material Merged (2)

?
What is Materials Development
Materials development is both a field of study and a practical undertaking.
As a field it studies the principles and procedures of the design, implementation

and evaluation of language teaching materials.
As an undertaking it involves the production, evaluation and adaptation of

language teaching materials, by teachers for their own classrooms and by
materials writers for sale or distribution.
Interaction of These Two
Ideally these two aspects of materials development are interactive in that the
theoretical studies inform and are informed by the development and use of
classroom material.
There is also a third aspect of materials development, that is the use of

materials development as a means of facilitating and deepening the personal
and professional development of teachers.
Every teacher is a materials developer’ (English Language Centre, 1997) who
needs to be able to evaluate, adapt and produce materials so as to ensure a
match between their learners and the materials they use.
It is also because of the realization that one of the most effective ways of
‘helping teachers to understand and apply theories of language learning – and
to achieve personal and professional development – is to provide monitored
experience of the process of developing materials’ (Tomlinson, 2001, p. 67).
This concrete experience of developing materials as a basis for reflective

observation and conceptualization enables teachers to theorize their practice
(Schon, 1987).
A fourth aspect of materials development is the use of materials to actualize

new pedagogical or content approaches in ELT
What Are Materials?
Materials’ ‘include anything which can be used to facilitate the learning of a

language.
They can be linguistic, visual, auditory or kinesthetic, and they can be

presented
in print, through live performance or display, or on cassette, CD-ROM, DVD or
the internet’ (Tomlinson, 2001, p. 66).
They can be instructional, experiential, elicitative or exploratory, in that they can

inform learners about the language, they can provide experience of the
language in use, they can stimulate language use or they can help learners to
make discoveries about the language for themselves.
Despite the recent ‘explosion’ of electronic materials most language learning
materials are still published as books.
What Should Drive Materials?
The obvious answer to this question is that the needs and wants of the learners
should drive the materials.
But teacher's have needs and wants to be satisfied too (Masuhara, 2011)
and so do administrators, with their concerns for standardization and conformity

with a syllabus, a theory of language learning, the requirements of
examinations
and the language policies of a government

These needs and wants are not irreconcilable and they can
best be satisfied by localized projects which consult
learners, teachers and administrators before, during and
after the materials writing process.
...An Example
Prior to the writing of the book, students and teachers were consulted about
what they wanted and needed from the book.
During the writing of the book, Ministry of Education officials were present
throughout each day in which 30 teachers wrote the materials, and the
syllabus, the curriculum and the examination documents were frequently
referred to.
After the writing of the book, it was trialled extensively and revised in relation to
the feedback which was provided by students, teachers and officials.
Many of the projects decided to adopt a text-driven approach rather than a
syllabus- driven, grammar-driven, functions-driven, skills-driven, topic-driven or
theme driven approach.
That is, they decided to start by finding written and spoken texts with a potential
for affective and cognitive engagement, and then to use a flexible framework to
develop activities connected to these texts.
Later on they would cross-check with the syllabus and the examination
requirements to ensure satisfactory coverage
The situation is complicated in the case of materials
produced by publishers for commercial distribution. ‘The
author is generally concerned to produce a text that
teachers will find innovative, creative, relevant to their
learners’ needs, and that they will enjoy teaching from.. .
. The publisher is primarily motivated by financial
success’ (Richards, 2001, p. 257).
Publishers obviously aim to produce excellent books
which will satisfy the wants and needs of their users but
their need to maximize profits makes them cautious and
conservative and any compromise with the authors
tends still to be biased towards perceived market needs
rather than towards the actual needs and wants of the
learners.
Who Should Develop the Materials?
These days most commercial materials are written by professional materials

writers writing to a brief determined by the publishers from an analysis of
market needs (Amrani, 2011).
These writers are usually very experienced and competent, they are familiar
with the realities of publishing and the potential of the new technologies and
they write full-time for a living.
The books they write are usually systematic, well designed, teacher-friendly
and thorough. But they often lack energy and imagination and are sometimes
insufficiently relevant and appealing to the actual learners who use them.
Teachers as Material
!!! Developers
Dudley Evans and St John (1998) state that ‘only a small proportion of good
teachers are also good designers of course materials’.
This observation is contrary to my experience (Tomlinson, 2001 ), as I have

found that teachers throughout the world only need a little training, experience
and support to become materials writers who can produce imaginative
materials of relevance and appeal to their learners.
This has certainly been the case with teachers on materials development
courses I have run in Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Indonesia, Japan,
Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mauritius, Oman, the Seychelles, Vanuatu and
Vietnam, and on textbook projects I have been a consultant for in Ethiopia,
Bulgaria, China, Turkey and Namibia.
How Should Materials be Developed?
Typically, commercial materials are written over a long period of time by
a pair or small group of writers.
The materials usually take a long time to produce because these days
most of the materials published are courses (supplementary books are
generally not considered profitable enough), because most courses
have multiple components (e.g. Bradfield and Lethaby (2011) has
seven components per level) and because the important review
process takes time (though many publishers now save time by not
trialling their materials (Amrani, 2011)).
In my experience the result very often is a drop in creative energy as

the process drags on and the eventual publication of competent but
rather uninspiring materials.
Tomlinson's Point of View
My own preference is for a large team approach to writing

materials, which aims at fast first draft production by many
people followed by refinement by a smaller group of
experts. This is the procedure that the Namibian and
.Bilkent projects referred to above decided to follow
A Real Experience
In the writing of the Namibian coursebook, On Target (1996), 30 teachers were

selected to provide a team of varying age, experience and expertise and were
then brought from all over the country to Windhoek. On the first day, I
demonstrated some innovative approaches to extend the teachers’ repertoires of
activity types and to stimulate thought and discussion about the principles of
language learning. On the second day, we worked out a flexible framework to use
in producing the materials and made some decisions together about the use of
illustrations, music, cassettes, etc. Then, for four days the teachers wrote and
monitored materials in small teams while a small group of facilitators supported
them and cross-checked with the syllabus. That way we managed to complete
the first draft of the whole book in one week, and then this was trialled, revised,
edited and published within the year
Benefits
The teachers managed

,To inspire each other with ideas
,To maintain creative energy
To relate their materials to the actual learners who were going to use them
.To suggest useful improvements to each other’s materials
All this was achieved to a far greater degree than I have ever managed when
writing a coursebook by myself, with a partner or in a small team working at a
.distance from each other
And all this was achieved because a large group of enthusiastic teachers were
working together for a short time
? How Should Materials Be Evaluated
Materials are often evaluated in an ad hoc, impressionistic way, which tends to

favour materials
which have face validity (i.e. which conform to people’s expectations of what
(materials should look like
.which are visually appealing
In order to ensure that materials are devised, revised, selected and adapted in
reliable and valid ways, we need to ensure that materials evaluation
establishes procedures which are thorough, rigorous, systematic and principled
.
This often takes time and effort but it could prevent many of the mistakes which
are made by writers, publishers, teachers, institutions and ministries and which
.can have negative effects on learners’ potential to benefit from their courses
? Should Texts Be Authentic
Materials aiming at explicit learning usually contrive examples of the language which
,focus on the feature being taught. Usually these examples are presented in short, easy
specially written or simplified texts or dialogues, and it is argued that they help the
.learners by focusing their attention on the target feature
The counterargument is that such texts overprotect learners, deprive them of the
opportunities for acquisition provided by rich texts and do not prepare them for the realit
of language use, whereas authentic texts (i.e. texts not written especially for language
.teaching) can provide exposure to language as it is typically used
A similar debate continues in relation to materials for the teaching of reading and
listening skills and materials for extensive reading and listening. One side argues
that simplification and contrivance can facilitate learning; the other side argues
that they can lead to faulty learning and that they deny the learners opportunities
.for informal learning and the development of self-esteem
Different Views Concerning Authentic Material
.Most researchers argue for authenticity and stress its motivating effect on learners (e.g
;Bacon and Finneman, 1990; Kuo, 1993; Little et al., 1994; Mishan, 2005; Gilmore, 2007
.(Rilling and Dantas-Whitney, 2009
. . . However, Widdowson (1984, p. 218) says that ‘pedagogic presentation of language

necessarily involves methodological contrivance which isolates features from their natural
.’surroundings
Day and Bamford (1998, pp. 54–62) attack the ‘cult of authenticity’ and advocate simplified
.’reading texts which have the ‘natural properties of authenticity
Ellis (1999, p. 68) argues for ‘enriched input’ which provides learners with input which has
been flooded with exemplars of the target structure in the context of meaning focused
.activities
Day (2003) claims there is no evidence that authenticity facilitates acquisition but that there
is evidence that learners find authentic texts more difficult
Redefining Conventional View of Authenticity
Some researchers have challenged the conventional view of authenticity and redefined
it, for example,
in relation to the learners culture (Prodromou, 1992; Trabelsi, 2010),
in relation to the learners’ interaction with a text or task (Widdowson, 1978),
in relation to the ‘authenticity of the learner’s own interpretation’ (Breen, 1985)
in relation to the personal engagement of the learner (van Lier, 1996)

