write.

Materials which develop an understanding of grammar thus concern how meanings

can be codified in distinct and recognizable ways, shifting writing from the implicit
and hidden to the conscious and explicit. It is an approach which:

first considers how a text is structured and organized at the level of the whole text in
relation to its purpose, audience and message. It then considers how all parts of the
text, such as paragraphs and sentences, are structured, organized and coded so as to
make the text effective as written communication. (Knapp and Watkins, 1994, p. 8)

Scaffolding materials therefore recognize that grammar is a resource for producing

texts and are based on the principle that an awareness of texts facilitates writing
development. It is important to note then, that the most effective language exercises
focus on the features of the genre under consideration to help students create
meanings for particular readers and contexts. Thus a narrative would require students
to have some control of nouns and pronouns to identify people, animals or things and
of action verbs, past tense and conjunctions to sequence events. Explanations, on the
other hand, are usually written in the simple present tense using chronological and/or
casual conjunctions and ‘action’ verbs.

Reference materials, unlike those used for modelling and scaffolding, concern
knowledge rather than practice. This category includes grammars, dictionaries,
reference manuals and style guides, but they all function to support the learner’s
understanding of writing through explanations, examples and advice. This type of
support is particularly useful to learners engaged in self-study with little class contact.
A great deal of well-organized and self-explanatory information, particularly on the
conventions of academic writing can be found on the Online Writing Labs (OWLs) of
universities. Dictionaries such as the corpus-informed Cobuild Advanced (www.
mycobuild.com/free-search.aspx) and encyclopaedia like the ubiquitous Wikipedia
with over 4 million articles in English (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)
are also useful resources. The advice in many reference books tends, however, to be
idiosyncratic, intuitive and prescriptive and should be treated with caution (Hyland,
1998). Many students rely heavily on bilingual dictionaries or electronic translators
and on the thesaurus, grammar checker and dictionary components of their word
processor. These may well provide what the student is looking for, but fail to give
sufficient information about grammatical context, appropriacy and connotation.
Advice and practice in how to use these tools can have enormous benefits for
learners.

Finally, stimulus materials are commonly used to involve learners in thinking about
and using language by provoking ideas, encouraging connections and developing
topics in ways that allow them to articulate their thoughts. Such materials provide
content schemata and a reason to communicate, stimulating creativity, planning and
engagement with others. They include the full range of media and the internet is a
rich source, but generally, the more detailed and explicit the material, the greater
support it offers learners. So, a lecture recording or a flowchart can provide relatively
unambiguous and structured ways of stimulating language use. In contrast, material
which is open to numerous interpretations, such as a collection of divergent views on
a topic, poems or Lego bricks used to symbolize real objects, allows room for
students to exercise their creativity and imagination in their responses. The main
sources of stimulus for writing are texts themselves and teachers often select short
stories, poems, magazine articles, agony letters and so on as a way of introducing a
topic for discussion and brainstorming ideas for an essay on a similar theme.

Selecting writing materials

Any ELT course starts with two questions: ‘what is the proficiency of these students
and why are they learning English?’ and it is these questions which help focus the
course and make it relevant for learners. The first question ensures that we start
where the students are now and the second guides the direction we go in by taking the
world outside the language classroom into account. So while materials need to be at
an appropriate level, it is equally important that they look beyond instruction in
general
aspects of grammar and vocabulary to prepare students for the texts they need to
write in their social, academic or workplace contexts. This means conducting a needs
analysis of both the present situation and the target situation (Dudley-Evans and St
John, 1998), gathering information about learners’ current proficiencies and
ambitions and the linguistic skills and knowledge they need to perform competently
in the real world.

It is this second aspect of needs that teachers may be less familiar with. Because it
relates to communication needs rather than learning needs it compels the language
teacher to understand not only their students but the texts they need to write. This
may not always be easy to identify for younger learners, but where it is possible, it is
important to ensure that the writing materials we provide students with help them
towards an understanding of those they will find in target contexts. This principally
means becoming familiar with the key features of those texts and the skills needed to
create them, and then translating these into appropriate materials.

