What are Materials? Types?

● It is a generic term used by teachers ti deliver instruction. A well-planned

instructional material supports students' learning and aids success in learning. They
significantly increase their achievements. It is important to note that instructional
materials must be congruent with the contents of the lesson. They also carefully
graded so as ti make sure that they are at the level of the students who will used
them.
● Teacher’s guide, Daily lesson plan, learning log, english curriculum, workbooks,
Modules, Readers, textbooks, supplementary books.

PROCESS
● Planniing, producing/adapting and evaluating. WIthout this process, the cycle of
materials development will not be complete.

TRENDS
1. Materials allow learners to invest for themselves and discover how structures are
used in context.
2. More materials from corpus data are used in written and spoken language. The
practical use of language is emphasized.
3. More extensive series are created with fewer linguistic constraints to provoke
learners to react. Topics are engaging enough for students to use the language in
context.
4. There is an increased learning plan in engaging the learning process with the
learners.
5. There is an increased attempt to gain the affective engagement of the learners.
6. There is a movement towards the experience of spoken grammar.

Jack Richards mentions what the instructional material should serve to

learners. An instructional material:
1. Arouses the interest of the learners
2. Connects the old learning to new
3. Tells learners clearly what they are going to learn
4. Provides meaningful practice of skills
5. Strategizes to ensure students are set to attain goals
Principles of SLA Relevant to Dev’t of Materials
How well students learn a language ultimately depends more on their efforts than
on the teacher’s. Thus, any attempt to understand effective language must consider the
issue of effective learning. Four basic realities of language learning are that language is a
tool for communication, learning a language involves mastery of both knowledge and skill,
the struggle to learn a language is a battle of the heart as well as the mind, and learners
vary considerably in their preferred approaches to language learning. The language
teacher is not simply a transmitter of knowledge; like a coach, the language teacher needs
to assist students in understanding the task before them. Staying motivated, building
discipline, and learning how to pursue the task on their own.

1. A prerequisite for language acquisition is that the learners are exposed to a rich,
meaningful, and comprehensive input of language use.
2. To acquire the ability to use the language effectively the learners need a lot of
experience of the language being used in a variety of different ways for a variety of
purposes. They need to be able to understand enough of this input to gain positive
access to it and it needs to be meaningful to them (Krashen 1985).
Principles of Materials Development
1. Make sure that the materials contain a lot of spoken and written texts that provide
extensive experience of the language being used to achieve outcomes in a variety
of text types and genres about topics, themes, events, locations, etc. likely to be
meaningful to the target learners.
2. Make sure that the language the learners are exposed to is authentic in the sense
that it represents how the language is typically used.
3. Make sure that the language input is contextualized.
4. Make sure that the learners are exposed to sufficient samples of language in
authentic use to provide natural re-cycling of language items and features that
might be useful for the learners to acquire.

Principles of Language Acquisition 2

In order for the learners to maximize their exposure to language in use they need to
be engaged both affectively and cognitively in the language experience
1. Prioritize the potential for engagement by, for example, basing a unit on a text or a
task that is likely to achieve affective and cognitive engagement rather than on a
teaching point selected from a syllabus. 2
2. Make use of activities that get the learners to think about what they are reading or
listening to and to respond to it personally.
3. Make use of activities that get learners to think and feel before during and after
using the target language for communication.
Principles of Language Acquisition 3
Language learners who achieve positive affect are much more likely to achieve
communicative competence than those who do not

1. Make sure the texts and tasks are as interesting, relevant, and enjoyable as possible
to exert a positive influence on the learners’ attitudes to the language and to the
process of learning it.
2. Set achievable challenges that help to raise the learners’ self-esteem when success is
accomplished.
3. Stimulate emotive responses through the use of music, song, literature, and art etc,
through making use of controversial and provocative texts, through personalization,
and through inviting learners to articulate their feelings about a text before asking
them to analyze it.

Principles of Language Acquisition 4

L2 language learners can benefit from using those mental resources which they
typically utilize when acquiring and using their L1
1. Make use of activities that get learners to visualize and/or use inner speech before
during and after experiencing a written or spoken text.
2. Make use of activities that get learners to visualize and/or use inner speech before
during and after using language themselves.
3. Make use of activities that help the learners to reflect on their mental activity during
a task and then try to make more use of mental strategies in a similar task

Principles of Language Acquisition 5

Language learners can benefit from noticing salient features of the input.
1. Use an experiential approach in which the learners are first of all provided with an
experience that engages them holistically. From this experience, they learn
implicitly without focusing conscious attention on any particular features of the
experience. Later they re-visit and reflect on the experience and pay conscious
attention to features of it to achieve explicit learning.
2. Rather than drawing the learners’ attention to a particular feature of a text and then
providing explicit information about its use, it is much more powerful to help the
learners (preferably in collaboration) to make discoveries for themselves.
Principles of Language Acquisition 6
Learners need opportunities to use language to try to achieve communicative
purposes.

1. Provide many opportunities for the learners to produce language to achieve

intended outcomes.
2. Make sure that these output activities are designed so that the learners are using
language rather than just practicing specified features of it.
3. Design output activities so that they help learners develop their ability to
communicate fluently, accurately, appropriately, and effectively.
4. Make sure that the output activities are fully contextualized in that the learners are
responding to an authentic stimulus (e.g. a text, a need, a viewpoint, an event), that
they have specific addressees, and that they have a clear intended outcome in mind.
5. Try to ensure that opportunities for feedback are built into output activities and are
provided for the learners afterward.

