Chapter Title: Using the real

Book Title: Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

Book Author(s): Ian McGrath
Published by: Edinburgh University Press

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Chapter 6

Using the real

Conditions for language learning – The nature of authenticity: authentic texts;

‘the cult of authenticity’; criteria for the selection of authentic texts; text-­types;
text selection and teaching purpose; principles; exercise-­types – Tasks: authen-
tic and pedagogic tasks; spoken communication activities – Authenticity and
­difficulty: grading text and task; task difficulty – A focus on language: course-
book language; concordances – Exploiting the Internet and mobile technology:
functions of technology and roles of teachers; delivery of course content; facilitat-
ing learner access to other language learning materials; facilitating interaction;
feedback – Dissemination, support, training: materials sharing; professional
development

1 CONDITIONS FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING

In the previous chapter, the argument was put forward that teachers should prepare
their own supplementary materials in the following circumstances:
• the coursebook does not fully meet the specific needs of the learner group
• no suitable published supplementary materials are available (or these cannot be
copied or bought).
That chapter dealt with the preparation of supplementary exercise material.
This chapter is principally about texts, spoken and written. It thus not only has
a different focus from the previous chapter, it is also intended to be relevant both
to teachers who base their teaching on a coursebook and to those for whom that
is either not the preferred option or not an option at all. One of the assumptions
underlying this chapter is that teachers who through necessity or choice use a
coursebook will sometimes wish to supplement the book in other ways, for instance
by providing a greater variety of texts, or by introducing authentic texts or tasks if
these are not included in the coursebook; and that teachers who do not use a course-
book will nevertheless need to source texts and think about how best to use them
for the benefit of learners.
Also underlying this chapter is the belief that language learning (in the first and
additional languages) is facilitated by four interrelated conditions. The first of these

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100   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

conditions is exposure to suitable samples of the language in sufficient quantity

(suitability being a matter of quality as well as appropriateness to the learner).
The second is opportunities for relevant practice (receptive as well as productive),
that is, engagement with language samples and other language users. The third is
motivation, which may exist independently of conditions 1 and 2 but may also be
stimulated by these. And the fourth is feedback – not necessarily in the form of
error correction, but certainly a response indicating whether or not one has been
understood. By providing opportunities for learners to interact with real materi-
als, create materials and communicate with others about those materials, and by
structuring that experience so that feedback is available, we may be able to do more
than just establish a fertile environment for classroom learning. We can also hope
that out of these conditions springs the motivation for learners to want to carry on
­communicating and learning out of class.
Of course, instruction – however this is delivered – is at the heart of institutional
learning, and the point was made in Chapter 1 that this is one of the functions
of language learning materials, other potential functions suggested by Tomlinson
(2001) being elicitative, exploratory and experiential. Coursebooks are designed to
instruct and to elicit language from learners, typically in the form of controlled or
freer ‘practice’, though whether the practice provided fully meets the specification
above (relevant practice, receptive and productive engagement with language sam-
ples and other language users) will be a matter of degree. Where coursebooks have
tended to fall down most obviously is in relation to the exploratory and experiential
functions (Tomlinson et al. 2001; Masuhara et al. 2008): most have not encouraged
exploration (inductive/discovery learning) and/or provided enough experience in
the form of exposure to extended and genuine samples of the language. There are,
however, welcome signs of change. As we saw in Chapter 5, some published materi-
als do include inductive approaches to awareness raising; and publishers have been
resourceful in extending the range of materials available to learners through dedi-
cated websites. As far as the provision of authentic texts is concerned, Cengage’s link
with National Geographic Learning is of particular interest: this has resulted in the
Pathways series (Tarver Chase 2013) and the Life series (Hughes et al. 2015), both
of which make use of National Geographic videos and images, while Cengage’s 21st
Century Reading series (Longshaw and Blass 2015) exploits authentic speech in the
form of TED talks (see [Link]).
This chapter suggests a number of ways in which teachers can supplement,
improve upon or exploit what is available to them. Sections 2 and 3 are concerned
with the provision of materials that will engage learners in experiencing and inter-
acting with texts that are relevant to their needs and interests. Section 2 considers
the concept of authenticity, and offers guidance in the selection of texts, and section
3 deals with the preparation of tasks. Section 4 discusses authenticity and difficulty.
For teachers who design most of their own material these will obviously be central
concerns. With language exploration in mind, section 5 focuses more narrowly on
the exploitation of concordance data (i.e. samples of language use deriving from
computer-­based language corpora). Section 6 examines some of the possibilities

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 Using the real  101

afforded by technological advances and the teacher’s role in exploiting these and
facilitating learner use of online resources. Section 7 emphasises the importance of a
supportive institutional structure for teachers as well as learners.

2 THE NATURE OF AUTHENTICITY

Useful summaries of the authenticity debate are provided by Clarke (1989b), Newby
(2000), Mishan (2005) and Gilmore (2007). Although, as Clarke points out, there
has been something of a shift in focus from text to task, belief in the importance
of authentic texts runs deep and this therefore provides the starting point for this
section.

2.1 Authentic texts

Nunan (1988a: 99–102) offers the conventional definition of authentic texts:
‘“Authentic” materials are usually defined as those which have been produced for
purposes other than to teach language’ (1988a: 99): for example, print materials
such as newspapers or timetables or spoken materials such as public announce-
ments. If we see authentic text materials as not simply samples of the kind of
language use that learners may need to cope with outside the language classroom
but also as potential models of use, Nunan’s definition might be further refined to
include the more contentious dimensions of speaker/writer and listener/reader high-
lighted in the following definition: ‘communication by and for native speakers, writ-
ers or readers in that language’ (Breen et al. (1979: 1; emphasis added). This raises
another issue, of course, that of what constitutes an appropriate model, a question
to which there might be different answers in different contexts. For the purposes
of this chapter, therefore, a distinction will be made between (1a) ‘a stretch of real
language . . . produced for a real audience and designed to convey a real message’
(Morrow 1977: 13) and (1b) materials primarily designed to teach language; as well
as (2) how teachers and learners perceive and use materials.
Strictly speaking, an authentic listening text would be neither scripted nor edited;
in practice, poor quality, length and other pedagogic considerations lead to spoken
texts being re-­recorded and/or edited for use in classrooms. Written texts may
similarly be retyped and edited. While it might be argued that these changes can
substantially alter the way the original text was conceived or delivered and affect
comprehensibility (Grellet 1981), the pedagogical argument has generally prevailed.
The key issue in relation to text authenticity, however, is how far it is reasonable to
go in the direction of rendering a text accessible to learners. Modifications to texts
would include:

• cutting out a newspaper/magazine article and photocopying it (loss of informa-

tion on visual context in which it appeared)
• retyping an article (change in visual appearance of text)
• reproducing only part (but a continuous part) of the original text

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102   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

• editing out sections of the text to simplify the argument or content

• editing out linguistic elements (e.g. sentences, phrases or words) that are not
syntactically necessary and would pose difficulty.

As this list indicates, it is obviously easier to modify a written text than a spoken text.
The main concern in relation to these kinds of adaptation is that the more changes
are made the less ‘authentic’ the text becomes. One reason why authenticity is felt
to be important is that it gives learners a taste of the real world, an opportunity to
‘rehearse’ in a sheltered environment, hence the less authentic the materials we use
the less well prepared learners will be for that real world. This is also the argument
advanced against specially written or simulated authentic texts. Although discourse
analysis has helped us to identify the features of authentic speech and writing, and
we can deliberately build certain features into specially devised materials so that they
resemble the real thing, they can never be the real thing, as a comparison between,
say, scripted speech and a transcript of real speech immediately reveals. Does this
matter? Some, such as Nunan, would say it does: that ‘comprehending and manipu-
lating scripted dialogues does not readily transfer to comprehending and using
language in real communicative situations’ (1988a: 100), that there will be not only
phonological differences (e.g. articulation and intonation) but also differences at the
level of syntax, discourse patterns and patterns of interaction. However, to recognise
these differences is not to argue for the total exclusion from the classroom of scripted
material, since this can be used – alongside authentic text – for quite different peda-
gogic purposes (Nunan 1988a).