Selecting relevant texts is a key consideration as materials need to assist learners

towards the ability to write in the genres that have been identified. Where students’
writing needs are related to particular genres used in specific target contexts, then
teachers need to find such texts as authentic models. Students typically do not have to
write newspaper articles, magazine features or textbook chapters and, while these
genres may offer excellent sources of stimulus and content, they provide poor target
models. We also need to consider how texts are related to other texts in order to plan
a learning sequence of text types which scaffold learner progress, ensuring that
novice writers will move from what is easy to what is difficult and from what is
known to what is unknown. One way to proceed here is to determine the broad family
of text- types that students should work with, as this enables us to establish the kinds
of language and skills that students require to complete different assignments.
Knowledge of these kinds of differences allows teachers to see what students are able
to do and what they need to learn.

Another consideration is the authenticity of materials: how far teachers should use
unedited real-world language materials or texts which are simplified, modified or
otherwise created to exemplify particular features for teaching purposes. Clearly there
are important reasons for selecting authentic texts as genre models. The kinds of texts
that students will need to create in their target contexts cannot be easily imitated for
pedagogic purposes as simplifying a text. Altering its syntax and lexis is also likely to
distort features such as cohesion, coherence and rhetorical organization. Students may
then fail to see how the elements of a text work together to form text structure and
also miss the considerable information texts carry about those who write them, their
relationship to readers and the community in which they are written. It is also true,
however, that many authentic texts make poor models, may be difficult to obtain or
may require considerable effort by the teacher before they can be exploited
effectively in the classroom. The problem is to ensure that students get good writing
models with material that is not so far beyond them that they become disheartened.

The issue of what students are asked to do with these authentic materials raises the
problem of authentic use, as selecting real texts does not guarantee that they are used
in ways that reflect their original communicative purpose. Once we begin to study
them for writing tasks, then poems, letters, memos, reports, editorials and so on
become artefacts of the classroom rather than communicative resources. As a result,
many teachers feel there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using created materials,
especially at lower levels of language proficiency where students need the guidance
and support of controlled input. In fact, many writing courses employ both authentic
and created materials and the choice largely depends on the pedagogic purpose we
want the materials to serve. What will students do with the materials? What do we
want them to learn? The need for authenticity is less pressing when we move away
from models to materials which will stimulate writing, practice language items,
introduce content, and highlight features of target texts, all of which may actually be
more effective than real texts. The bottom line is that our materials should not
mislead students about the nature of writing.

Textbooks as writing materials

A common source of materials for writing classes is from commercial textbooks.

Many teachers rely heavily on them as a source of ideas for course structure, practice
activities and language models – dipping into them even when they are not used as
set texts. They can also provide support for novice teachers, reassuring them that they
are at least covering what someone else thinks are the important aspects of writing in
a logical sequence and following tried and trusted principles of teaching. These are
considerable advantages, but textbooks also need to be treated with caution: teaching
writing is primarily a local and complex endeavor which defies being packaged into a
single textbook.

It would, of course, be unreasonable to expect textbook writers, constrained by their

publishers and the fact they are writing for a broad and amorphous market, to produce
materials exactly suited to our local requirements. Their authors have no idea of who
our students are, their difficulties and target needs, nor the peculiarities of our local
teaching context. But scrutiny of a dozen widely used writing textbooks on my shelf
reveals a number of common deficiencies. We find cultural and social biases in the
readings, ad hoc grammar explanations poorly related to particular genres, vagueness
about target users’ proficiencies or backgrounds, lack of specificity about target
needs, an over-reliance on writing themes addressing personal experience, obsession
with a single composing process, and invented and misleading text models. Most
disturbingly, there is often little recognition given to the teaching implications of
current writing and genre research and so textbooks often fail to reflect the ways
writers actually use language to communicate in real situations (Hyland, 2006).