Tomlinsons Point of View Concerning Authenticity
The most useful definition of an authentic text is ‘one which is produced in order to
communicate rather than to teach’ (Tomlinson, 2012b) and the most useful definition of
an authentic task is ‘one which involves the learners in communicating to achieve an
outcome, rather than to practice the language’ (ibid.).
I believe that all texts and tasks should be authentic in these ways, otherwise the
learners are not being prepared for the realities of language use.
I also believe that meaningful engagement with authentic texts is a prerequisite for the
development of communicative and strategic competence but that authentic texts can be
created by interactive negotiation between learners as well as presented to them.
I also believe, though, that it is useful for learners to sometimes pay attention to linguistic
or discoursal features of authentic texts which they have previously been engaged by.
What is the Future of Materials Development?
Publishers will probably still stick to what they know they can sell; but the hope is that a
decrease in customer satisfaction and an increase in local materials development
projects will help some of the following to develop:
• even greater personalization and localization of materials;

• greater flexibility of materials and creativity in their use;
• more respect for the learners’ intelligence, experience and communicative
competence;
• more affectively engaging content;
• a greater emphasis on multicultural perspectives and awareness;
• more opportunities for learners with experiential (and especially kinaesthetic) learning
style preferences;
• engaging the learner in the language learning process as experienced, intelligent and
interesting individual;
• using multidimensional approaches to language learning (Tomlinson, 2010).
Materials Adaptation
MOGHADDAM
FALL 2023
● L2 Materials Development has played a significant role as an
academic discipline for a number of years. However, there seems
to be a gap between theoretical findings in Second Language
Acquisition (SLA) research and practice in many course books and
published materials.
● 1. there is a mismatch between some of the pedagogic procedures
of current textbooks and what second language acquisition
researchers have discovered about the process of learning a
second or foreign language’ (Tomlinson, 1998, p. 265).
● 2. many examples of materials produced for language teaching and
learning purposes seem to follow a very similar format: they only
differ in shape and visual impact, but are very often based on
similar topics and activities, hence similar objectives.
Here are a few common characteristics:
The activities are mostly based on language manipulation, such as drills,

comprehension tests, substitution tables;
The topics are generally trivial and very often not relevant to the learners’ needs
and
interests;
The objectives are usually based on the main format of the Presentation,
Practice,
Production Approach (PPP), which seems to be still overwhelmingly present in
so many textbooks for language teaching and yet has very little basis in
research.
3. the topics seem to reoccur particularly in many low-level books, where the
lower the level, the less controversial and provocative the content seems to be.
Particularly for materials published for beginners, for example, the following
seem very commonly found:
Introductions
Numbers
Food & Drink
Time Expressions
Expressions of Quantity/Shopping
The Future
Transport
A number of potential limitations can be identified with these types of language
teaching materials:
• they tend to undermine and demotivate learners;

• they are rather trivial;
• they are not new or innovative;
• they tend to give a very stereotypical image of the target language;
• they do not take into consideration their main users, more specifically learners
and
teachers
In order to reduce the above-mentioned gap between SLA research principles
and classroom practice, the adaptation of courses is proposed.
The conventional approach to materials adaptation generally relates to a

number of changes to the materials, such as, for example, the process of
deleting, reordering or adding.
We take such a process further and perhaps propose a more radical view on
adapting courses, with the aim of drawing a rationale behind materials
adaptation.
It can involve changing activities, topics and therefore objectives. It make the
materials more relevant and useful for their users.
Material Adaptation
Adapting materials is an inevitable process as it is always carried out as part of
classroom practice. The simple fact of using a piece of teaching/learning
materials inevitably means adapting it to the particular needs of a specific
teaching and learning scenario.
A teacher- centered approach to adaptation

A learner- centered approach to adaptation
Adaptation as critical awareness development
The importance of materials adaptation as a relevant and useful link between
the reality of the language classroom and SLA research findings, creates a
great need to develop such a process further and put it into practice in a more
systematic manner.
However, materials adaptation is still left to the teachers’ hands, and it is largely
based simply on their intuition and experience.
On the one hand, research has, for decades, stressed the importance of the
learner and their role in the language classroom; On the other hand, particularly
as far as adapting courses is concerned, learners are traditionally left with a
rather passive role.
● Clarke (1989) provides a typical example of a learner- centered
approach to adaptation: he acknowledges the importance of learner
involvement in the adaptation process and he distinguishes what he
calls a Negotiated Syllabus, from an Externally Imposed Syllabus.
● The former is internally generated and it is a result of the product of
negotiation between teacher and students. The latter is a syllabus
imposed by an external body such as the teacher, the institution or
any other administrative authority. There is, however, a fine line
between the Negotiated Syllabus and the Externally Imposed
Syllabus in the sense that the former turns out to also be an
imposed syllabus for some reasons.
A much more active learner’s role in the adaptation process appears when the
learner is given the opportunity of sharing the ownership of the classroom
and of the materials used in the classroom, with the teacher. Therefore,
learners participate in the adaptation process and also provide classroom
input so that, gradually they share the control of what happens in the
classroom, and also over their own learning.
● In this context, adapting courses can be used as an awareness
development activity (Tomlinson, 2003a, 2003b) that potentially facilitates
learner involvement and empowers learners to develop their critical
thinking. This approach, promotes the use of materials adaptation to take
awareness development principles further and apply them also to teacher
development (Wright and Bolitho, 1993; Bolitho, 2003; Bolitho et al., 2003).
The above-mentioned approach to adapting courses can be considered in
relation to at least two teaching and learning scenarios, as a tool for critical
awareness development:
1 The language classroom

2 Teacher development courses
A Model for Adapting Courses
As can be seen in the above example, the process of adapting courses is
inevitably based on an initial evaluation. Moreover, if, on the one hand,
adapting courses becomes also a responsibility of the learners, on the other
hand, material developers should produce materials with the specific aim of
facilitating the evaluation and inevitable adaptation process: materials
purposely designed to be adapted later by their users.
In the traditional approach to materials writing, where the whole structure is