2.2 ‘The cult of authenticity’

Referring to prescriptive methods of the first part of the twentieth century, Howatt
comments that ‘the authority of the approach resided in the materials themselves,
not the lessons given by the teacher using them’, which led to ‘a cult of materials’
(1984: 267, cited in Gilmore 2007: 97). Is there a parallel here with authentic
materials? Although the arguments for the use of authentic texts appear to have
been widely accepted, a few dissenting – or at least questioning – voices have been
heard. Day (2003), who cites a number of pro-­authenticity authors, uses the term
‘the cult of authenticity’ (Day and Bamford 1998: 53) to express his own unease.
Claiming that authentic materials are too difficult for beginners and intermediate-­
level language learners and that there is no empirical evidence demonstrating that
such materials benefit learners, he argues that appropriateness is more important
than authenticity. Peacock (1997), whose focus was on learner motivation rather
than improved performance, describes a carefully designed experiment over twenty
days with thirty-­one South Korean beginner-­level learners in a university EFL
institute in which authentic materials and what he calls ‘artificial’ (i.e. coursebook)
materials were used on alternate days. The authentic materials consisted of two
poems, some TV listings, two short articles, an advice column for a local newspaper,
an American pop song and some English language magazine advertisements. His

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 Using the real  103

o­ verall ­conclusion is that ‘learners were more motivated by authentic materials but
not because they were more interesting’ (1997: 152); he also notes a ‘time effect’,
in that learners’ preference for the authentic materials increased as the study pro-
gressed. The authenticity vs artificiality debate is for Waters (2009) just one example
of an attempt by applied linguists to impose ideological values on the profession,
in this case by insisting on authenticity. One conclusion that might be drawn
from these papers is that a concern for appropriateness need not rule out the use
of authentic materials but might instead be a key consideration in deciding which
authentic materials to use, and when to use specially written materials; another, that
more research is needed. Text difficulty is discussed in section 4.

Task 6.1

1. In Hong Kong, teachers are free to select their own teaching materials but
official curriculum documents drawn up by the Education and Manpower
Bureau encourage teachers to ‘supplement [textbooks] with interest-
ing and authentic materials to suit their learners’ needs’ (Education and
Manpower Bureau 2002: 77, cited in Yeung 2011: 6) and to ‘make use of
a wide selection of authentic listening materials such as advertisements,
announcements, telephone conversations, speeches, films, poems, songs
and rhymes’ (Education and Manpower Bureau 2007: 77, cited in Yeung
2011: 6). Do you think teachers should be ‘encouraged’ in this kind of way?
2. What would you say to the learner quoted by this teacher?
Evidence of our examination-­oriented attitude is that I ask my students to
read the newspaper, as it is a source of examination articles. Ironically, a
sixth former once asked me which sections of the newspaper were most
likely to appear in the examination so that he should read more and
which sections were not ‘useful’ so that he need not read them at all.
3. Do you use authentic texts in your teaching? If so, what most influences
your choice of text?

2.3 Criteria for the selection of authentic texts

A number of criteria need to be considered in selecting authentic texts for classroom
use, the most obvious of which are:
• relevance (to syllabus, to learners’ needs)
• intrinsic interest of topic/theme
• cultural appropriateness
• linguistic demands
• cognitive demands
• logistical considerations: for example, length, legibility/audibility
• quality (as a model of use or as a representative token of a text-­type)
• exploitability.

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104   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

Relevance is a sine qua non. However interesting a text may be, if its use cannot be
justified on the grounds of relevance (whether of topic, genre or linguistic features)
it should not be used at all. The corollary also applies: if a text is patently not going
to interest learners, however relevant it is, it should be replaced by one that will.
Relevance and interest are relative, of course, and potentially a matter of presenta-
tion and exploitation as well as content. With a little ingenuity, it may be possible to
use an unpromising text in ways that make it seem relevant or more interesting. For
this effort to be worthwhile, the text would also need to be suitable in other respects.
In some contexts, cultural appropriateness is seen as the absence of any features
(illustrations or verbal references) that offend against the religious, social or political
mores of that culture; more broadly, it might be seen as the framework within which
the materials are set, and the extent to which settings, interactions and characters
are familiar. With regard to a specific text, therefore, cultural inappropriateness may
relate to the topic, the attitude of the writer to the topic or specific allusions. It may
be possible to edit out or replace certain allusions; if the text is deemed to be inappro-
priate in a more general sense, then there is little that can be done. (For a fuller discus-
sion, and an alternative view, see section 3 on materials and culture in Chapter 10.)
The extent to which there is a rough match between the linguistic and cognitive
demands of the text and the capacities (language proficiency, cognitive maturity,
knowledge) of the learners is an obvious consideration. Cognitive considerations will
include the familiarity of the subject matter and key concepts, degree of abstract-
ness and text organisation (including the ordering of information and the salience
of discourse markers). On a linguistic level, glossing of key lexical items can help,
and some difficulties can be removed through judicious editing. Editing (e.g. of
whole paragraphs) can also reduce a long text to something usable within a limited
time frame. Too much editing, on the other hand, especially within paragraphs or
sentences, can not only result in the loss of some of the features that make a text
authentic but also eliminate some of the links that make it a cohesive whole – and
thereby render it more difficult to process (see Tomlinson’s (1998b) comments on
simplification, quoted in Chapter 4). Potential problems relating to the legibility of
a written text (e.g. its (small) size or the fact that it is handwritten) or to the audibil-
ity of a recorded text may necessitate the production of a more accessible version
of the original or, if these logistical difficulties combine with other disadvantages to
make the text basically unsuitable, lead to the decision to select an alternative text.
Two final criteria should be mentioned – and here we move away from the text
itself to the way in which it is used. Since texts are seen by students (if not always by
teachers) not simply as something on which to polish their listening/reading skills
but also as something from which they can learn language, it is important that they
be suitable as examples (e.g. of a particular text-­type such as a letter requesting infor-
mation, abstract or technical report) and/or contain examples of specific language
features. In other words, a text should be an appropriate sample of language use and
a model, in some of its features at least, for student production. We should remem-
ber, however, that authentic texts were not written to serve as practice grounds or
hunting grounds for language learning. They were written to convey information,

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 Using the real  105

transmit ideas, express opinions and feelings, entertain. Good texts tell us something
we do not know; they contain interesting content; they provoke a reaction. They are
multiply exploitable because they lend themselves readily to tasks which are interest-
ing as well as useful.

2.4 Text-­types
One reason for teachers to go outside a coursebook for texts is that they wish to
expose their students to more examples of a particular text-­type, and to illustrate
the variations within this, or to provide exposure to a greater range of text-­types.

Task 6.2

1. Can you add to the following list of text-­types? You might also wish to dis-
tinguish between subcategories of some of the items, such as letters:
• novels, plays, poetry, nursery rhymes
• song lyrics
• cartoons
• letters, postcards, notes, emails
• newspapers and magazines – and particular sections in these, such as
letters to the editor
• advertisements (any medium)
• films
• film reviews (print or online)
• reports, statistics, diagrams
• travel brochures, guidebooks, timetables
• instructions, road signs
• menus, bills
• telephone directories, dictionaries.
2. Which of the text-­types on your (expanded) list have you not used? Are
there any of these which it might be useful for your students to work on?

2.5 Text selection and teaching purpose

We use texts for a variety of purposes. For example:
• for listening/reading skills practice/development
• as further exposure to examples of language use (reinforcing previous struc-
tured input)

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106   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

• to introduce new linguistic input

• as stimuli for productive language use: for example, a spoken or written
response to the topic of a text
• as discourse models
• for their information content.
Potentially, all of these purposes could be fulfilled using specially written texts. The
primary purpose for choosing to use an authentic text is that it is authentic. The next
task encourages you to consider in a preliminary way possible objectives underlying
text use and some of the procedures that might be used to fulfil these objectives.