If teachers choose (or are compelled) to use a textbook, it is important they are clear
about what they want it to do and to be realistic in what they expect it to offer. The
fact that publishers must target a mass audience to make a profit considerably
undermines the value of even the best books, but a textbook should not be rejected
simply because it does not meet all our specific instructional needs. Preparing new
materials from scratch for every course is an impractical ideal and it is far more time
and cost-effective to be creative with what is available. Often a book may be useful if
we supplement omissions or adapt activities to suit our particular circumstances and
the process of reflecting on what gaps exist between what students need and what the
textbook offers can be productive in course design and materials development. We
can, in fact, identify five ways of adapting materials, although in practice they shade
into each other:

• Adding: supplementing what the textbook offers with extra

readings, tasks or exercises.
• Deleting: omitting repetitive, irrelevant, potentially unhelpful or difficult
items.
• Modifying: rewriting rubrics, examples, activities or explanations
to improve relevance, impact or clarity.
• Simplifying: rewriting to reduce the difficulty of tasks, explanations
or instructions.
• Reordering: changing the sequence of units or activities to fit
more coherently with course goals.

Clearly, modifying textbooks to make them more useful materials in our classes is an
important skill for all writing teachers as it not only improves the resources available
to students but also acts as a form of professional development. Teaching is largely a
process of transforming content knowledge into pedagogically effective forms, and
this is most in evidence when teachers are considering both their learners and their
profession in modifying and creating materials.

The internet and writing materials

The internet has been credited with offering teachers a number of advantages (e.g.
Zhao, 2005), but perhaps among the most relevant for writing teachers are that it:

1. offers access to a massive supply of authentic print, image and video materials
2. provides opportunities for student written communication (with
classmates and beyond)
3. offers practice in new genres and writing processes
4. encourages collaborative research and writing projects
5. generates immediate automated feedback and evaluative comments
6. offers students as-you-write computer-based grammar and spell checkers
7. provides student with access to dictionaries, corpora and reference aids
as they write
8. enables teachers to manage learning websites and to collect activities
and readings together with blogs, assignments, etc. and to track and
analyze student errors and behaviors
9. Facilitates opportunities for students to publish their work to a wider audience.

The internet is obviously an excellent source of materials to develop writing skills

and is probably now used more by teachers than textbooks. Sites such as Dave’s
Internet Café (www.eslcafe.com) and BBC English
(www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/) have discussion groups and writing
exercises for L2 students. While these sites offer ideas for exercises, assignments and
discussions and are places students can be directed for out-of-class activities,
materials for writing are more scarce online. The internet, however, does extend the
teacher’s source of advice beyond his or her immediate colleagues through discussion
lists and bulletin boards where teachers (or students) can exchange ideas, get
information, discuss problems with others by simply registering and posting a
message. Two active ones are Writing Centers’ Online Discussion Community
(lists.uwosh.edu/mailman/listinfo/wcenter) and WPA-L: Writing Program
Administration (www.wpacouncil.org/wpa-l).

There are also many sites specifically dedicated to writing. There are, for example,
several thousand On-Line writing Labs (OWLs) which offer exercises on grammar
and mechanics, teaching tips and advice on style, genre and writing processes. The
OWL at Purdue (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/) is one of the best and Angelfire
offers teachers useful resources for steps in the process of writing
(www.angelfire.com/ wi/writingprocess/). The Online Resources for Writers site
(http://webster.commnet. edu/writing/writing.htm) provides a list of useful sites.
Other sites support writing in various ways, such as the Using English website
(www.usingenglish.com/) which allows students or teachers to upload a text and
receive statistics about it, including a count of the unique words, the average number
of words per sentence, the lexical density and the Gunning Fog readability index.
ESL Gold (www.eslgold.com/writing. html) provides lessons and ideas for teaching
composing, organizing, revising and editing essays from a process perspective.

The internet also provides a means for teachers to manage their materials and present
them together as a coherent sequence of linked readings and activities to support
students’ writing development. Many teachers use commercial course management
systems such as Blackboard or Moodle to create tasks and wikis, to display their
course materials, readings and messages in one place, to receive course assignments
and to encourage students to engage with each other through the site. Increasingly,
however, teachers are recognizing the value of supporting students to develop and
publish their own websites or manage their own blogs so they can develop online
literacy skills (Bloch, 2008). Here the internet furnishes its own learning materials in
the form of the specialized genres of the web and the particular writing skills they
demand.