prescriptively designed, learners and teachers have to follow activities in a
specifically controlled manner
New Approach to Material Development
First, the above mentioned controlled approach should be broken and replaced
by a set of materials much more flexible and open to different interpretations
and adaptations. Second, the element of critical awareness development
should generally be preceded by an aesthetic experience of the input provided,
as further explained later on in this section. Such an alternative model for
adapting courses can be used also as a way to make materials more relevant
to a wider group of learners, reducing the risk of becoming superficial and
trivial.
List of Key Features in Materials Adaptation
The following is a list of basic key points to take into account when evaluating
and adapting courses. However, these can be used simply as a proposal to be
developed further and adapted to different classroom situations.
Learner-Centeredness and Critical Awareness
Development
• There is a large amount of literature on learner-centered approaches and
principles (Nunan, 1988). However, there are very few language teaching
and learning materials which, in my opinion, are truly learner-centered, in
the sense that their aims are the development of learners’ critical
awareness, linguistic empowerment and therefore learner autonomy. The
materials should put learners at the center of the learning process and
make them input providers (hence part of the materials adaption process),
whereas teachers should be facilitators and coordinators and should
provide a stimulus, a starting point, for language exposure as well as for
different approaches to learning. Materials adaptation, therefore, should be
shared between materials developers, teachers and learners.
Flexibility and Choice
Materials should be flexible, in the sense that they should provide learners with
the possibility of choosing different activities, tasks, projects and approaches,
thus of adapting the materials to their own learning needs. At the same time,
however, given the fact that the majority of learners are not used to this type of
approach to learning, they should also be exposed to a variety of different
activities and approaches, so that they themselves become more flexible
learners, having experienced different ways of learning. Materials, then, should,
on the one hand, provide choice but, on the other hand, also enable learners to
develop a variety of skills and learning styles by encouraging them to
experience a wide range of tasks and approaches, so that they may also
become more independent learners. Materials can, for example, include a
choice of tasks ranging from analytical ones (such as those based on
grammatical awareness) to more creative ones (such as those based on
creative writing). Learners can be encouraged to experience them all at one
point and then also make choices at a later stage.
Open-Endedness and Aesthetic Experience
If materials allow only one possible right answer, they do not leave space for
interpretation and adaptation, whereas if they are open-ended they can
become more relevant to learners. In many ways this is related to the concept
of Aesthetic Experience, an idea which originated from the theory of Aesthetic
Response as put forward by Rosenblatt (1995). Aesthetic Response refers to
the process of reacting spontaneously when reading literary texts, hence it
involves interaction between readers, language and texts (Iser, 1978; Hirvela,
1996). Some of the major elements of such type of experiential response, such
as the voice of the narrator and that of the reader, as well as the role of the
receiver and the one of the producer of the literary input, become overlapping
and interchangeable. Aesthetic Experience, therefore, typically represents the
immediate response to language and literature experienced by the receiver and
the producer, as well as their later interpretations and reactions. Literature and
Aesthetic Experience are inevitably part of a subjective process which is
created every time the text is read or written. Reading and interpretation are
always different: we have different reactions every time we aesthetically
experience a poem, a novel, etc. (Saraceni, 2010).
A parallel point should be drawn here between aesthetic experience and
materials
adaptation. Aesthetic Experience (Rosenblatt, 1994, 1995; Saraceni, 2010)
promotes the subjectivity of texts and their various interpretations. In a similar
way, also materials for teaching and learning purposes should promote an
aesthetic experience, in the sense that they should, not only be based on
right/wrong testing and practice but, rather, they should also focus on open-
ended tasks and texts. For example, in relation to texts, materials should
include also those which are open to many different ideas and points of view
and encourage a variety of interpretations. Therefore, texts and tasks should be
included with the main purpose of promoting a subjective response, whether
this be in relation to a reading text or to a listening one. If materials present
open spaces or gaps (Eco, 1993, 1995), they can allow learners to form their
own interpretations and ideas and, therefore, to take control of the adaptation
process. In this context, the aim of materials moves from comprehension
testing, which allows only a rather superficial intake of the input, to a deeper
understanding and awareness of the language exposure, with the emphasis on
individual differences.
Relevance
In an attempt to draw a link between the adaptation process and reading,

materials left open- ended, as explained above, have the potential to become
relevant to the learners when they fill those gaps with their ideas,
interpretations and discussions. It is only at this level that materials acquire
significance and become potentially beneficial for the learners. It is, in fact, by
virtue of such contributions that materials can be adapted and developed
further. Adaptation is, therefore, essential in making materials relevant and
potentially more effective for learning development.
Universality
• Materials should be based on universally appealing topics, which

are culturally provoking in the sense that they are culturally specific
but, at the same time, they are present in all cultures. A rich source
of this type of topics comes from Literature, which typically involves
themes based on life experiences, feelings, relationships. These are
present in all cultures but they can be looked at from different angles
and experienced in different ways. Universality of topics provides a
stimulus for discussion and it enables learners to focus on and gain
a better understanding of cultural differences as well as cultural.
Authentic and non-Authentic Input
• Materials should be based on authentic texts, those texts which have been
written for any purpose other than language teaching. At the same time,
there should also be a combination of authentic and non-authentic tasks,
based on realistic scenarios, in order to expose the learners to realistic
input. In my view a significant role is played by the use of non-authentic
tasks with authentic texts. For example, tasks which aim at drawing the
learners’ attention to certain linguistic features of the input with activities
based on texts selected from authentic sources, can be beneficial for
language awareness development
Provocative Topics and Tasks
● Materials should include topics and activities that can potentially provoke a
reaction, hence an aesthetic experience (whether it be positive or negative)
that is personal and subjective. These can make learning more engaging
and perhaps also more humanistic.
● From my point of view, topics are not to be considered intrinsically
provocative but the activities associated with them can potentially make the
materials more or less provocative, thus more or less engaging. In my
experience, however, certain topics related to Personal Life, Family,
Parents, Relationships, Emotions, Inner Self can achieve this aim more
effectively, rather than those topics very often associated with controversy
such as Politics, War, Racism, Drugs, etc.
However, although students generally feel engaged when exposed to
provocative topics, at first a few may show some resistance to such
personal depths. Students in general are used to traditional ways of
being taught; they are not always ready to be challenged and to step
beyond the usual safer topics. In some cases, they are so used to
teacher-centered teaching, that they find it more reassuring and
credible. This, however, further demonstrates their need to be
gradually exposed to different types of input, to enable them to
express their opinions and to further develop their interpretations and
points of view, hence to develop their flexibility as learners.
Part A
Evaluation and
Adaptation of
Materials
1
Materials Evaluation
Brian Tomlinson
What is materials evaluation?

Materials evaluation is a procedure that involves measuring the value (or potential
value) of a set of learning materials. It involves making judgements about the effect
of the materials on the people using them and it tries to measure some or all of the
following:
ll the appeal of the materials to the learners;