Task 6.3
Here are five teachers (A–E) talking about their reasons for using texts in class.
Read the extracts, then try the tasks that follow.
A. I want students to have a model (for instance, examples of a new
structure or a particular kind of letter) so that they’ll feel more confi-
dent about attempting new things in the language. The principle of
listen/read first and then speak/write seems a basic one to me.
B. Students will only learn to understand native speakers of the lan-
guage if they’re exposed to plenty of samples of authentic language,
different voices, etc.
C. Sometimes my students have difficulty talking or writing about topics
because they lack imagination or inspiration. I find that if I give them a
listening or reading text first that often helps to get the ideas flowing.
D. I tend to use texts to develop a specific receptive skill, be it listening or
reading. And I normally have particular aspects of the skill in mind – for
instance, the ability to distinguish the main points, to get the gist, as
it were, or the ability to use contextual clues or existing knowledge to
make informed guesses about the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items.
Sometimes, I use explicit means (i.e. consciousness raising); at other
times, I use what you would probably call implicit means – that is, I get
students to carry out particular operations in the hope that these will
become instinctive. For example, if I wanted to help students to process
written text more quickly, I might either analyse a text with them so that
they can see how texts are typically structured in the target language –
bearing in mind that there are differences across cultures, or if I were
working implicitly, I might simply set them a task which required them
to read quickly. Normally, of course, I’d move from the explicit to the
implicit, which would then be a way of practising or applying their con-
scious knowledge. So, using the same example, consciousness-­raising
analysis of text structure would be followed by practice in skimming.
E. I see texts as linguistic quarries. My main concern in working with texts
– real texts, that is, not texts specially written for language learners –
is to draw attention to points of language which are either of interest

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 Using the real  107

in themselves (specific structures, lexical items, cultural allusions) or

provide a starting point for consideration of related language features.
A lot of what I do – and my students seem to find this fascinating too –
is in the area of synonymy, antonymy, idiomatic expressions, etc. The
general idea is to enrich their vocabularies, of course, extend their
linguistic repertoires. We dig at the text together; they then decide
what they want to take from it. For the kind of students I teach, upper-­
intermediate and advanced, this seems to work pretty well.
1. Which of the teachers seem most concerned that texts should be authentic?
2. Each of the extracts makes reference to an end (the objective) of using
texts and a means. Go through them again and mark the relevant sections
O and M respectively.
3. The objectives listed below are reformulated (and reordered) versions of
those expressed by Teachers A–E. Match the two sets of objectives. One
has been done for you.

Objectives
Language skill-­oriented
develop general comprehension ......
develop specific receptive skills ..D..
Language system-­oriented
facilitate productive use of specific language items ......
develop general language proficiency ......
Other
facilitate production ......

4. Which of the views expressed is closest to your own?

Beyond beginner level, all language teachers in adequately resourced contexts make
use of texts. However, they differ both in what they do (method or means) and in
what they hope to achieve (objectives or ends). Clearly, different procedures are likely
to produce different results. What we need to ensure is that there is a match between
our objectives and our means. Here are a few general principles that might be helpful.

2.6 Principles
1. Students will find it easier to cope with ‘real-­life’ listening/reading if they are
exposed to authentic texts in class.
2. In much of the listening that we do in real life we are involved as interactants.
We listen and we speak. We know why we are involved in the interaction
and our role and that of others in the interaction. Even if we are not directly
involved, as when we are ‘eavesdropping’, standing in a queue or sitting near
someone on public transport, we know what the situation is and we have
access to various kinds of contextual information, such as facial expression,

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108   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

physical closeness and touch, that can usually help us to make sense of the
relationship and of what we hear. In other kinds of listening (e.g. telephone
conversations, public announcements, radio broadcasts, lectures), where the
speaker knows we need additional help to compensate for what we cannot see
and/or for the lack of potential for interaction, this will be provided through
explanation, repetition, and so on. In the classroom, when audio recordings
have been used, compensatory background information has not always been
given. Audio recordings are, of course, an important way of providing for
classroom listening practice. However, it needs to be recognised that in rela-
tion to recorded conversations learner-­listeners will be at a severe disadvantage
compared with someone present during that conversation because they lack
contextual information. Unless one of the specific purposes of the activity is to
encourage learners to make guesses about the situation, the topic, the attitude
of the speakers to the topic, the relationship between the speakers, and so on,
as much of this information as would be known to someone present during
the conversation should be made available to the learner. From all this we can
derive a very brief principle: put the learner in the picture.
3. If we are to simulate real-­life text processing (reading or listening), the first
stage of an approach to text should involve a focus on meaning. In our first lan-
guage, we listen/read with a purpose. That purpose always involves ­extraction
of meaning (information or opinion), although it may also include supple-
mentary expectations, such as pleasure through humour.
4. The meanings that we ask students to extract should be related to the meanings the
intended reader is expected to derive from the text, that is, the writer’s intention.
Students’ text-­processing proficiency can be judged by their capacity to extract
these (and arguably no other) meanings. The nature and extent of the mean-
ings involved will, of course, be partially determined by text-­type.
5. Students are more likely to cope successfully with text meanings if they are
given help with content and/or language. This can include pre-­reading activi-
ties or the provision of a glossary.
6. Since students are also language learners, it follows that the second stage
should involve a focus on language. This may be intended to serve various
purposes:
(a) provision of models: for example, study of the use of a particular tense
(b) language enrichment: text items provide a starting point for work on, for
example, synonymous or antonymous items or lexical sets
(c) input to another activity: a text is used almost as a pre-­text or preliminary
to an activity in which the focus is on another language skill (e.g. a writ-
ten text may be used as input to discussion). In this case, the initial text
may serve both to stimulate thought on the topic and to feed in relevant
ideas and language.
In ‘the bad old days’, a teacher might have asked learners to read the text aloud
or gone through it themselves translating and/or commenting on each sentence

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 Using the real  109

or simply said, ‘Read/listen to the text and answer the questions’; these days, the
­orthodox approach takes the form ‘pre-­reading/listening – while-reading/listening –
post-reading/listening’. The principles above reflect this orthodoxy, 2, 3 and perhaps
5 relating to the pre-­reading/listening stage, 4 to the while-­reading/listening stage
and 6 to the post-­reading/listening stage.

2.7 Exercise-­types
Let us imagine that a good (suitable) listening or reading text is available – in other
words, a text which satisfies the text-­selection criteria discussed in section 2.3 and
which will serve a teacher’s teaching objectives. It may be a reading or listening text
in a coursebook, accompanied by an inappropriate set of ‘comprehension ques-
tions’, or it may be something the teacher has found him-­or herself. In either case, it
will be necessary to prepare questions or tasks. The principles above may be helpful
at a general level, but it is still necessary to consider how specific objectives can be
translated into task types.
Grellet (1981) is one of the most comprehensive sources of ideas for the teacher
wishing to develop text-­based materials. As Table 6.1 indicates, her approach is to
identify specific reading subskills (many of which have an equivalent in listening);
she then provides copious illustrations of the types of exercise that can be used to
develop each of these skills. See Grellet (1981: 14–25) for a discussion of each of
these exercise-­types.

Table 6.1 Reading comprehension exercise-­types (based on Grellet 1981: 12–13)

Reading techniques
Sensitivity: Improving reading speed From
inference: through context;
•  skimming to
through word-­formation scanning:
understanding relations within
•  • predicting
the sentence • previewing
linking sentences and ideas:
•  • anticipation
reference; link words • skimming
• scanning
How the aim is conveyed
Aim and function of a text: Organisation of the text – Thematisation
• function of the text different thematic patterns:
• functions within the text • main ideas and
supporting detail
• chronological sequence
• descriptions
• analogy and contrast
• classification
• argumentation and logical
organization

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110   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

Table 6.1 (continued)

Understanding meaning
Non-­linguistic response to the Linguistic response to the
text: text:
ordering a sequence of
•  • reorganising the
pictures information: reordering
• comparing texts and pictures events; reorganising the
• matching information using grids
• using illustrations • comparing several texts
• completing a document • completing a document
• mapping it out • question-­types
• using the information in a text • study skills: summarising;
• jigsaw reading note-­taking
Assessing the text
• fact versus opinion
• writer’s intention

Grellet’s concern is with the learner and what the learner needs to be able to do to
understand a text fully; and the exercise-­types listed are means to that end. By contrast,
the questions and tasks that accompany reading texts in coursebooks were the stimu-
lus for Freeman’s (2014) research. In order to classify these, she drew on a number of
existing taxonomies, but found none of these sufficiently comprehensive. She therefore
developed her own composite taxonomy. This consists of two tiers. The first relates to
pre-­reading activities; the second is reproduced in Table 6.2. The ordering of question-­
types within the Content and Affect categories is intended to be hierarchical.

Table 6.2 Taxonomy of comprehension questions (Freeman 2014: 83–4)

Categories Comprehension Description
question types
Content Textually In this question type the answer to the question
questions Explicit can be found stated directly in the text. There is
word-­matching between the question and the
text. The information required is in sequential
sentences.
Textually In this question type the answer to the question
Implicit is stated directly in the text but is not expressed
in the same language as the question (no word-­
matching). The information is not all in the same
order. It is separated by at least one sentence.
Inferential In this question type the answer to the question
Comprehension is not stated explicitly in the text but rather
alluded to. The reader has to combine their
background knowledge with the information in
the text and make the necessary connections.