Much of the social online writing done by students is in chat rooms, emails and blogs,
some of which resemble written conversations, with different conventions and
constraints to more traditional kinds of academic writing. But online composing not
only involves working in new genres, but requires new process skills and new ways
of collaborating in writing. Writing is often no longer a matter of a single individual
creating a linear, print text and even when writing alone students are able to seek help
through the internet from their teacher, from their classmates and from unknown
others in far locations. The availability of aids such as online spell-checkers, grammar
checkers and thesauruses together with programmes that give rich feedback on the
nature of writing errors such as Correct Grammar, Grammatik and Right Writer,
require training and practice. This is also true of the ability to search effectively,
select reliable sources and use the graphics, sound and video clips of multimedia
dictionaries. Being able to recognize these affordances, handle these tools and craft
these genres effectively requires considerable practice, as does the ability to identify
the pros and cons of different semiotic modes and the skill to combine these in
effective ways. Teachers can use the internet as a material to develop these
competencies.

Perhaps most importantly, the internet is a source of authentic text material and of a
growing number of free, searchable online corpora which can be used for exploring
actual uses of language and written genres. Authentic materials include audio
materials, such as podcasts of anything from short stories to political commentary,
radio broadcasts and plays; visual materials such as video clips, photographs,
paintings, etc.; and textual materials such as newspaper articles, movie reviews,
sports reports, obituary columns, tourist information brochures, etc.

There is a massive array of excellent free-to-view online newspapers (e.g. www.

guardian.co.uk/ and www.nytimes.com/), and magazines (e.g. www.economist.com.
hk/, www.newscientist.com/ and www.filmjournal.com/) which are a great source of
textual and visual stimulus material and genre examples. A reasonably
comprehensive list can be found at www.world-newspapers.com/. There is also an
abundance of reports of various kinds from coastal erosion
(www.eurosion.org/reports- online/reports.html) to police incidents
(www.cityofmadison.com/incidentReports/) and good examples of reviews
(www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews and www.consumerreports.
org/cro/index.htm). These sources not only provide material for models and analysis,
but enable teachers to raise students awareness of their key features through various
noticing and consciousness-raising activities, a ‘top-down’ approach to understanding
language which encourages students to see grammatical features as ‘the on-line
processing component of discourse’ (Rutherford, 1987, p. 104).

Finally, corpora can be used as materials for developing students’ writing, particularly
at more advanced levels, by providing evidence of use and how a particular
vocabulary item regularly co-occurs with other items. Corpora can be treated as
reference tools to be consulted for examples when problems arise while writing. An
example of this is WordPilot, which allows students to call up a concordance of a
word while they are writing in their word-processor (Hyland, 2009). Alternatively,
they can be used by students as research tools to be systematically investigated as a
means of gaining greater awareness of a particular genre, searching for personal
pronouns, hedges or particular verb forms, for example. Research approaches
presuppose considerable motivation and a curiosity about language which is often
lacking, so there is a danger that some students will be bored by an over-exposure to
concordance lines. Teachers have therefore tended to guide student searches to
features which are typical in target genres using search tasks, gap fill and other
methods (e.g. Flowerdew, 2012; Hyland, 2013). Examples of free, online searchable
corpora are the VLC Webconcordancer (http://vlc.polyu.edu.hk/concordance/) and
Word Neighbours (http://wordneighbors.ust. hk/). An excellent source of academic
essays is the British Academic Written English corpus
(www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/collect/bawe/ ).

It is clear that the internet is able to contribute a great deal to the writing teacher’s
efforts to provide a range of materials to model, scaffold and stimulate writing as well
as offer advice and examples of language use and opportunities for students to
develop new skills.

