Principles of Efective Materials Development

By Prof. Karen Dennis Stewart

Writer Brian Tomlinson and others, made studies about ELT materials. Material should not be random ctreations from repertoire of other materials that was successfully used. For Tomlinson material should be coherent and princile applications of:

• theories of language acquisition
• principles teaching
• our current knowledge
• the result of systematic observation and evaluation.

Tomlinson proposes 15 principles for material development, here are four principles:

• exposse the learners to language in authentic use.
• help learners to pay attention to features of authintic input
• provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to acheive communicative purposes.
• provide opportunities for outcome feedback

Also he agreed with the importance of:

• flexibility
• moving from text to language
• providing engaging content
• learners development

PROPOSAL FOR PRINCIPLED APPROACHES TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIAL

Tomlinson proposal for principles approaches are based on his 40 years experience of teaching English, developing language-learning materials.

• 
  
  a prerequisite for language acquisition is that the learners are exposed to rich, meaningful, and comprehension input of language in use.
• 
  
  in order for learners to maximize their exposure to language in use, they need to be engaged both effectively and cognitively in the language experience.
• 
  
  language learners who achieve positive affect are much more likely to achieve communicative competence than those who do not.
• 
  
  Second language learners can benefit from using those mental resource that they typically utilize when acquiring and using the L1
• 
  
  language learners can benefit from noticing salient features of the input.
• 
  
  learners need opportunities to use language to try to achieve communicative purposes.

When developing classroom materials we should consider principles of language teaching. Some principles followed by Tomlinson are:

• 
  
  the content and methodology of the teaching should be consistent with the objectives of the course and should meet the need and want of the learners.
• 
  
  the teaching should be designed so as to provide the learners with learning opportunities that will help then to develop educationally in the sense that they become more mature, m0re critically astute, and more confident as a result of the course.
• the teacher needs to be able to personalize and localize the materials and to relate them in different ways to the needs, wants, and learning-style preferences of individual learners.

There are many other principles of language teaching, and there are also language teaching realities to cater to in designing materials.