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 Using the real  111

Table 6.2 (continued)

Categories Comprehension Description
question types
Language Reorganization This question type requires the reader to reorder,
questions rearrange or transfer information in the text.
– putting sequences in chronological order
– transferring data into parallel forms (e.g. label
pictures/maps, complete a table, translate)
Lexical This question type requires the reader to focus
specifically on vocabulary, not information.
Included in this category are exercises where the
reader
– guesses the meaning of a word or phrase from
the context
– matches definition A with word/phrase B
– Uses a dictionary
Word attack and text attack strategies are
included in this level.
Form This question type requires the reader to focus
specifically on grammar or form, not information.
Examples of form questions include exercises
where the reader
– changes a sentence from the affirmative to the
negative
– forms the question that goes with a given
answer
– explains the use of one tense rather than
another (e.g. present perfect not past simple)
Affect Personal This question type requires the reader to offer
questions Response their personal reaction to the text in terms of
likes/dislikes, what they found funny, surprising
etc. the reader can be asked to transfer the
situation in the text to their own cultural context
and comment. Highly subjective, there is no
‘right’ answer.
Evaluation This question type requires the reader to make a
judgement or assessment of the text/information
according to some understood criteria. This
criteria can be
– formally recognized independent sources
– teacher provided
– student-­set standards
The reader is also expected to provide a
rationale or justification for their view.

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112   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

Application of the taxonomy to four global EFL textbooks revealed a number

of differences in question-­patterning across the books, and across different editions
(reflecting changes in the authors’ views over time). On the value of the taxonomy,
Freeman comments that it offers ‘a framework for the analysis and comparison of
reading comprehension activities . . . it raises awareness of different types of ques-
tions and tasks . . . and each question-­type has its merits’ (2014: 105).

Task 6.4
1. Does Grellet’s taxonomy seem to you to be a satisfactory way of describing
the skills involved in reading? Look first at the major headings.
2. Does your approach to the teaching of reading cover all of these skills and
subskills?
3. Use Freeman’s taxonomy to analyse the questions accompanying three
reading texts in your coursebook or the reading materials you have pre-
pared yourself or the extracts from published materials in Appendix 6.1.
What did you discover? Are there any types of question that you now feel
you ought to include when you use texts?
One of the many ideas contained in Maley’s (1998, 2011) discussion of current and
desirable future developments in materials design is that of a typology of generalised
procedures that can be used with raw texts. They are, in essence, ideas that teachers
can use in devising student activities. As with any good typology, the number of
ideas that can be generated by each option is limited only by the user’s imagination.
1. Expansion: students add something to the text (e.g. adjectives, sentences,
comments, a beginning or ending).
2. Reduction: students shorten the text in some way (e.g. by turning it into
telegraphese, by combining sentences, by rewriting in a different format – see
also points 3 and 8).
3. Media transfer: students translate the text into a different medium or format
(e.g. drawing, table, poem or recast a letter as a newspaper article).
4. Matching: students ‘match’ the text with something else (e.g. a title, another
text, a picture).
5. Selection/ranking: students select a text (e.g. for inclusion in a teenage maga-
zine) or part of a text for a particular purpose (e.g. words to act as a title); or
rank texts according to a given criterion (e.g. formality).
6. Comparison/contrast: students identify points of similarity or difference
(e.g. words/phrases, facts, ideas).
7. Reconstruction: students reconstruct the original text (which has been,
e.g., reordered, gapped or presented in a different medium).
8. Reformulation: students express the same meaning in a different form (e.g.
retelling a story, rewriting in a different style).
9. Interpretation: students engage with the text on a personal level (e.g. in
response to prompts about their own experience or the images/associations

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 Using the real  113

thrown up by the text) or think about what questions they might wish to ask
the author.
10. Creating text: students use the text as a starting point for the creation of their
own texts (e.g. parallel text on different theme, reusing words from the origi-
nal text, using the same title for a new text).
11. Analysis: students carry out a linguistic analysis of the text (e.g. frequency
with which different tenses are used, listing all the words referring to a par-
ticular topic, such as the sea).
12. Project work: students make use of the text in a more extended practical
­activity (e.g. a text in which an issue is presented leads to the design of a
questionnaire, which is administered to other students).
(Based on Maley 2011: 395–8)
An illustration is provided (see also Woodward 2001). In each case, Maley suggests,
the normal pattern would be for individuals to do the activity first themselves, then
to compare what they have done in pairs or threes, and finally for the outcomes to
be shared with the whole class.

Task 6.5
1. Are there any techniques in Maley’s list that you had not thought of?
2. Can you add further examples for any of the options?
3. Look at the tasks that accompany extract F in Appendix 3.3 and classify
them according to Maley’s typology. Which of the task-­types suggested by
Maley might precede, follow or replace the original tasks?
4. Do the same for the tasks accompanying a text in a randomly chosen
lesson in the coursebook you are using or one of those in Appendix 6.1.

One of the points emphasised in Grellet’s (1981) introduction to her book is that
reading should be linked to other skills. Examples include reading and writing (sum-
marising in a letter what one has read); reading and listening (comparing an article
and a news bulletin); reading and speaking (debates, the arguments for which have
been researched). This brings us to the issue of task authenticity.

3 TASKS

3.1 Authentic and pedagogic tasks

The narrow concern with text authenticity that characterised the early years of the
communicative movement gave way in the 1980s and 1990s to a concern for the
nature of tasks and for learners’ attitudes to texts and tasks (e.g. Candlin and
Murphy 1987; Nunan 1989; Crookes and Gass 1993a, 1993b; Willis 1996).
Nunan provides a generally accepted definition of authentic tasks which takes real-­
world behaviour and learner needs into account: ‘tasks which replicate or rehearse

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114   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

the communicative behaviours which will be required of them in the real world’
(1988b: 4; emphasis added). Authentic tasks can be contrasted with pedagogic tasks
(e.g. ­controlled grammar practice activities such as gap-­filling or transformation
exercises), which focus on the development of accuracy rather than language using.
One point of particular interest in Nunan’s definition of authentic tasks, though
he does not pursue it, is the specific reference to learners’ own realities. This poses
a common problem for syllabus planners and materials designers: how to predict
the behaviours that will (and will not) be needed. Form-­filling, for instance, might
seem a potentially relevant activity, but the classroom teacher is probably in the best
position to know whether a specific group of learners are likely to need to complete
a car hire form, a visa application form, a dating agency form – or none of these. The
obvious solution would be to exclude the kinds of task which will most obviously
not involve the learners in relevant kinds of communication or, more positively, to
concentrate on the likely needs of the majority – but even here there are problems.
One of these has to do with the relationship between text and task. Hall (1995), for
instance, makes the point that the authenticity of a text is not in itself sufficient to make
the work based on it either interesting or valuable; what counts is the reader’s response.
If a learner is already familiar with the content of the text he or she is expected to read
in the language class, then the ‘need’ to read will derive merely from the requirement
to jump through the hoops (exercises and activities) provided by the teacher. If real-­life
reading is our yardstick, then we must bear in mind that this is self-­motivated: that a
reader reads because he or she wishes to. For Hall, therefore, ‘An authentic response
depends on the existence of an authentic need’ (1995: 12; emphasis added).
On one level, this can be seen as an argument against teacher-­imposed tasks.
Senior makes the point that students may engage with materials in ways we have
not anticipated:
They may want to comment, or learn more about, something that’s caught their
eye. They may want to point out the places they’ve been to on a local map, say
that they’ve already seen a particular movie, or have genuine questions they want
to ask about a product in a particular advertisement. (2009: 47)
She adds: ‘One advantage of taking whole newspapers to class, rather than articles
that we’ve cut out and photocopied, is that students can choose what they want
to read’ (2009: 47). While this is a persuasive argument, it ignores the fact that a
good deal of reading for study purposes (and probably much of the reading that is
done in work contexts) is not motivated by a wish to read but a need to read, which
students and those who need to read in the course of their work accept. Moreover,
learners may have different expectations of classroom activities and their real-­world
parallels. Thus, a second problem, if it can really be seen as such, is that learners may
take a different perspective from theorists. There has been research into adult learn-
ers’ preferences which suggests a preference for conventional form-­focused activities
(i.e. pedagogic tasks) over more communicatively oriented activities (see Nunan
1988 for a summary of some of this research and Spratt 2001 for further research).
Taking this into account, Nunan (1988a, 1991) suggests that learners may them-

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 Using the real  115

selves authenticate particular activities which, using measures such as those discussed
above, would not pass the authenticity test.
Our response to this should not be: ‘Good, so it doesn’t matter what kinds of
task (or text) we use, as long as learners seem happy with them.’ If we can predict
that learners will need to engage in real-­world interactions, whether face-­to-­face or
through the written word, then we owe it to them to devise appropriate rehearsal
activities (tasks). But this concentration on the real (authentic tasks) should not
blind us to the fact that there may be two routes to success in carrying out such
activities. One involves the acquisition, through discrete practice exercises (peda-
gogic tasks), of the necessary knowledge and skills, with the final task necessitat-
ing the integration of these enabling competences. The alternative is to provide a
progressively more complex series of tasks, with feedback at each stage. The latter
approach has been strongly advocated in the context of task-­based learning, where
feedback is seen as essential: ‘to avoid the risk of learners achieving fluency at the
expense of accuracy and to spur on language development, another stage is needed
after the task itself’ (Willis 1996: 55, cited in McDonough et al. 2013: 41).

