Materials Development for TESOL: Edinburgh textbooks in TESOL (2015)

Materials Development for TESOL: Edinburgh textbooks in TESOL  (2015)

1.     Introduction: Why Do We Need a Book about Materials Development?

2.     Principled Materials Development

·      The importance of Affective and Cognitive Change in LL Materials

·      Input and output in LL Materials

3.     Materials, Methods and Contexts

·      Pedagogy

4.     Materials, Evaluation and Adaptation

·      The need for principled evaluation

·      Materials adaptation

5.     Reconceptulising Materials for the Technological Environment

·      Materials as product vs. as process

·      Template

6.     Materials to develop reading and listening skills

7.     Materials to develop speaking and writing skills

8.     Materials for vocabulary and grammar

9.     Materials: from process to product

 “Why do we need a book about materials development”?

This first question we need to ask is, “why do we need an academic book, even a practice-oriented book, about materials development?” It could, after all, be argued that materials

 Thornbury (2000b) argues that the most important resources in the classroom are learners and teachers. He complains about teachers obsession with grammar and materials-driven lessons where the materials actually act as an obstacle between learns and teachers and bury the “inner life” of the learners.

The list of potential reasons for adaptation produced by Islam and Mares (2003) focuses heavily on learner factors:

·      To add real choice

·      To cater for all sensory learning styles

·      To provide for more learner autonomy

·      To encourage higher level cognitive skills

·      To make language input more accessible and engaging

·      Be up to date

·      Be appropriate to the learners’ level/offer an appropriate level of challenge

We want materials to

·      Arouse our learner’s interest

·      Be challenging enough

·      Make the students feel that they are having a properly planned class

·      Support and guide both the students and the teacher, and provide structure and progress (even if this is not explicit)

·      Provide a variety of experience in terms of texts

·      Be a resource that introduced and/or reinforces areas of lexis or grammar.

·      Teach new skills and strategies that our learners really need

·      Provide knowledge about other cultures

·      Guide learners to be more autonomous

·      Be flexible for other teachers to use

·      Provide teachers with sound teaching principles

What should we adapt?

1.     Language (the language of instructions, explanations, examples, the language in exercises and texts and the language learner are expected to produce)

2.     Process (forms of classroom management or interaction stated explicitly in the instructions for exercise, actives and tasks, but also the learning styles involved)

3.     Content (topic, contexts, cultural references)

4.     Level (linguistic and cognitive demands on the learner)

5.