Creating writing materials

Designing new writing materials can be an extremely satisfying activity. It not only
offers students a more tailored learning experience but also demonstrates a
professional competence and perhaps fulfils a creative need in teachers. But materials
development is also typically an intensive and time-consuming process as producing
just 1 hour of good learning materials from authentic texts can consume at least 15
hours of a teacher’s time (Dudley-Evans and St John, 1998). This is a good reason to
lean heavily on existing materials as a source of ideas.

It is also a good reason to consider forming and participating in materials writing

teams, with two or three teachers sharing responsibilities for all aspects of the project.
As many others have noted (e.g. Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2010; Tomlinson, 2011),
this kind of team-work can help teachers inspire each other with ideas, better relate
their materials to learners and suggest useful improvements to each other’s materials.
Team writing can involve individuals in creating separate units of work or in
collaborating on finding texts, developing language and content exercises and writing
tasks. This is particularly important if there is an absence of literature on which to
base genre descriptions and some text analyses needs to be done. The advantages of
working in teams can be considerable, not only because combining expertise creates a
greater potential for a more diverse and higher-quality final product, but also because
collaboration can reduce the amount of effort, time and frustration invested in the
process. This is particularly the case if teachers are creating online materials as this
can be extremely time-consuming and requires some expertise in the selection,
combination, organization, cross-referencing and hyper-linking of a number of
textual, visual and audio elements. Like many other internet documents, the
collaboration needed in materials design means there is no longer a clear sense of
individual authorship and ownership of texts.

The processes of creating new materials and modifying existing ones are very similar,
and here Hutchison and Waters (1987) framework for materials design is a useful
guide for teachers. This comprises four key components: input, content, language and
a task. This model reflects the instructional roles of materials for writing discussed in
the beginning part and emphasizes the integration of key elements in materials
design. It also reflects the distinction originally made by Breen, Candlin, and Waters
(1979) between content materials as sources of information and data and process
materials that act as frameworks within which learners can use their communicative
abilities. Materials lead to a task, and the resources of language and content that
students need to successfully complete this task are supplied by the input. Input is
crucial as students cannot learn to communicate effectively in writing if they are
simply given a topic and asked to write. While they need to have something to write
about, they also need to know how to generate and draft ideas, and to have sufficient
language and genre knowledge to perform the task. The materials students are given
must guide them towards this, and as a result materials development, whether this
means creating new materials or adapting existing resources, is likely to begin by
noticing the absence of one or more of these elements.

A model of materials design

• Input: Typically, this is a paper or electronic text in the writing class,

although it may be a dialogue, video, picture or any communication data. This
provides at least one of the following:
- A stimulus for thought, discussion and writing
- New language items or the re-presentation of earlier items
- A context and a purpose for writing
- Genre models and exemplars of target texts
- Spur to the use of writing process skills such as pre-writing, drafting, editing,
etc.
- Opportunities to process information
- Opportunities for learners to use and build on prior knowledge
• Content Focus: topics, situations and information to generate
meaningful communication
• Language Focus: Should involve opportunities for analyses of texts and for
students to integrate new knowledge into the writing task.
• Task: Materials should lead towards a communicative task, in which learners
use the content and language of the unit, and ultimately to a writing assignment.

Jolly and Bolitho (2011, p. 112) suggest that materials design begins by identifying a
gap, a need for materials because the existing coursebook fails to meet a learning
outcome of the course or because the students need further practice in a particular
aspect of writing. They then state that the teacher needs to explore this area to gain a
better understanding of the particular skill or feature involved, perhaps consulting
reference materials, corpora, colleagues, specialist informants, text models or other
sources. A suitable input source, such as a text or video clip, is then needed and tasks
developed to exploit this input in a meaningful way, ensuring that the activities are
realistic, that they work well with the text, that they relate to target needs and learner
interests, and that tasks are clearly explained. The materials then need to be produced
for student use and we should not underestimate the importance of their physical
appearance. Attractively presented materials demonstrate to students the interest the
teacher has invested in them and are likely to possess greater face validity,
encouraging students to engage with the activities. Following production, materials
are then used in class and finally evaluated for their success in meeting the identified
need.