ll the credibility of the materials to learners, teachers and administrators;
ll the validity of the materials (i.e. Is what they teach worth teaching?);
ll the reliability of the materials (i.e. Would they have the same effect with
different groups of target learners?);
ll the ability of the materials to interest the learners and the teachers;
ll the ability of the materials to motivate the learners;
ll the value of the materials in terms of short-term learning (important, for
example, for performance on tests and examinations);
ll the value of the materials in terms of long-term learning (of both language
and of communication skills);
ll the learners’ perceptions of the value of the materials;
ll the teachers’ perceptions of the value of the materials;
ll the assistance given to the teachers in terms of preparation, delivery and
assessment;
22 Developing Materials for Language Teaching
ll the flexibility of the materials (e.g. the extent to which it is easy for a
teacher to adapt the materials to suit a particular context);
ll the contribution made by the materials to teacher development;
ll the match with administrative requirements (e.g. standardization across
classes, coverage of a syllabus, preparation for an examination).
It is obvious from a consideration of the effects above that no two evaluations can
be the same, as the needs, objectives, backgrounds and preferred styles of the
participants will differ from context to context. This is obviously true of an evaluation of
the value of a coursebook for use with 16-year-olds preparing for a Ministry of Education
Examination in South Africa compared to an evaluation of the same coursebook for use
with teenagers and young adults being prepared for the Cambridge First Certificate
at a language school in Oxford. It is also true for the evaluation of a set of materials
prepared for Foundation Level learners in a university in January compared with a set
of materials for the same type of learners prepared in the same university in July. The
main point is that it is not the materials which are being evaluated but their effect on
the people who come into contact with them (including, of course, the evaluators).
An evaluation is not the same as an analysis. It can include an analysis or follow from
one, but the objectives and procedures are different. An evaluation focuses on the users
of the materials and makes judgements about their effects. No matter how structured,
criterion referenced and rigorous an evaluation is, it will be essentially subjective. On
the other hand, an analysis focuses on the materials and it aims to provide an objective
analysis of them. It ‘asks questions about what the materials contain, what they aim
to achieve and what they ask learners to do’ (Tomlinson, 1999, p. 10). So, for example,
‘Does it provide a transcript of the listening texts?’ is an analysis question which can
be answered by either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. ‘What does it ask the learners to do immediately
after reading a text?’ is also an analysis question and can be answered factually. As a
result of answering many such questions, a description of the materials can be made
which specifies what the materials do and do not contain. On the other hand, ‘Are
the listening texts likely to engage the learner?’ is an evaluation question and can be
answered on a cline between ‘Very unlikely’ and ‘Very likely’. It can also be given a
numerical value (e.g. 2 for ‘Unlikely’) and after many such questions have been asked
about the materials, subtotal scores and total scores can be calculated and indications
can be derived of the potential value of the materials and of subsections of them.
For example, a coursebook which scores a total of 75 per cent or more is likely to
be generally effective but, if it scores a subtotal of only 55 per cent for listening, it is
unlikely to be effective for a group of learners whose priority is to develop their listening
skills. See Littlejohn (2011) for an example and discussion of materials analysis and
Tomlinson et al. (2001), Masuhara et al. (2008) and Tomlinson and Masuhara (2013) for
examples of materials evaluation.
A detailed analysis of a set of materials can be very useful for deciding, for example,
if anything important has been missed out of a draft manuscript, for deciding how
closely it matches the requirements of a particular course and as a database for a
Materials Evaluation 23
subsequent evaluation of the materials. Ideally analysis is objective but analysts are
often influenced by their own ideology and their questions are biased accordingly. For
example, in the question ‘Does it provide a lot of guided practice?’, the phrase ‘a lot of’
implies it should do and this could interfere with an objective analysis of the materials.
Analysts also often have a hidden agenda when designing their instruments of analysis.
For example, an analyst might ask the question ‘Are the dialogues authentic?’ in order
to provide data to support an argument that intermediate coursebooks do not help
to prepare learners for the realities of conversation. This is legitimate if the analysis
questions are descriptive and the subsequent data provided is open to evaluative
interpretation. For example, I conducted an analysis of ten lower-level coursebooks
(Tomlinson, 1999, p. 10) to provide data to support my argument that such books were
too restricted in their emphasis on language form, on language practice rather than
use and on low-level decoding skills. My data revealed that nine out of the ten books
were form and practice focused and that in these books there were five times more
activities involving the use of low-level skills (e.g. pronouncing a word) than there were
involving the use of high-level skills (e.g. making inferences). I was then able to use my
data to argue the need for lower-level coursebooks to be more holistic and meaning
focused and to be more help to the learners in their development of high-level skills.
But a different analysis could have used the same instruments and the same data to
argue that lower-level coursebooks were helping learners to develop from a confident
base of low-level skills.
Many publications on materials evaluation mix analysis and evaluation and make
it very difficult to use their suggested criteria because, for example, in a numerical
evaluation most analysis questions would result in 1 or 5 on a 5-point scale and would
thus be weighted disproportionately when combined with evaluation questions, which
tend to yield 2, 3 or 4. For example Mariani (1983, pp. 28–9) includes in a section on
‘Evaluate your coursebook’ such analysis questions as, ‘Are there any teacher’s notes
. . .’ and ‘Are there any tape recordings?’ alongside such evaluation questions as, ‘Are
the various stages in a teaching unit adequately developed’. And Cunningsworth (1984,
pp. 74–9) includes both analysis and evaluation questions in his ‘Checklist of Evaluation
Criteria’. Cunningsworth does recognize the problem of mixing these different types of
questions by saying that, ‘Some of the points can be checked off either in polar terms
(i.e. yes or no) or where we are talking about more or less of something, on a gradation
from 1 to 5’ (1984, p. 74). My preference for separating analysis from evaluation is
shared by Littlejohn (2011), who presents a general framework for analysing materials
(pp. 182–98), which he suggests could be used prior to evaluation and action in a
model which is sequenced as follows:
ll Analysis of the target situation of use.

ll Materials analysis.
ll Match and evaluation (determining the appropriacy of the materials to the
target situation of use).
ll Action.
Principles in materials evaluation

Many evaluations are impressionistic, or at best are aided by an ad hoc and very
subjective list of criteria. In my view it is very important that evaluations (even the most
informal ones) are driven by a set of principles and that these principles are articulated
by the evaluator(s) prior to the evaluation. In this way greater validity and reliability can
be achieved and fewer mistakes are likely to be made. In developing a set of principles
it is useful to consider the following.
The evaluator’s theory of learning and teaching

All teachers develop theories of learning and teaching which they apply in their
classrooms (even though they are often unaware of doing so). Many researchers (e.g.
Schon, 1983) argue that it is useful for teachers to try to achieve an articulation of
their theories by reflecting on their practice. For example Edge and Wharton (1998,
p. 297) argue that reflective practice can not only lead to ‘perceived improvements in
practice but, more importantly, to deeper understandings of the area investigated’. In
a similar way I am going to argue that the starting point of any evaluation should be
reflection on the evaluator’s practice leading to articulation of the evaluator’s theories
of learning and teaching. In this way evaluators can make overt their predispositions
and can then both make use of them in constructing criteria for evaluation and be
careful not to let them weight the evaluation too much towards their own bias. At the
same time evaluators can learn a lot about themselves and about the learning and
teaching process.
Here are some of my theories, which I have articulated as a result of reflection on
my own and other teachers’ practice:
ll Language learners succeed best if learning is a positive, relaxed and

enjoyable experience.
ll Language teachers tend to teach most successfully if they enjoy their role
and if they can gain some enjoyment themselves from the materials they
are using.
ll Learning materials lose credibility for learners if they suspect that the
teacher does not value them.
ll Each learner is different from all the others in a class in terms of his or
her personality, motivation, attitude, aptitude, prior experience, interests,
needs, wants and preferred learning style.
ll Each learner varies from day to day in terms of motivation, attitude, mood,
perceived needs and wants, enthusiasm and energy.
ll There are superficial cultural differences between learners from different

countries (and these differences need to be respected and catered for)
but there are also strong universal determinants of successful language
teaching and learning.
ll Successful language learning in a classroom (especially in large classes)
depends on the generation and maintenance of high levels of energy.
ll The teacher is responsible for the initial generation of energy in a lesson;
good materials can then maintain and even increase that energy.
ll Learners only learn what they really need or want to learn.
ll Learners often say that what they want is focused language practice but
they often seem to gain more enjoyment and learning from activities which
stimulate them to use the target language to say something they really
want to say.
ll Learners think, say and learn more if they are given an experience or text
to respond to than if they are just asked for their views, opinions and
interests.
ll The most important thing that learning materials have to do is to help the
learner to connect the learning experience in the classroom to their own
life outside the course.
ll The more novel (or better still bizarre) the learning experience is the more
impact it is likely to make and it is more likely to contribute to long- term
acquisition.
ll The most important result that learning materials can achieve is to engage
the emotions of learners. Laughter, joy, excitement, sorrow and anger can
promote learning. Neutrality, numbness and nullity cannot.
I could go on for pages more articulating theories which I did not really know I believed
in so strongly. These theories are valid for me in that they have come from seven
years of classroom language learning and forty-seven years of teaching a language
in eight different countries. They will be of considerable help when it comes to me
constructing my own criteria for materials evaluation. However, what is valid for me
from my own experience will not be valid for other evaluators and users of materials
from their experience and I must be careful not to assume that my criteria will be the
correct criteria. For example, from a quick glance at the extracts from my theories
above it is obvious that I favour a holistic rather than a discrete approach to language
learning, that I think flexibility and choice are very important and that I value materials
which offer affective engagement to both the learner and the teacher. I must be careful
not to insist that all learning materials match my requirements.
Learning theory
Research into learning is controversial as there are so many variables involved and local
circumstances often make generalization precarious. However, it is important that the
materials evaluator considers the findings of learning research and decides which of its
findings are convincing and applicable. The conclusions which convince me are that:
ll Deep processing of intake is required if effective and durable learning is to

