Developing Material for
Language Teaching
Edited by Tomlinson ( 2013 )
Material should achieve Impact
Impact is achieved when materials have a
noticeable effect on learners, that is when the
learners’ curiosity, interest and attention
are attracted. If this is achieved, there is a
better chance that some of the language in the
materials will be taken in for processing.
Materials can achieve impact
through:
Novelty (e.g. unusual topics, illustrations and activities);
Variety (e.g. breaking up the monotony of a unit routine with an
unexpected activity; using many different text-types taken from
many different types of sources; using a number of different
instructor voices on a CD); achievable challenge (e.g. tasks which
challenge the learners to think).
Attractive presentation (e.g. use of attractive colors;
lots of white space; use of photographs)
Appealing content (e.g. topics of interest to the target
learners; topics which offer the possibility of learning
something new; engaging stories; universal themes;
local references);
In order to maximize the likelihood of achieving impact,
the writer needs to know as much as possible about the
target learners and about what is likely to attract
their attention.
In order to achieve impact. with most of the learners, the
writer also needs to offer choice. The more varied the
choice of topics, texts and activities, the more likely is
the achievement of impact.
Materials should help learners to
feel at ease
Research has shown... the effects of various forms
of anxiety on acquisition: the less anxious the
learner, the better language acquisition proceeds.
Similarly, relaxed and comfortable students
apparently can learn more in shorter periods of
time. (Dulay, Burt and Krashen 1982)
Materials can help learners to feel at ease in a number of
ways :
Feel more comfortable with written materials with lots of
white space than they do with materials in which lots of
different activities are crammed together on the same page
Texts and illustrations that they can relate to their own
culture than they are with those which appear to
them to be culturally alien
Feeling at ease can also be achieved through:
a ‘voice’ which is relaxed and supportive,
content and activities which encourage the personal
participation of the learners,
materials which relate the world of the book to the world
of the learner
the absence of activities which could threaten self-esteem
and cause humiliation.
The most important (and possibly least
researched) factor is that of the ‘voice’ of
the materials. Conventionally, language-
learning materials are de-voiced and
anonymous. They are usually written in a semi-
formal style and reveal very little about the
personality, interests and experiences of the
writer.
Materials should take into account that the positive effects
of instruction are usually delayed
Research into the acquisition of language shows that it is
a gradual rather than an instantaneous process and that
this is equally true for instructed as well as informal
acquisition.
Acquisition results from the gradual and dynamic
process of internal generalization rather than from
instant adjustments to the learner’s internal grammar.
It follows that learners cannot be expected to learn a
new feature and be able to use it effectively in the same
lesson. They might be able to rehearse the feature,
to retrieve it from short-term memory or to
produce it when prompted by the teacher or the
materials. But this does not mean that learning has
already taken place.
Most of you are familiar with the situation in which
learners get a new feature correct in the lesson in which
it is taught but then get it wrong the following week.
This is partly because they have not yet had
enough time, instruction and exposure for learning
to have taken place.
The inevitable delayed effect of instruction suggests that
no textbook can really succeed if it teaches
features of the language one at a time and expects
the learners to be able to use them straightaway.
But this incremental approach is popular with many
publishers, writers, teachers and learners as it can
provide a reassuring illusion of system, simplicity and
progress. Therefore, adaptation of existing
approaches rather than replacement with radical
new ones is the strategy most likely to succeed.
So, for example, the conventional textbook approach of PPP
Presentation-Practice-Production) (could be used to promote
durable learning if the objective of the Production phase was seen
as reinforcement rather than correct production and if this was
followed in subsequent units by more exposure and more
presentation relating to the same feature.
The Production phase could be postponed to another unit
which is placed after further exposure, instruction and
practice have been provided.
The initial Production phase could be used to provide output which
would enable the learners to notice the mismatch between what
they are doing and what proficient speakers typically do.
In order to facilitate the gradual process of acquisition, it
is important for materials to recycle instruction and to
provide frequent and ample exposure to the instructed
language features in communicative use.
This is particularly true of vocabulary acquisition, which requires
frequent, spaced and varied recycling in order to be successful
(Nation 2003, 2005; Nation and Wang 1999).
It is equally important that the learners are not forced into
premature production of the instructed features (they will get them
wrong) and that tests of proficiency are not conducted immediately
after instruction (they will indicate failure or an illusion of success).
The End