Task 6.6
1. Think of the tasks that you typically set on texts. Which of these are authen-
tic and which pedagogic? Do the latter prepare for the former? Should they?
2. What are your students’ views about text and task authenticity? If you do
not know, how would you find out? (Be as specific as possible.)

3.2 Spoken communication activities

The ‘information gap’ is now well established as a means of stimulating classroom
communication. For instance, jigsaw listening and jigsaw reading both require
learners to share their piece of the puzzle with other learners in order to solve a prob-
lem. Other types of commonly used paired activities which exploit this principle
include the following:
• Describe and draw: one person describes a picture, the other attempts to repro-
duce it; the same principle applies to following instructions on how to get from
A to B on a map.
• Describe and arrange: one person describes a fixed set of items, the other organ-
ises movable items accordingly (e.g. cut-­outs of furniture in a room or photo-
graphs of people) – for this activity, two copies of the same sets of pictures will
obviously be needed.
• Spot the difference: the kind of observation puzzle sometimes found in news-
papers, where two versions of the same picture (hand-­drawn or photocopied)
differ in a specified number of details. This is more interesting when items are
added as well as deleted from both pictures.
• Making plans: both students have diaries with certain fixed appointments; the
task is to find a time when they can do something together.

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116   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

The degree of difficulty involved in any of these tasks will depend partly on the
nature of the task but more particularly on the lexis required to describe/­understand.
In one version of ‘Describe and arrange’, for example, the task might be to arrange
photographs of people or food items or landscapes in a particular order, but the pho-
tographs themselves might be so similar that very detailed descriptions are required.
It is not difficult to cater for quite different proficiency levels within a class in this
way.
‘Opinion gap’ activities also have an obvious real-­world origin. We differ in our
tastes in clothes, colours, food; we differ in what we think of books, films, music;
and we differ in our judgements of people and events. We will also have different
preferred ways of dealing with common problems and different views on how we
should act in given situations. Unlike information gap activities, activities that
exploit an opinion gap are open-­ended in the sense that there is no right answer
(Clark 1987 calls them ‘divergent’ as opposed to ‘convergent’ tasks); and as a result,
some students may find them less satisfying. (The instruction to ‘try to persuade
others to agree with you’ may be a way of extending an open discussion meaning-
fully and bringing it to a positive conclusion.) Activities that would fall into this
category would include:
• discussion: for example, based on a question, a visual or auditory stimulus, a
social problem, an ‘agony aunt’ page
• debates
• priorities exercises: for example, ranking a list of occupations according to their
social usefulness
• story completion.
Prabhu (1987), whose Bangalore Project used both information gap and opin-
ion gap activities, also refers to ‘reasoning gap’ activities. These involve processing
information in order to solve a given task. An example would be working out from
a railway timetable the quickest way to reach a given destination. For school-­age
learners, such tasks can obviously serve broader educational aims as well as providing
for communication practice.
As with any activity, relevance is important. Jolly and Bolitho (2011: 111) cite
the following reaction from a young German learner to a tourist–policeman dia-
logue in an elementary secondary school textbook: ‘Schon wieder so ein dummes
Übungsgesprach’ (‘Another stupid practice conversation’). Topics, contexts and, in
the case of role plays, roles – all have to be seen as appropriate by the learner.

4 AUTHENTICITY AND DIFFICULTY

4.1 Grading text and task

In language learning, as Nunan (1988a, 1991) points out, difficulty has traditionally
been seen in terms of language items, and careful selection or ‘control’ of these items
has been the principal means by which input to learners has been graded.

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 Using the real  117

The adoption of the principle of authenticity as a central tenet of communicative

language teaching has posed a particular problem as far as grading is concerned. If
only authentic texts are used and the principle of authenticity is adhered to strictly,
then no linguistic editing (or control, in this sense) is possible.
Two ways of resolving this dilemma have emerged.

4.1.1 ‘Grade the text’

In the first approach, where the emphasis is on linguistic appropriateness, texts are
selected which are of approximately the right linguistic level for the learners, without
worrying overmuch about specific linguistic items. While this may seem relatively
unproblematic for an experienced teacher with a feel for the kind of language that
a particular group of learners should be able to handle, text difficulty cannot be
assessed purely on the basis of linguistic analysis. The difficulty of a spoken text
may be attributable to the rate at which a speaker speaks, for instance, to his or her
accent (and perhaps the familiarity of the learners with this accent) and articulation,
to the fact that there are several speakers whose speech overlaps, or to white noise;
and particular difficulties are involved in listening to recordings, when the clues
available in face-­to-­face speech are absent. Both spoken and written texts may prove
difficult, as noted earlier, if one is unfamiliar with their content, key concepts or the
cultural setting.

4.1.2 ‘Grade the task’

The second approach is to select texts on the basis of their inherent interest and
devise tasks which are judged to be within the competence of the learners, to grade
the task and not the text (Grellet 1981). Following this principle, even newspapers
can be used with beginners.
In practice, the two tactics are frequently combined in a single strategy: that is, a
text is selected which is thought likely to interest learners and be of an appropriate
level of difficulty, without being ‘easy’. The pedagogic justification for not choos-
ing an ‘easy’ text or one from which all difficulties have been edited out is that in
responding to relatively simple tasks, the learner’s focus will tend to be on taking
only what is needed from the text for a defined and limited purpose (an ‘authentic’
approach in itself).

4.2 Task difficulty

Nunan (1989: ch. 5), whose discussion of task difficulty draws attention to the
complex interaction between the various contributory factors which combine to
determine task difficulty, refers to input considerations (i.e. the text, and the sup-
port this provides for the listener/reader), the nature of the task, and learner fac-
tors such as linguistic/cultural knowledge, confidence and previous experience with
similar tasks. Prabhu’s (1987) experience with the Bangalore Project suggested that

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118   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

Figure 6.1 An input–output view of task difficulty

key factors affecting task difficulty included the degree of abstractness and the need
for precision and reasoning.
Linguistic output considerations (what the learner may be required to say/write)
are no doubt implied in this discussion, but by making them explicit, as in Figure 6.1,
and distinguishing them from non-­linguistic features of the task, we ensure that they
are fully taken into account at the task design stage. During the 1970s and 1980s,
output tended to be seen in terms of accuracy and fluency. Skehan (1989) suggested
that complexity is also involved, and this is now accepted as one of the factors to be
considered in task analysis and task design. (For discussion of related research, see
Houston and Kuiken 2009, a special issue of Applied Linguistics.)
Another advantage of separating linguistic output from the other features of task
difficulty is that it encourages a focus on the conditions (e.g. time constraints) under
which the task is to be carried out, as well as on the cognitive processes involved.
Candlin and Nunan (1987, cited in Nunan 1989: 110) have proposed a system
of grading adapted from Bruner, in which there is a four-­stage progression from
‘attending and noticing’ to ‘transferring and generalising’.
This kind of analysis is not only relevant to the selection or design of suitable tasks
for a specific class of learners; as Nunan (1989) points out, it also makes possible the
manipulation of one or more elements to create tasks which pose different levels of
challenge.

5 A FOCUS ON LANGUAGE

5.1 Coursebook language

One of the criticisms that has been made of coursebooks is that they do not present
‘real language’. This applies not simply to texts but also to examples and rules. As
we saw in Chapter 5, it can also extend to the language which learners are asked to
produce in exercises.