take place (Craik and Lockhart, 1972). Such processing is semantic in that
the focus of the learner is on the meaning of the intake and in particular on
its relevance to the learner.
ll Affective engagement is also essential for effective and durable learning.
Having positive attitudes towards the learning experience and developing
self-esteem while learning are important determiners of successful
learning. And so is emotional involvement. Emotions must be ‘considered
an essential part of learning’ (Williams and Burden, 1997, p. 28) as they
‘are the very centre of human mental life . . . [they] link what is important
for us to the world of people, things and happenings’ (Oatley and Jenkins,
1996, p. 122).
ll Making mental connections is a crucial aspect of the learning process. In
order for learning to be successful, connections need to be made between
the new and the familiar, between what is being learned and the learner’s
life and between the learning experience and its potential value in the
future.
ll Experiential learning is essential (though not necessarily sufficient)
and, in particular, apprehension should come to the learner before
comprehension (Kolb, 1984; Kelly, 1997; Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2000;
Kolb and Kolb, 2009).
ll Learners will only learn if they need and want to learn and if they are
willing to invest time and energy in the process. In other words, both
instrumental and integrative motivation are vital contributors to learning
success (Dornyei and Ushioda, 2009).
ll Multidimensional processing of intake is essential for successful
learning and involves the learner creating a mental representation of the
intake through such mental processes as sensory imaging (especially
visualization), affective association and the use of the inner voice
(Masuhara, 1998, 2005; Tomlinson, 2000a, 2000b, 2001a, 2001c, 2003,
2011b; de Guerro, 2005; Wiley, 2006; Tomlinson and Avila, 2007). As
Berman (1999, p. 2) says, ‘we learn best when we see things as part
of a recognised pattern, when our imaginations are aroused, when we
make natural associations between one idea and another, and when the
information appeals to our senses.’ One of the best ways of achieving
multidimensional representation in learning seems to be a whole person
approach which helps the learner to respond to the learning experience
with emotions, attitudes, opinions and ideas (Jacobs and Schumann, 1992;
Schumann, 1997, 1999; Arnold, 1999).
ll Materials which address the learner in an informal, personal voice are more
likely to facilitate learning than those which use a distant, formal voice
(Beck et al., 1995; Tomlinson, 2001b). Features which seem to contribute to
a successful personal voice include such aspects of orality as:
{{ Informal discourse features (e.g. contracted forms, ellipsis, informal lexis)
{{ The active rather than the passive voice
{{ Concreteness (e.g. examples, anecdotes)
{{ Inclusiveness (e.g. not signalling intellectual, linguistic or cultural
superiority over the learners)
{{ Sharing experiences and opinions
{{ Sometimes including casual redundancies rather than always being
concise. (Tomlinson, 2001b)
As a materials evaluator I would convert the assertions above into criteria for the
assessment of learning material. For example, I would construct such criteria as:
ll To what extent are the materials related to the wants of the learners?
ll To what extent are the materials likely to help the learners to achieve
connections with their own lives?
ll To what extent are the materials likely to stimulate emotional engagement?
ll To what extent are the materials likely to promote visual imaging?
Second language acquisition research (SLA)

SLA research is so far inconclusive and has stimulated many disagreements and
debates (e.g. about the value of the explicit teaching of discrete language points).
However, there is now a sufficient consensus of opinion on certain facilitating features
of language learning for them to be useful in helping to articulate the principles to be
used as a basis of materials evaluation. In Tomlinson (2011a, pp. 6–23) I discussed the
principles of second language acquisition which I think SLA researchers would agree
are relevant to the development of materials for the teaching of languages. Some of
these principles are summarized below:
ll Materials should achieve impact (through novelty, variety, surprise,

bizarreness, attractive presentation and appealing content).
ll Materials should help learners to feel at ease (e.g. through the use of
white space to prevent clutter and the use of texts and illustrations which
they can relate to their own culture, through a supportive approach which
is not always testing them and through the use of a personal voice).
ll Materials should help the learners to develop confidence (e.g. through
‘pushing’ learners slightly beyond their existing proficiency by involving
them in tasks which are challenging but achievable).
ll What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and
useful (Stevick, 1976; Krashen, 1982; Wenden and Rubin, 1987).
ll Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment (e.g. through
giving learners responsibility for making decisions and through encouraging
them to make discoveries about the language for themselves (Rutherford
and Sharwood-Smith, 1988; Tomlinson, 1994, 2007; Bolitho et al., 2003).
ll Learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught both in terms
of linguistic, developmental readiness and of psychological readiness too
(Meisel et al., 1981; Pienemann, 1985, 2005).
ll Materials should expose the learners to language in authentic use (ideally
to a rich and varied input which includes unplanned, semi-planned and
planned discourse and which stimulates mental response). See Mishan
(2005), Rilling and Dantas-Whitney (2009) and Tomlinson (2012).
ll The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input
(so that they are alerted to subsequent instances of the same feature in
future input (Seliger, 1979; White, 1990; Schmidt, 1992; Ortega, 2009).
ll Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target
language to achieve communicative purposes (in order to automatize
existing procedural knowledge, to check the effectiveness of their existing
hypotheses (Swain, 1985, 2005) and to develop strategic competence
(Canale and Swain, 1980)).
ll Materials should take into account that the positive effects of instruction
are usually delayed (and therefore should not expect effective production
immediately to follow initial presentation but should rather ensure
recycling and frequent and ample exposure to the instructed features in
communicative use).
ll Materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles
(Oxford and Anderson, 1995; Oxford, 2002; Anderson, 2005) (and should
therefore ensure that they cater for learners who are predominantly visual,
auditory, kinaesthetic, studial, experiential, analytic, global, dependent or
independent).
ll Materials should take into account that learners differ in affective attitudes
(Wenden and Rubin, 1987) (and therefore materials should offer variety and
choice).
ll Materials should maximize learning potential by encouraging intellectual,
aesthetic and emotional involvement which stimulates both right and left
brain activities (through a variety of non-trivial activities requiring a range of
different types of processing).
ll Materials should provide opportunities for outcome feedback (i.e. feedback
on the effectiveness of the learner in achieving communication objectives
rather than just feedback on the accuracy of the output).
In addition to the requirements listed in Tomlinson (2011a) I would like to add that
materials should:
ll help the learner to develop cultural awareness and sensitivity (Tomlinson,

2000b; Byram and Masuhara, 2013);
ll reflect the reality of language use;
ll help learners to learn in ways similar to the circumstances in which they
will have to use the language;
ll help to create readiness to learn (e.g. by helping learners to draw their
attention to the gap between their use of a feature of communication and
the use of that feature by proficient users of the language, or by involving
the learners in a task in which they need to learn something new in order
to be successful);
ll achieve affective engagement (Tomlinson, 2010).
Richards (2001, p. 264) suggests a rather different and briefer list of the ‘qualities each
unit in the materials should reflect’:
ll Gives learners something they can take away from the lesson.
ll Teaches something learners feel they can use.
ll Gives learners a sense of achievement.
ll Practises learning items in an interesting and novel way.
ll Provides a pleasurable learning experience.

ll Provides opportunities for individual practice.
ll Provides opportunities for personalization.
ll Provides opportunities for self-assessment of learning.
The important thing is for materials evaluators to decide for themselves which findings
of SLA research they will use to develop principles for their evaluation. Ultimately what
matters is that an evaluation is principled, that the evaluator’s principles are made overt
and that they are referred to when determining and carrying out the procedures of the
evaluation. Otherwise the evaluation is likely to be ad hoc and mistakes will be made.
A textbook selected mainly because of its attractive appearance could turn out to be
very boring for the learners to use; a review which overemphasizes an irritating aspect
of the materials (e.g. a particular character in a video course) can give a distorted
impression of the value of the materials; a course selected for national use by a ministry
of education because it is the cheapest or because it is written by famous writers and
published by a prestigious publisher could turn out to be a very expensive disaster.
Types of materials evaluation