DAN’S REPORT: MATERIALS EVALUATION

Materials evaluation
● Materials evaluation is a procedure that involves attempting to predict or measure
the value of the effects of language-learning materials on their users. The macro
effects on learners can include the understanding and production of language, the
acquisition of language, the development of language skills and the development of
communicative competence, whilst the micro effects can include engagement,
motivation, self reflection, self-esteem, autonomy and attitudes toward the target
language and towards the learning of it

An evaluation of language learning materials should attempt to predict or measure

whichever of the following effects are relevant to the context of learning in which the
materials are being or are going to be used:
● The surface appeal of the materials for the learners.
● The content appeal of the materials
● The credibility of the materials to learners, teachers and administrators.
● The validity of the materials.
● The reliability of the materials.
● The ability of the materials to interest both the learners and the teachers. The ability
of the materials to motivate the learners to use them and the teachers to “deliver”
them.
 ● The ability of the materials to engage the learners affectively and cognitively. The
degree of challenge presented by the materials (with achievable challenge being the
ideal aimed at).
● The relevance of the materials to the learners’ lives, needs, and wants. 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 acquisition and development (of
language, of language skills, and of communicative competence).
● The learners’ 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—see Bao (2015) for a
focus on flexibility of materials).
● The contribution made by the materials to teacher development.

Analysis
An analysis focuses on the materials themselves and it aims to be objective in its
analysis of them. It “asks questions about what the materials contain, what they aim to
achieve and what they ask learners to do” (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 10).

A rigorous analysis of a set of materials can be very useful for finding out, for
example, if:
1. anything important has been missed out of a draft manuscript;
2. the materials match the requirements of a syllabus or of a particular course;
3. the materials contain what the teachers believe they should contain; and, the
materials ask the students to do what they will have to do in an examination they are
preparing for;

Evaluation
An evaluation makes judgments about the effects of materials on their users. An
evaluation can (and should be) structured, criterion-referenced, and rigorous but it will
always be essentially subjective. (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 10)

On separating analysis from evaluation

Separating analysis from the evaluation is shared by Littlejohn (2011), who puts
forward a general framework for analyzing materials (pp. 182–198). He proposes a model,
which is sequenced as follows:
● Analysis of the target situation of use.
● Materials analysis.
 ● Match and evaluation (determining the appropriacy of the materials to the target
situation of use).
● Action

McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara (2013) offer a similar model which has two
stages: an initial one, which involves an “external evaluation that offers a brief overview of
the materials from the outside (cover, introduction, table of contents)” (p. 53) and a
subsequent one that involves a criterion-referenced “internal evaluation.”

Early Literature in Establishing Criteria

In the 1970s Tucker (1975) put forward a four-component scheme for measuring the
internal and external value of beginners’ textbooks; Davison (1976) proposed a
five-category scheme for the evaluation and selection of textbooks, and Dauod and
Celce-Murcia (1979) supplied check lists of criteria for teachers to use in evaluating
coursebooks. Candlin and Breen (1980) proposed criteria for evaluating materials and,
uniquely at the time, also proposed the use of these criteria when developing the
materials—something we strongly believe in and which we insist on when working on
materials-development projects. Rivers (1981) shared her categories and criteria for
evaluating materials; Mariani (1983) focused on evaluation for supplementation; Williams
(1983) focused on how to develop criteria for textbook evaluation, and Cunningsworth
(1984, pp. 74−79) provided the most detailed checklist so far of evaluation criteria to be
used “as an instrument for evaluating teaching material” (p. 74). Breen and Candlin (1987)
published a principled guide that was intended unusually for both evaluators and producers
of materials and then Sheldon (1987, 1988) also suggested principled criteria that could be
used for both evaluating and developing textbook material. Skierso (1991) provided
probably the most detailed and comprehensive checklist of criteria for textbooks and for
teachers’ books by combining criteria from a number of publications.

In the early literature there was no attempt to establish what evaluation criteria should and
should not do. Checklists were just presented without any rational or theoretical
justification. It was not until 2004 that Tomlinson and Masuhara (2004, p. 7) proposed the
following questions for evaluating evaluation criteria:
● “Is each question an evaluation question?” (as opposed to an analysis question
inviting a factual or yes / no answer).
● “Does each question only ask one question?” (and therefore does not include
“and”).
● “Is each question answerable?” (i.e. not so large and vague that nobody can answer
it).
● “Is each question free of dogma?” (i.e. it does not assume or impose a
methodology).
 ● “Is each question reliable in the sense that other evaluators would interpret it in the
same way

What criteria should be employed in evaluating language materials?

● No two evaluations can be the same, as the levels, needs, wants, experiences,
objectives, and out-of-class backgrounds of the learners will differ from context to
context

This is obviously true of an evaluation of the value of a coursebook being used with groups
of teenagers preparing for an examination in Thailand compared to an evaluation of the
same book being used with groups of young adults preparing for a different examination in
Peru. The main point is that it is not the materials that are being evaluated but their effect
on the people who come into contact with them (including, of course, the evaluators).

Conclusions:
The length of this chapter reflects the prominence of materials evaluation in the
literature on materials development and the fact that it is the one aspect of the field which
most concerns (and ideally involves) learners, teachers, writers, publishers and researchers.
In summary they are that:
● Evaluation needs to be systematic, rigorous and criterion referenced.
● Evaluation should be of the effects of materials on their users and not of the
materials themselves.
● Pre-use evaluation can be useful but in-use and especially post-use
evaluation is potentially more reliable and informative.
● The criteria for evaluating materials should ideally be developed prior to the
writing of the materials and should then be used to evaluate them whilst they
are being developed and after their completion.