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 Using the real  119

The analysis of the language of coursebooks and the comparison of this with
native speaker language use, as reflected in language corpora, has been a popular
focus of research for some time now, and surveys can be found in, for example,
Gilmore (2007), Harwood (2010b, 2014b) and McGrath (2013). Typically these
studies of coursebook language content point to gaps: language items which one
might expect to be included on the basis of their frequency in corpus data are
absent, or their range of uses only partially represented. Harwood (2014b) also
cites a number of studies focusing on pragmatics which illustrate potentially more
significant consequences of this gap. For example, Handford (2010) points out
that though the expression ‘I disagree with you’ appeared in the business English
textbooks he analysed, this did not feature in his 900,000-­word corpus of business
meetings. Harwood comments:
It is not that disagreement is absent from the meetings; rather, disagreements are
prefaced or hedged in the authentic data. As Handford notes, this mismatch is
no trivial matter, as I disagree with you and some of the other expressions taught
are ‘potentially face-­threatening in many situations’, and ‘learners are in danger
of acquiring linguistic behaviour that may be highly detrimental to their profes-
sional career’. (Handford 2010: 251–2, cited in Harwood 2014b: 8–9; original
emphasis)
One of the reasons for making use of carefully chosen authentic texts, of course, is
that they can serve as examples of real-­world language use. Another way of giving
learners access to such examples is in the form of concordance data.

5.2 Concordances

5.2.1 The value of concordances

Descriptions of language in use have benefited greatly from the development in
recent years of huge computerised databases (e.g. the British National Corpus at the
University of Oxford, the COBUILD corpus at the University of Birmingham and
the Nottingham/Cambridge University spoken English corpus at the University of
Nottingham). Using such a database to examine a specific language item (e.g. the
verb ‘do’), it is possible to determine both the range of ways in which the item is used
and the relative frequency of these, information which can be a useful input to course
planning and materials design. Made available to learners, printouts (or ‘concord-
ances’) of extracts from such data allow students to explore the language and formulate
their own tentative rules. Concordances can also reveal – and help learners notice –
patterns of use that might not otherwise be apparent (Willis 1998). For instance, a
study of concordance lines focusing on ‘break out’ would show that the subject of the
verb ‘break out’ is typically something unpleasant – ‘wars’, ‘fights’, ‘strikes’, ‘riots’ or
‘fire’ (Fox 1998); or focusing on the verb ‘wish’ would show that it can be used in a
variety of ways with somewhat different meanings, new knowledge which can sub-
sequently be tested (Mishan 2013). Moreover, in relation to grammatical features,

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120   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

Figure 6.2 A concordance of ‘than’ (Tribble and Jones 1990: 41)

concordances can compensate for the limitations of ­coursebooks. The concordance

of ‘than’ in Figure 6.2, from Tribble and Jones, while short on examples of more ADJ
than, contains ‘plenty of examples of the comparison of adverbs, often neglected in
course books, and of rather than, as well as the common idiomatic uses . . . than ever,
. . . than you think, and the structure better to (verb) than to (verb)’ (1990: 41).
Concordances can also be a corrective to the prescriptiveness of coursebooks. Fox
suggests:
a selection of appropriate lines can be given to students, who can then see for
themselves what is happening. They will find sentences exemplifying what is tra-
ditionally taught – and that’s good: it gives them some rules they can apply and
know they will not go far wrong. But they will also find sentences that deviate from
what they have been taught – and discussion should help tease out what is hap-
pening: how so much depends on the speakers and their perceptions. (1998: 32)
Carter et al. illustrate this last point with reference to the Nottingham corpus
of spoken English, which incorporates a description of the context of use,
noting that the choice of ‘going to’ or ‘will’ depends as much on ‘interper-
sonal and social-­context sensitive factors’ as it does on ‘strength of prediction’
(1998: 68).

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 Using the real  121

5.2.2 Using concordance data

A teacher could simply take a printout into class and talk learners through it
(Tribble and Jones 1990). Though this might be informative, it might also
be overwhelming and it is possible to imagine other uses that are a little more
imaginative and potentially more effective. A first step, as Tribble and Jones
suggest, would be to add a heading and a set of questions to the printout. The
dataset could also be edited by deleting repetitive examples. This latter problem
might be reduced by using a sampler, that is, a smaller, representative set from
the main database. Tribble (2000) recommends for teaching purposes the British
National Corpus sampler (1999), a two million word sample from the much
larger database; this is also available as a CD-­ROM. Mishan (2004) recommends
the Collins COBUILD website at [Link] (forty-­line ‘sample’
concordance), the British National Corpus (BNC) website at [Link]
[Link] (fifty random ‘hits’) and the Hong Kong Virtual Language Centre at
the Hong Kong Polytechnic University at [Link]
(subject-­and genre-­specific corpora).
A number of exploitation techniques are also suggested and exemplified by
Tribble and Jones (1990). For instance, if the intention is to draw learners’ atten-
tion to the range of uses of a particular lexical item, an edited selection of these can
be generated with the keyword deleted and learners asked to supply the missing
keyword. Matching exercises can be created by reordering the elements that follow
the keyword (see the example in Figure 6.3). Group-­work activities can be based on
groups being given the same task but a different set of data.

Figure 6.3 A matching exercise using concordance data (Tribble and Jones
1990: 41)

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122   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

Technical advice is also included on how to produce and manipulate the con-
cordance data.
Willis (1998) suggests that teachers (or their students) can create their own
concordance exercises based on texts with which students are already familiar.
Willis’s paper includes five examples of actual classes in which she used what
she calls ‘hand concordancing’, that is, the creation of a mini-­concordance based
on available texts (which may be learner-­generated texts) by the learners them-
selves. The focus of each concordance was determined by Willis with reference
to a computer-­generated frequency list – in this case, a list based on The Bank
of English, the University of Birmingham corpus. Participants produced the
concordances, on overhead projectors or on the board, and Willis devised the
analysis tasks.
One of the examples provided by Willis relates to an analysis of uses of ‘in’.
The students (described as ‘weak remedial beginners’) had read three short articles
from the Guinness Book of Records about the largest, the smallest and the most
expensive houses in the world, and were then asked to write out the phrases con-
taining ‘in’ and classify these as ‘place’, ‘time’ and ‘other’. In the Guinness Book
texts, all the phrases were found to relate to place or time. The students were
then asked to look through materials they had worked with earlier in the course
and find further examples. This led to a number of discoveries: for example, that
‘in’ can be used to refer to groups of people (‘in your family’), languages (‘in
English’) and fixed phrases (‘in fact’). It also has an adverbial use: for example,
‘Will you join in?’ ‘Hand your books in.’ Willis comments: ‘This search for
more ­examples gives a broader picture of the uses of the common word. In other
words, it is making full use of the pedagogic corpus so far covered by the learners’
(1998: 57).
The possible benefits of the kinds of language analysis activities Willis describes
are summarised as follows:
Learners can:
• become aware of the potential different meanings and uses of common
words
• identify useful phrases and typical collocations they might use themselves
• gain insights into the structure and nature of both written and spoken
discourse
• become aware that certain language features are more typical of some kinds of
text than others.
(Willis 1998: 55)

Concordance printouts need to be handled with care, however. Students may find
the fragmentary nature of the lines and the disparateness of the samples disorien-
tating. An appropriate first step would therefore be to explain what a concordance
is and how working with concordance printouts may help them. (See Thompson
1995 for suggestions for introductory exercises.) They may also feel daunted if they

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 Using the real  123

are presented with too much material. Even though these disadvantages can be
overcome by getting students to do the concordancing themselves, they may still
be reluctant to spend a great deal of time on a single point of language. We could,
of course, ask them to suggest points of language about which they feel unsure and
would themselves like to investigate.

Task 6.7
1. Mishan (2004) suggests that corpora could be helpful in (1) highlighting
differences between words which students tend to confuse (e.g. say,
speak, tell); (2) clarifying the meanings of phrasal verbs that share the
same lexical verb (e.g. get on, get off, get by, get through); and (3) raising
awareness of collocations which are idiomatic, ‘language-­ specific and
culturally-­determined’ (e.g. colours, parts of the body). Other possible foci
would include reporting verbs such as state, claim and argue (especially
useful for students of EAP) and ‘tricky’ verbs such as ‘suggest’. What do
you think of these ideas?
2. Have you used concordance data with your students? If not, would you?