There are many different types of materials evaluation. It is possible to apply the basic
principles of materials evaluation to all types of evaluation but it is not possible to
make generalizations about procedures which apply to all types. Evaluations differ, for
example, in purpose, in personnel, in formality and in timing. You might do an evaluation
in order to help a publisher to make decisions about publication, to help yourself in
developing materials for publication, to select a textbook, to write a review for a journal
or as part of a research project. As an evaluator you might be a learner, a teacher, an
editor, a researcher, a Director of Studies or an Inspector of English. You might be
doing a mental evaluation in a bookshop, filling in a short questionnaire in class or
doing a rigorous, empirical analysis of data elicited from a large sample of users of the
materials. You might be doing your evaluation before the materials are used while they
are being used or after they have been used. In order to conduct an effective evaluation
you need to apply your principles of evaluation to the contextual circumstances of your
evaluation in order to determine the most reliable and effective procedures.
Pre-use evaluation
Pre-use evaluation involves making predictions about the potential value of materials
for their users. It can be context-free, as in a review of materials for a journal, context-
influenced as in a review of draft materials for a publisher with target users in mind or
context-dependent, as when a teacher selects a coursebook for use with her particular
class. Often pre-use evaluation is impressionistic and consists of a teacher flicking
through a book to gain a quick impression of its potential value (publishers are well
aware of this procedure and sometimes place attractive illustrations in the top right-
hand corner of the right-hand page in order to influence the flicker in a positive way).
Even a review for a publisher or journal, and an evaluation for a ministry of education
is often ‘fundamentally a subjective, rule of thumb activity’ (Sheldon, 1988, p. 245) and
often mistakes are made. Making an evaluation criterion-referenced can reduce (but
not remove) subjectivity and can certainly help to make an evaluation more principled,
rigorous, systematic and reliable. This is especially true if more than two evaluators
conduct the evaluation independently and then average their conclusions. For example,
in the review of eight adult EFL courses conducted by Tomlinson et al. (2001), the
four evaluators devised one-hundred-and-thirty-three criteria together and then used
them independently and in isolation to evaluate the eight courses before pooling their
data and averaging their scores. Even then, though, the reviewers admitted that, ‘the
same review, conducted by a different team of reviewers, would almost certainly have
produced a different set of results’ (p. 82).
Making use of a checklist of criteria has become popular in materials evaluations and
certain checklists from the literature have been frequently made use of in evaluations
(e.g. Cunningsworth (1984, 1995), Skierso (1991), Brown (1997), Gearing, (1999)). The
problem though is that no set of criteria is applicable to all situations and, as Byrd
(2001) says, it is important that there is a fit between the materials and the curriculum,
students and teachers. Matthews (1985), Cunningsworth (1995) and Tomlinson (2012)
have also stressed the importance of relating evaluation criteria to what is known
about the context of learning and Makundan and Ahour (2010) in their review of 48
evaluation checklists were critical of most checklists for being too context bound to be
generalizable. Makundan and Ahour (2010) proposed that a framework for generating
flexible criteria would be more useful than detailed and inflexible checklists (a proposition
also made by Ellis (2011) and stressed and demonstrated by Tomlinson (2003b)). Other
researchers who have proposed and exemplified frameworks for generating evaluation
criteria include:
ll McGrath (2002), who suggests a procedure involving materials analysis

followed by first glance evaluation, user feedback and evaluation using
context-specific checklists.
ll Riazi (2003), who suggests, surveying the teaching/learning situation,
conducting a neutral analysis and the carrying out of a belief-driven
evaluation.
ll Rubdy (2003), who suggests a dynamic model of evaluation in which the
categories of psychological validity, pedagogical validity and process and
content validity interact.
ll Mukundan (2006), who describes the use of a composite framework

combining checklists, reflective journals and computer software to evaluate
ELT textbooks in Malaysia.
ll McDonough et al. (2013), who focus on developing criteria evaluating the
suitability of materials in relation to usability, generalizability, adaptability
and flexibility.
Tomlinson and Masuhara (2004, p. 7) proposed the following criteria for evaluating
criteria:
a Is each question an evaluation question?
b Does each question only ask one question?
c Is each question answerable?
d Is each question free of dogma?
e Is each question reliable in the sense that other evaluators would interpret it in
the same way?
Tomlinson (2012) reports these criteria and gives examples from the many checklists in
the literature of evaluation criteria which their use exposes as inadequate in terms of
specificity, clarity, answerability, validity and generalizability.
Whilst-use evaluation
This involves measuring the value of materials while using them or while observing
them being used. It can be more objective and reliable than pre-use evaluation as it
makes use of measurement rather than prediction. However, it is limited to measuring
what is observable (e.g. ‘Are the instructions clear to the learners?’) and cannot claim to
measure what is happening in the learners’ brains. It can measure short-term memory
through observing learner performance on exercises but it cannot measure durable
and effective learning because of the delayed effect of instruction. It is therefore very
useful but dangerous too, as teachers and observers can be misled by whether the
activities seem to work or not. Exactly what can be measured in a whilst-use evaluation
is controversial but I would include the following:
ll Clarity of instructions
ll Clarity of layout
ll Comprehensibility of texts
ll Credibility of tasks
ll Achievability of tasks
ll Achievement of performance objectives

ll Potential for localization
ll Practicality of the materials
ll Teachability of the materials
ll Flexibility of the materials
ll Appeal of the materials
ll Motivating power of the materials
ll Impact of the materials
ll Effectiveness in facilitating short-term learning
Most of the above can be estimated during an open-ended, impressionistic observation

of materials in use but greater reliability can be achieved by focusing on one criterion
at a time and by using pre-prepared instruments of measurement. For example, oral
participation in an activity can be measured by recording the incidence and duration of
each student’s oral contribution, potential for localization can be estimated by noting
the times the teacher or a student refers to the location of learning while using the
materials and even motivation can be estimated by noting such features as student
eye focus, proximity to the materials, time on task and facial animation. Whilst-use
evaluation receives very little attention in the literature, but Jolly and Bolitho (2011)
describe interesting case studies of how student comment and feedback during lessons
provided useful evaluation of materials, which led to improvements being made in the
materials during and after the lessons. Also Tomlinson and Masuhara (2010) report
materials development projects in which whilst-use evaluation was made use of.
Post-use evaluation
Post-use evaluation is probably the most valuable (but least administered) type of
evaluation as it can measure the actual effects of the materials on the users. It can
measure the short-term effect as regards motivation, impact, achievability, instant
learning, etc., and it can measure the long-term effect as regards durable learning and
application. It can answer such important questions as:
ll What do the learners know which they did not know before starting to use
the materials?
ll What do the learners still not know despite using the materials?
ll What can the learners do which they could not do before starting to use
the materials?
ll What can the learners still not do despite using the materials?
ll To what extent have the materials prepared the learners for their
examinations?
ll To what extent have the materials prepared the learners for their post-
course use of the target language?
ll What effect have the materials had on the confidence of the learners?
ll What effect have the materials had on the motivation of the learners?
ll To what extent have the materials helped the learners to become
independent learners?
ll Did the teachers find the materials easy to use?
ll Did the materials help the teachers to cover the syllabus?
ll Did the administrators find the materials helped them to standardize the
teaching in their institution?
In other words, it can measure the actual outcomes of the use of the materials and thus
provide the data on which reliable decisions about the use, adaptation or replacement
of the materials can be made. Ways of measuring the post-use effects of materials
include:
ll tests of what has been ‘taught’ by the materials;

ll tests of what the students can do;
ll examinations;
ll interviews;
ll questionnaires;
ll criterion-referenced evaluations by the users;
ll post-course diaries;
ll post-course ‘shadowing’ of the learners;
ll post-course reports on the learners by employers, subject tutors, etc.
The main problem, of course, is that it takes time and expertise to measure post-use
effects reliably (especially as, to be really revealing, there should be measurement
of pre-use attitudes and abilities in order to provide data for post-use comparison).
But publishers and ministries do have the time and can engage the expertise, and
teachers can be helped to design, administer and analyse post-use instruments of
measurement. Then we will have much more useful information, not only about the
effects of particular courses of materials but about the relative effectiveness of different
types of materials. Even then, though, we will need to be cautious, as it will be very
difficult to separate such variables as teacher effectiveness, parental support, language

exposure outside the classroom, intrinsic motivation, etc.
For a description of the process of post-use evaluation of piloted materials see
Donovan (1998), for descriptions of how publishers use focus groups for post-use
evaluation of materials see Amrani (2011) and for suggestions of how teachers could
do post-use micro-evaluations of materials see Ellis (1998, 2011). For reports of projects
which conducted post-use evaluation of materials in many different countries see
Tomlinson and Masuhara (2010).
Standard approaches to materials evaluation