Having chosen a suitable input text, the teacher needs to decide how to best use it. A
naturally occurring text, for instance, might be presented as a model to highlight the
lexico-grammatical features and typical structure of a particular genre, beginning
with questions which encourage students to notice what they may have previously
ignored.

For example:

• How is the text laid out? Are there headings, diagrams, etc.?
• How does the text open or close?
• What tense is it mainly written in?
• Does the writer refer to him or herself? How?
• What are the typical thematic patterns?

Alternatively, the teacher might want students to explore the context of the text:

• Who is the text written for?

• Why was it written?
• What is the tone? (Formal or informal? Personal or impersonal? Etc.)
• What is the relationship between the writer and the intended reader?
• What other texts does it assume you have a knowledge of?

On the other hand, the input material might be better suited to building content
schemata and initiating writing through extensive reading and group discussion. Here
the teacher is more likely to develop questions to aid comprehension of the passage
and reflection on its personal meaning to the students. The objective is to encourage
reflection and engagement so that students might see the texts as relevant to their own
lives and to unlock the desire to express this relevance. Some initial questions might
focus on the following aspects of the text:

• What is the text about?

• Who can write such a text? To whom?
• What knowledge does it assume?
• Have you had a personal experience similar to this?
• Have you seen a text like this before? Where? Have you written such a
 text?
• What shared understandings are implied in the text?

While exploiting texts is important, materials are likely to be needed for language
exercises, to give students more information about a language point or to furnish data
for a research project.

Following the discussion and deconstruction of a representative model, scaffolding

materials are needed to develop students’ understanding of a genre and their ability to
construct texts of their own. Materials here offer students guided, teacher-supported
practice in the genre through tasks which focus on particular stages or features of the
text. One popular method is to provide students with a set of jumbled paragraphs
which they have to reconstruct into a text by identifying the salient move structures.
The Problem-Solution pattern is an excellent candidate for this kind of activity, or
helping students construct a literature review by ordering material from general to
specific (Flowerdew, 2000). Materials which encourage students to compare different
texts are also often helpful for raising awareness of language features (e.g. Hyland,
2008), looking at how events are discussed in recounts and reports, for example, or
using students’ own writings as materials in mixed genre portfolios where students
collect together the texts they have written in different genres over a course with a
commentary on each one which addresses their differences and similarities (Johns,
1997).

Conclusion It can be noted that L2 learners share a very similar text-bound inefficient way of reading.
These L2 learners regardless of age, levels or nationality share one common factor: they
were taught using the coursebooks that were produced using the four major approaches
evaluated in this chapter. The learners have received language lessons, skills/strategies
lessons, learned the importance of activating the schema and have been tested with
comprehension questions. Learners do have language problems, but it is not so much
extensive knowledge of the vocabulary or syntax that they need, what they lack is the fun
and involving experience of connecting the language with multidimensional mental
representation. Moreover, this module has provided a practical introduction to the role and
sources of materials in the writing class and some steps in designing them. It has emphasized
the importance of matching materials to the proficiency and target needs of learners and the
value of providing students with varied material from a range of sources. Essentially,
materials should contribute towards students’ understanding of a target genre (its purpose,
context, structure and main features) or provide opportunities to practice one or more aspects
of the writing process (pre-writing, drafting, revising and editing). In other words, the
activities that are devised from a selected text should be carefully planned to lead to the
syllabus goals.

Online
References
Mozayan, M. (2015). Materials to develop microskills and macroskills: Are there any
principles? ELT Voices. Retrieved at
http://eltvoices.in/Volume5/Issue_6/EVI_56_1.pdf

Poetsch, S. (2016). Teaching language: Macro skills. Retrieved at

https://www.indigoz.com.au/language/teachmacro.html

Tomlinson, B. (2013). Developing materials for language teaching. Bloomsbury

Publishing Plc Retrieved at
https://www.academia.edu/36454579/Developing_Materials_for_Language_Teaching