6 EXPLOITING THE INTERNET AND MOBILE

TECHNOLOGY

6.1 Functions of technology and roles of teachers

In resource-­rich classroom teaching environments, fixed and mobile technology
– in the hands of teachers and learners – now offers conveniently rapid access
to specially designed learning materials as well as to the resources of the Web.
Advances in technology have also led to increased possibilities for formal learn-
ing outside the classroom through, for example, virtual learning environments
(VLEs) such as Blackboard or Moodle. In less advantaged contexts, formal learn-
ing is also possible through the personal mobile technology in the learner’s bag
or pocket.
From the perspective of materials and language learning, new technology in its
various forms potentially serves a number of purposes:
1. to deliver instructional content
2. to give independent access to learning materials other than those provided
directly by the institution where the learner is studying
3. to facilitate interaction and communication within learning communities and
more widely
4. to provide feedback on performance.
A word of caution may be appropriate here. When planning or reviewing face-­to-­face
courses which might make use of new technology, it is important to apply the same
test – of fitness for purpose – that we would apply to books, which are also a form

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124   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

of technology. This means that our starting point should be our course aims, derived
from an analysis of context – which in this case would include the technology avail-
able and what we know about learners. We can then consider whether, and if so how,
the available technology can be exploited in order to enhance and complement face-­
to-­face classroom learning in the ways outlined above. Or to make the point rather
differently: ‘We need to remind ourselves constantly that technology should be a tool
in the service of creativity and not a substitute for it’ (Maley 2013: 184).
There is some evidence that learners are already making autonomous use of
at least some of these increased opportunities for learning. For instance, Jarvis
surveyed the use of English via computers by university students in Thailand and
Abu Dhabi. Of the 123 respondents, ‘a tiny 3.3% reported using only their L1’,
whereas 8.1 per cent claimed to use only English, 24.4 per cent ‘mainly’ English
and 64.2 per cent ‘some’ English (2012: 8). The majority of respondents referred to
Google, YouTube and Wikipedia, with some also mentioning specific websites. It
follows that one of the key tasks for teachers is to raise learners’ awareness of where
they can find useful materials (see point 2, above). More generally, carefully staged
directed learning through class activities and homework tasks (see sections 6.2 and
6.3) can prepare the ground for self-­motivated self-­directed learning, with the Web
being seen, in Slaouti’s (2013: 84) words, as ‘an enormous self-­access centre’. In
formal learning settings, encouragement might not be enough, of course: linking
out-­of-­class activity to assessment may be more persuasive.

6.2 Delivery of course content

Ideas for technology-­based language-­focused classroom activities can be found in
resource books such as Dudeney (2007), where activities are organised by level and
theme, and Stanley (2013), where the primary organisation is by language area
(e.g. pronunciation, writing). Kiddle (2013) has sections on teacher-­created and
learner-­created digital materials.
Out-­of-­class activity can also serve as preparation for in-­class activity. In the
‘flipped classroom’, the teacher typically provides lesson content in an electronic
form. The notion of the flipped classroom derives from general education, but
has also stimulated interest in EFL classrooms, where the out-­of-­class activity
might take the form of a video or listening comprehension task (a YouTube
clip or a TED talk, for example) or a research task involving learners accessing
electronic resources. Although this is not new in the sense that teachers have
always set homework, what is new is the idea that the instructional dimension of
teaching (and in the foreign language class this could include, for example, pro-
nunciation modelling, or advice on giving a presentation) can be taken out of the
classroom, and some of the responsibility for sourcing information can be passed
to the learner. Project work has been used in language teaching for some time
(e.g. Fried-­Booth 1986; Phillips et al. 1999; and the Project series (Hutchinson
2013) currently in its third edition). The resources now available through the Web
have expanded the possibilities enormously. Mishan (2005) contains examples of

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 Using the real  125

tasks which encourage learners to carry out online research relevant to literary
works; and another task involves collecting information on cultural events such
as festivals. This not only means that class time is freed up for more interactive
follow-­up activities; it also means that learners have some choice and can work
at their own pace, and that different learning styles can also be catered for. From
this perspective, flipping represents an attempt to enhance and individualise the
learning experience through the creative exploitation of ­technology, including
mobile technology. That is, it breaks down the boundary between the physical
and virtual classroom. As a corollary, however, it also obliges us to consider how
to make the most effective use of classroom time. (Blended learning courses, in
which course activities are distributed across online and physical environments
can be seen as an extension of this idea.)
We cannot take it for granted, of course, that all learners will be equally comfort-
able with all aspects of technology use. For Warschauer, electronic literacy includes:

Computer literacy (i.e., comfort and fluency in keyboarding and using c­ omputers),
information literacy (i.e., the ability to find and critically evaluate online infor-
mation), multimedia literacy (i.e., the ability to produce and interpret complex
documents comprising texts, images and sounds), and computer-­mediated com-
munication literacy (i.e., knowledge of the pragmatics of individual and group
online interaction). (Warschauer 2002: 455, cited in Slaouti 2013: 86)

This argues for an approach to tasks which takes into account learners’ existing com-
petences. This is the basis of Dudeney et al.’s (2013) Digital Literacies, in which activ-
ities are ordered hierarchically according to the type of literacy involved (e.g. texting
literacy, multimedia literacy). Group tasks also allow for learners to learn from each
other, but in secondary-­and tertiary-­level institutions cross-­disciplinary collaboration
on course design which promotes the development of digital literacies is desirable.
Teachers also vary in their sense of comfort with technology. Stanley (2013:
Appendix A) provides a brief ‘Learning technologies guide’, which includes both
descriptive notes and some suggested websites. Appendix B contains an extensive
set of technical notes on the activities which form the bulk of his book; the many
websites recommended have value in their own right.

6.3 Facilitating learner access to other language learning materials

One of the tasks suggested in Mishan (2005) involves learners in evaluating lan-
guage learning websites. The stages in the activity are similar to those outlined in
Chapter 4 for teacher evaluation of websites. My own comments are in brackets.
1. Evaluation criteria are presented by the teacher (though these could also come
from students).
2. (Optional) a list of websites is supplied (again, learners might add their own
recommendations).
3. Learners work individually or in pairs to look for and evaluate sites contain-

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126   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

ing different types of materials – reference materials, such as grammars and

dictionaries; interactive learning activities, such as gap-­fill exercises or games;
cultural information (or learners create their own list of the kinds of site they
would find useful and volunteer which to research).
4. Learners comment on each site visited using the evaluation criteria in point 1.
5. Learners discuss their findings (or post them online).
6. Learners try out sites suggested by others (and rate them).
7. (Optional) learners draw up a reference list of recommended sites on a class
Web page or group workspace if available.
In my experience, this task has value not only for learners, in giving them experi-
ence of potentially useful additional resources, but also for teachers, in drawing their
attention to sites that learners themselves find useful and providing some insight
into the reasons for learners’ preferences. It would also, incidentally, generate a great
deal of purposeful language use.
A starter list of websites might include the British Council site at [Link]-
[Link], the Macmillan site at [Link] the BBC site at www.
[Link]/worldservice/learningenglish and Dave Sperling’s ESL café at [Link].
com. See also Appendix 5.2. Dudeney (2007: 165–70) contains categorised lists of
websites. Hyland (2013) lists websites useful for the development of writing skills.

6.4 Facilitating interaction

Electronic interaction is now possible through a variety of means, through messag-
ing applications, social media, telephony software, chat rooms, discussion forums
and bulletin boards. Warschauer and Kern have made the point that:

if our goal is to help students enter into new authentic discourse communities,
and if those discourse communities are increasingly located online, then it seems
appropriate to incorporate online activities for their social utility as well as for
their perceived particular pedagogical value. (Warschauer and Kern 2000: 13,
cited in Slaouti 2013: 96)

Although the emphasis here is on the social utility of the discourse community, it
also needs to be recognised that pedagogical value is added if teachers participate in
the community and respond constructively to student contributions; this may also
be an incentive to students to take part. Project work of the kind referred to under
section 6.2 or cross-­institutional cultural projects would seem to be an ideal way to
foster social links as well as fulfilling a pedagogical goal. Technology now offers a
means of combining both aims through the creation of wikis, through which con-
tent can not only be shared but also collaboratively developed.
Slaouti (2013) is a rich source of practical advice and references. Stanley (2013)
has a section on building a learning community. Online projects are discussed by,
for example, Mishan (2005), Dudeney (2007), Reinders and White (2010) and
Stanley (2013). Mishan (2005) also touches on cultural exchanges.