My experience of materials evaluation in many countries has been rather worrying. I
have sat on National Curriculum committees which have decided which books should
be used in schools purely on the basis of the collective impressions of their members. I
have written reviews of manuscripts for publishers without any criteria being specified
or asked for. I have had my own books considered by Ministry of Education officials
for adoption without any reference to a coherent set of criteria. I have read countless
published reviews (and even written a few myself) which consist of the reviewers’ ad
hoc responses to the materials as they read them. I have conducted major materials
evaluations for publishers and software companies without being given or asked for any
criteria. I wonder how many mistakes I have contributed to. On the other hand, I was
encouraged by a major British publisher to develop a comprehensive set of principled
criteria prior to conducting an evaluation for them and I led a team of evaluators in
developing a set of 133 criteria prior to evaluating eight adult EFL courses for ELT
Journal (Tomlinson et al., 2001).
Most of the literature on materials development has so far focused on materials
evaluation, and useful advice on conducting evaluations can be found in Brown, 1997;
Byrd, 1995; Candlin and Breen, 1980; Cunningsworth, 1984, 1995; Donovan, 1998;
Daoud and Celce-Murcia, 1979; Ellis, 1995, 1998; Grant, 1987; Hidalgo et al., 1995;
Jolly and Bolitho, 1998; Littlejohn, 2011; McDonough, 1998; McDonough et al., 2013;
Mariani, 1983; Richards, 2001; Roxburgh, 1997; Sheldon, 1987, 1988; Skierso, 1991;
Tomlinson, 1999; Tomlinson et al., 2001; and Williams, 1983. Many of the checklists
and lists of criteria suggested in these publications provide a useful starting point for
anybody conducting an evaluation but some of them are impressionistic and biased
(e.g. Brown (1997) awards points for the inclusion of tests in a coursebook and Daoud
and Celce-Murcia (1979, p. 305) include such dogmatic criteria as, ‘Are the vocabulary
items controlled to ensure systematic gradation from simple to complex items?’).
Some of the lists lack coverage, systematicity and/or a principled base, and some give
the impression that they could be used in any materials evaluation (‘there can be no
one model framework for the evaluation of materials; the framework used must be
determined by the reasons, objectives and circumstances of the evaluation’ (Tomlinson,
1999, p. 11)). Most of the lists in the publications above are to some extent subjective
as they are lists for pre-use evaluation and this involves selection and prediction. For
example, Tomlinson et al. (2001, p. 81) say,
We have been very thorough and systematic in our evaluation procedures, and have
attempted to be as fair, rigorous, and objective as possible. However, we must start
this report on our evaluation by acknowledging that, to some extent, our results are
still inevitably subjective. This is because any pre-use evaluation is subjective, both
in its selection of criteria and in the judgements made by the evaluators.
A useful exercise for anybody writing or evaluating language teaching materials would
be to evaluate the checklists and criteria lists from a sample of the publications above
against the following criteria:
ll Is the list based on a coherent set of principles of language learning?

ll Are all the criteria actually evaluation criteria or are they criteria for
analysis?
ll Are the criteria sufficient to help the evaluator to reach useful conclusions?
ll Are the criteria organized systematically (e.g. into categories and
subcategories which facilitate discrete as well as global verdicts and
decisions)?
ll Are the criteria sufficiently neutral to allow evaluators with different
ideologies to make use of them?
ll Is the list sufficiently flexible to allow it to be made use of by different
evaluators in different circumstances?
More useful to a materials evaluator than models of criteria lists (which might not fit
the contextual factors of a particular evaluation) would be a suggested procedure for
developing criteria to match the specific circumstances of a particular evaluation. I
would like to conclude this chapter by suggesting such a procedure below.
Developing criteria for materials evaluation

My experience, both personally and of students and teachers, is that it is extremely
useful to develop a set of formal criteria for use on a particular evaluation and then to
use that set as a basis for developing subsequent context-specific sets. Initially this
is demanding and time-consuming, but it not only helps the evaluators to clarify their
principles of language learning and teaching but it also ensures that future evaluations
(both formal and informal) are systematic, rigorous and, above all, principled. One way
of developing a set of criteria is as follows.
1 Brainstorm a list of universal criteria

Universal criteria are those which would apply to any language learning materials
anywhere for any learners. So, for example, they would apply equally to a video
course for 10-year-olds in Argentina and an English for academic purposes textbook for
undergraduates in Thailand. They derive from principles of language learning and the
results of classroom observation and provide the fundamental basis for any materials
evaluation. Brainstorming a random list of such criteria (ideally with other colleagues)
is a very useful way of beginning an evaluation, and the most useful way I have found
of doing it is to phrase the criteria as specific questions rather than to list them as
general headings.
Examples of universal criteria would be:
ll Do the materials provide useful opportunities for the learners to think for
themselves?
ll Are the target learners likely to be able to follow the instructions?
ll Are the materials likely to cater for different preferred learning styles?
ll Are the materials likely to achieve affective engagement?
Here are the universal criteria used in Tomlinson and Masuhara (2013) to evaluate six
current global coursebooks.
To what extent is the course likely to:
ll provide extensive exposure to English in use?

ll engage the learners affectively?
ll engage the learners cognitively?
ll provide an achievable challenge?
ll help learners to personalize their learning?
ll help the learners to make discoveries about how English is typically used?
ll provide opportunities to use the target language for communication?
ll help the learners to develop cultural awareness?
ll help the learners to make use of the English environment outside the
classroom?
ll cater for the needs of all the learners?
ll provide the flexibility needed for effective localization?
ll help the learners to continue to learn English after the course?
ll help learners to use English as a lingua franca?

ll help learners to become effective communicators in English?
ll achieve its stated objectives?
2 Subdivide some of the criteria

If the evaluation is going to be used as a basis for revision or adaptation of the materials,
or if it is going to be a formal evaluation and is going to inform important decisions, it
is useful to subdivide some of the criteria into more specific questions.
For example:
Are the instructions:

ll succinct?
ll sufficient?
ll self-standing?
ll standardized?
ll separated?
ll sequenced?
ll staged?
Such a subdivision can help to pinpoint specific aspects of the materials which could
gain from revision or adaptation.
3 Monitor and revise the list of universal criteria

Monitor the list and rewrite it according to the following criteria:
Is each question an evaluation question?

If a question is an analysis question (e.g. ‘Does each unit include a test?’) then you can
only give the answer a 1 or a 5 on the 5-point scale which is recommended later in this
suggested procedure. However, if it is an evaluation question (e.g. ‘To what extent are
the tests likely to provide useful learning experiences?’) then it can be graded at any
point on the scale.
Does each question only ask one question?

Many criteria in published lists ask two or more questions and therefore cannot be
used in any numerical grading of the materials. For example, Grant (1987) includes the
following question which could be answered ‘Yes; No’ or ‘No; Yes’: ‘1 Is it attractive?
Given the average age of your students, would they enjoy using it?’ (p. 122). This
question could be usefully rewritten as:
1 Is the book likely to be attractive to your students?
2 Is it suitable for the age of your students?
3 Are your students likely to enjoy using it?
Other examples of multiple questions are:
ll ‘Do illustrations create a favourable atmosphere for practice in reading and

spelling by depicting realism and action?’ (Daoud and Celce-Murcia, 1979,
p. 304)
ll ‘Does the book provide attractive, interesting (and perhaps exciting)
language work, as well as a steady and systematic development of the
language system?’ (Mariani, 1983, p. 29)
Is each question answerable?

This might seem an obvious question but in many published lists of criteria some
questions are so large and so vague that they cannot usefully be answered. Or
sometimes they cannot be answered without reference to other criteria, or they
require expert knowledge of the evaluator.
For example:
‘Is it culturally acceptable?’ (Grant, 1987, p. 122)
‘Does it achieve an acceptable balance between knowledge about the language and
practice in using the language?’ (Ibid.)
‘Does the writer use current everyday language, and sentence structures that follow
normal word order?’ (Daoud and Celce-Murcia, 1979, p. 304)
Is each question free of dogma?