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 Using the real  127

6.5 Feedback
It is not difficult to incorporate feedback to learners in activities with right/wrong
answers. A wrong answer can even trigger a response which explains why a p ­ articular
choice is right and the others wrong. We can, however, take a broader view of
feedback as any intervention which causes a learner to reflect on his or her previous
action. Kiddle cites Hattie’s (2009) finding, based on a large-­scale meta-­analysis of
educational studies, that feedback was a crucial variable in terms of its positive influ-
ence on student achievement. Hattie writes:
The art of teaching, and its major successes, relate to ‘what happens next’ – the
manner in which the teacher reacts to how the student interprets, accommodates,
rejects and reinvents the content and skills, how the student relates and applies
the content to other tasks, and how the student reacts in light of success and fail-
ure apropos the content and the method that the teacher taught. (Hattie 2009,
cited in Kiddle 2013: 194)
Hattie’s statement in itself provokes reflection. In the first part of the quotation
(‘“what happens next” – the manner in which the teacher reacts to’), his focus
seems to be on the nature of the teacher’s response to a range of possible student
behaviours (elaborated in the later part of the quotation). However, it is also pos-
sible to see these behaviours as a process during which the student demonstrates
mastery of the content, with the teacher monitoring continuously and interven-
ing as necessary and in whatever way seems appropriate at each stage. Whichever
interpretation we take, I think we can draw two conclusions: that it is important to
find ways of providing feedback to learners during their online learning activities
(which include course-­related interaction activities) and that this feedback needs
to be ­individualised – the use of the singular ‘the teacher’ and ‘the student’ here
is probably not merely stylistic. There is a place for general feedback to the course
group as a whole, of course, either at the end of a particular stage in an activity or
when the activity has been completed, and this might begin with an opportunity
for self-­evaluation.
Stanley (2013: Activity 11.6) describes screen-­capture video feedback. Students
send their work to the teacher by email and the teacher creates a video of this, with
sections highlighted and accompanying audio feedback. The video or the link can
then be sent to the student or group. Assessment of digital work, including the use
of e-­portfolios, is briefly discussed in Dudeney et al. (2013: 342–7).

7 DISSEMINATION, SUPPORT, TRAINING

7.1 Materials sharing

Broadly speaking, the theme of the chapter thus far has been on support for learners.
In this section, we turn our attention to the needs of teachers.
Arguing that the time spent by teachers on materials design can be justified,

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128   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

Block presents a six-­stage process leading to the sharing of material. The example
given is the exploitation of a reading text, but this might equally well be a satel-
lite TV news programme, a radio interview or any general-­interest material in any
medium:
1. The teacher finds an interesting article in a news magazine.
2. The teacher spends over an hour putting together a reading exercise, a lan-
guage activity derived from the text, and a discussion activity.
3. The teacher uses the text and activities in class, and then makes a few adjust-
ments in the activities.
4. The teacher posts several copies of the text with the activities on a board
in the teachers’ room.
5. Several teachers use the text and activities in their classes.
6. At some point, the text and activities are either put in a long-­term bank (in
which case, they are considered to be relatively ‘timeless’) or thrown away (in
which case they are considered ‘dated’).
(Block 1991: 215–16)
Block makes the point that for this to be ‘cost-­effective’ in terms of preparation time
at least six colleagues need to contribute to the bank of material. This obviously
necessitates an institutional culture in which colleagues are prepared to cooperate –
and give as well as take. This problem apart, there is the practical difficulty of keep-
ing track of the use of a specific piece of material. Where staffrooms operate with
this kind of common resource, it can be very frustrating to find that a class in which
you are intending to use ‘your’ material has already used that material (especially if
you only discover this in the course of the lesson). On the positive side, it should
be recognised that this kind of sharing has the potential additional benefit that the
original material is gradually extended and refined as a result of trialling with differ-
ent classes and by different teachers.
Because authentic texts are inherently rich in their possibilities, it is tempting
to base a whole battery of activities on a single text. A word of warning: don’t. As
Maley wisely points out, ‘there is no point wringing the text dry just for the sake of
completeness’ (1998: 288). You may have lost your learners long before they reach
the final activity.

7.2 Professional development

Teachers vary in their attitudes to and adoption of technology. Slaouti notes:

How technology is integrated into teachers’ practice is very much related to a

number of issues . . . Access to specific technologies and how your institution
supports their use is clearly important. Personal confidence in using technology is
also a factor in teachers’ decision-­making. Our learners, their specific needs, and
their own expectations of technology use are also powerful influences on eventual
technology use. (2013: 80)

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 Using the real  129

One aspect of institutional support is the availability of training for teachers based
on agreed target competences (McGrath 2007); and competency statements and
training have to keep up with changes in technology. What is important, however,
is that the training provided meets the individual needs of the teachers concerned
and is perceived as relevant to language teaching (Hu and McGrath 2011); for
most teachers, what is of real interest is how technology can enhance teaching
and learning in their subject area. An institutional infrastructure which provides
opportunities for teachers to talk to each other about their concerns and successes
tends to be appreciated more than training which is delivered by experts but nar-
rowly technical.

REFLECTION, DISCUSSION, ACTION

• What did you find most interesting and/or useful in this chapter?
• The following quotations and questionnaire statements are taken from
Yeung’s (2011) study of the attitudes to authentic materials of teachers in two
Hong Kong secondary schools. Which statements do you agree with?
(a) Authentic materials are too difficult for my students.
(b) Adapting authentic materials is too time-­consuming.
(c) Authentic materials help to build students’ confidence in using English.
(d) Authentic materials are beneficial to the development of students’ receptive skills.
(e) Authentic materials are beneficial to the development of students’ productive
skills.
(f) Authentic texts broaden students’ knowledge, understanding and experience of
the various countries in which English is used.
(g) Students show greater motivation when you use authentic tasks.
(h) I firmly believe that English is not merely for exams. It is a medium for students
to experience the creative and fun world beyond the classroom and textbooks.
Using authentic materials can let students see a bigger world.
(i) . . . (add a statement which expresses your attitudes to or beliefs about
authentic materials and ask your classmates/colleagues if they agree).
• EITHER
Choose an authentic text (print or online) which you feel would be appropriate
for a class of learners whom you currently teach or have taught. This may be
one of the texts in Appendix 6.1. Create two or more tasks based on the text.
Describe the intended context of use to a colleague/classmate, explain your
choice of text and tasks, and ask for comments. If possible, try out the text and
tasks, collect feedback from learners and report back.
OR
Design a Web-­based task (a webquest) which involves learners in obtaining
information from at least three sources and reporting on what they find. You
may provide one or more website links or provide guidelines to help learners

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130   Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching

locate suitable sources. If possible, try out the task, collect feedback from learn-
ers and report back.

REVIEW AND PREVIEW

The focus in this chapter has been on the real: authentic texts, authentic (realistic?)
tasks, examples of real language use extracted from computer databases, and in rela-
tion to the Internet, real communication and the accessing of yet more authentic texts.
The strongest argument for exposing learners to real language (in the form of texts
and corpora) and facilitating their engagement in real communication (e.g. through
cultural exchanges or other forms of meaningful interaction) is compellingly simple.
Motivation. This language is alive. It comes off the page (or screen), surprising, enter-
taining, puzzling. It comes through the window on the breeze, bringing intriguing
sounds and scenes from the world outside. It opens doors into the homes and lives of
strangers who may yet become friends. This is the language of real people. To under-
stand and to make them understand, we must know this language.
For teachers, working with the real is also motivating because it represents a chal-
lenge to our professional resourcefulness and creativity. Chapter 7 looks at ways of
managing this challenge by systematising the process of materials design.

FURTHER READING
Using texts: see sections on skills teaching in collections such as Harwood (2010a),
Tomlinson (2011a, 2013b), and in general methodology books, such as Harmer
(2015). Articles on this and related topics appear frequently in journals and maga-
zines for teachers (e.g. the ELT Journal, Modern English Teacher, English Teaching
Professional and the RELC Journal).
Language learning and teaching through technology: at the time of writing, Slaouti
(2013) and Stanley (2013) provide overviews, useful references and practical ideas,
and Dudeney et al. (2013) a theoretical framework for developing digital literacy
skills alongside language skills. Keep up to date through special interest groups within
teachers’ associations and/or journals such as Language Learning and Technology or
websites such as that of Graham Stanley at [Link],
Nik Peachey’s blog at [Link] or Mark Pegrum’s wiki at
[Link] The British Council at [Link].
uk, The Consultants-­E at [Link]-­[Link] and Russell Stannard’s web-
site at [Link] offer a range of resources for teachers.

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