The questions should reflect the evaluators’ principles of language learning but should
not impose a rigid methodology as a requirement of the materials. If they do, the
materials could be dismissed without a proper appreciation of their potential value.
For example, the following examples make assumptions about the pedagogical
procedures of coursebooks which not all coursebooks actually follow:
ll ‘Are the various stages in a teaching unit (what you would probably call
presentation, practice and production) adequately developed?’ (Mariani,
1983, p. 29)
ll Do the sentences gradually increase in complexity to suit the growing
reading ability of the students? (Daoud and Celce-Murcia, 1979, p. 304)
Is each question reliable in the sense that other

evaluators would interpret it in the same way?
Some terms and concepts which are commonly used in applied linguistics are
amenable to differing interpretations and are best avoided or glossed when attempting
to measure the effects of materials. For example, each of the following questions
could be interpreted in a number of ways:
ll Are the materials sufficiently authentic?

ll Is there an acceptable balance of skills?
ll Do the activities work?
ll Is each unit coherent?
There are a number of ways in which each question could be rewritten to make it more
reliable and useful. For example:
ll Do the materials help the learners to use the language in situations they
are likely to find themselves in after the course?
ll Is the proportion of the materials devoted to the development of reading
skills suitable for your learners?
ll Are the communicative tasks useful in providing learning opportunities for
the learners?
ll Are the activities in each unit linked to each other in ways which help the
learners?
4 Categorize the list

It is very useful to rearrange the random list of universal criteria into categories which
facilitate focus and enable generalizations to be made. An extra advantage of doing
this is that you often think of other criteria related to the category as you are doing the
categorization exercise.
Possible categories for universal criteria would be:
ll Learning Principles
ll Cultural Perspective
ll Topic Content
ll Teaching Points
ll Texts
ll Activities
ll Methodology
ll Instructions
ll Design and Layout
5 Develop media-specific criteria

These are criteria which ask questions of particular relevance to the medium used by
the materials being evaluated (e.g. criteria for books, for audio cassettes, for videos,
etc.). Examples of such criteria would be:
ll Is it clear which sections the visuals refer to?

ll Is the sequence of activities clearly signalled?
ll Are the different voices easily distinguished?
ll Do the gestures of the actors help to make the language meaningful in
realistic ways?
Obviously these criteria can also be usefully categorized (e.g. under Illustrations,
Layout, Audibility, Movement).
6 Develop content-specific criteria

These are criteria which relate to the topics and/or teaching points of the materials
being evaluated. ‘Thus there would be a set of topic related criteria which would be
relevant to the evaluation of a business English textbook but not to a general English
coursebook; and there would be a set of criteria relevant to a reading skills book which
would not be relevant to the evaluation of a grammar practice book and vice versa’
(Tomlinson, 1999, p. 11).
Examples of content-specific criteria would be:
ll Do the examples of business texts (e.g. letters, invoices, etc.) replicate

features of real-life business practice?
ll Do the reading texts represent a wide and typical sample of genres?
7 Develop age-specific criteria

These are criteria which relate to the age of the target learners. Thus there would be
criteria which are only suitable for 5-year-olds, for 10-year-olds, for teenagers, for young
adults and for mature adults. These criteria would relate to cognitive and affective
development, to previous experience, to interests and to wants and needs.
Examples of age-specific criteria would be:
ll Are there short, varied activities which are likely to match the attention
span of the learners?
ll Is the content likely to provide an achievable challenge in relation to the
maturity level of the learners?
8 Develop local criteria

These are criteria which relate to the actual or potential environment of use. They are
questions which are not concerned with establishing the value of the materials per se
but rather with measuring the value of the materials for particular learners in particular
circumstances. It is this set of criteria which is unique to the specific evaluation being
undertaken and which is ultimately responsible for most of the decisions made in
relation to the adoption, revision or adaptation of the materials.
Typical features of the environment which would determine this set of materials
are:
ll the type(s) of institution(s);

ll the resources of the institution(s);
ll class size;
ll the background, needs and wants of the learners;
ll the background, needs and wants of the teachers;
ll the language policies in operation;
ll the syllabus;
ll the objectives of the courses;
ll the intensity and extent of the teaching time available;
ll the target examinations;
ll the amount of exposure to the target language outside the classroom.
Examples of local criteria would be:
ll To what extent are the stories likely to interest 15-year-old boys in Turkey?
ll To what extent are the reading activities likely to prepare the students for the
reading questions in the Primary School Leaving Examination in Singapore?
ll To what extent are the topics likely to be acceptable to parents of students
in Iran?
9 Develop other criteria

Other criteria which it might be appropriate to develop could include teacher-specific,
administrator-specific, gender-specific, culture-specific or L1-specific criteria and,
especially in the case of a review for a journal, criteria assessing the match between
the materials and the claims made by the publishers for them.
10 Trial the criteria

It is important to trial the criteria (even prior to a small, fairly informal evaluation) to
ensure that the criteria are sufficient, answerable, reliable and useful. Revisions can
then be made before the actual evaluation begins.
11 Conducting the evaluation

From experience I have found the most effective way of conducting an evaluation is to:
ll make sure that there is more than one evaluator;

ll discuss the criteria to make sure there is equivalence of interpretation;
ll answer the criteria independently and in isolation from the other
evaluator(s);
ll focus in a large evaluation on a typical unit for each level (and then check
its typicality by reference to other units);
ll give a score for each criterion (with some sets of criteria weighted more
heavily than others);
ll write comments at the end of each category;
ll at the end of the evaluation aggregate each evaluator’s scores for each
criterion, category of criteria and set of criteria and then average the scores;
ll record the comments shared by the evaluators;
ll write a joint report.
See Tomlinson et al. (2001) for a report of a large-scale evaluation in which 4 evaluators
from different cultures independently evaluated 8 adult EFL courses using the same
133 criteria (weighted 0–20 for Publisher’s Claims, 0–10 for Flexibility and 0–5 for the
other categories of criteria). See also Masuhara et al. (2008), Tomlinson (2008) and
Tomlinson and Masuhara (2013) for other examples of evaluations.
What is recommended above is a very rigorous, systematic but time-consuming
approach to materials evaluation which I think is necessary for major evaluations
from which important decisions are going to be made. However for more informal
evaluations (or when very little time is available) I would recommend the following
procedure:
1 Brainstorm beliefs
2 Decide on shared beliefs
3 Convert the shared beliefs into universal criteria
4 Write a profile of the target learning context for the materials
5 Develop local criteria from the profile
6 Evaluate and revise the universal and the local criteria
7 Conduct the evaluation
Conclusion
Materials evaluation is initially a time-consuming and difficult undertaking. Approaching
it in the principled, systematic and rigorous ways suggested above can not only help
to make and record vital discoveries about the materials being evaluated but can also
help the evaluators to learn a lot about materials, about learning and teaching and
about themselves. This is certainly what has happened to my students on MA courses
in Ankara, Leeds, Luton, Norwich and Singapore and to the teachers on workshops on
materials evaluation I have conducted all over the world.
Doing evaluations formally and rigorously can also eventually contribute to the
development of an ability to conduct principled informal evaluations quickly and
effectively when the occasion demands (e.g. when asked for an opinion of a new book;
when deciding which materials to buy in a bookshop; when editing other people’s
materials). I have found evaluation demanding but rewarding. Certainly, I have learned
a lot every time I have evaluated materials, whether it be the worldwide evaluation
of a coursebook I once undertook for a British publisher, the evaluation of computer
software I once undertook for an American company, the evaluation of materials I have
done for reviews in ELT Journal or just looking through new materials in a bookshop
every time I visit my daughter in Cambridge. I hope, above all else, that I have learned
to be more open-minded and that I have learned what criteria I need to satisfy when I
write my own best-selling coursebook.
References
Amrani, F. (2011), ‘The process of evaluation: a publisher’s view’, in B. Tomlinson (ed.),
Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 267–95.
2
Adapting Courses:
A Personal View
Claudia Saraceni
Introduction
L2 Materials Development has played a significant role as an academic discipline for
a number of years. However, there seems to be a gap between theoretical findings in
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research and practice in many coursebooks and
published materials. ‘Many think that there is [. . .] a mismatch between some of
the pedagogic procedures of current textbooks and what second language acquisition
researchers have discovered about the process of learning a second or foreign language’
(Tomlinson, 1998, p. 265).
Moreover, many examples of materials produced for language teaching and
learning purposes seem to follow a very similar format: they only differ in shape and
visual impact, but are very often based on similar topics and activities, hence similar
objectives. Here are a few common characteristics:
The activities are mostly based on language manipulation, such as drills,

comprehension tests, substitution tables;
The topics are generally trivial and very often not relevant to the learners’ needs
and interests;
The objectives are usually based on the main format of the Presentation, Practice,
Production Approach (PPP), which seems to be still overwhelmingly present
in so many textbooks for language teaching and yet has very little basis in
research.
Also, the topics seem to reoccur particularly in many low-level books, where the lower
the level, the less controversial and provocative the content seems to be. Particularly
for materials published for beginners, for example, the following seem very commonly
found:
Introductions
Numbers
Food & Drink
Time Expressions
Expressions of Quantity/Shopping
The Future
Transport
A number of potential limitations can be identified with these types of language

teaching materials:
ll they tend to undermine and demotivate learners;

ll they are rather trivial;
ll they are not new or innovative;
ll they tend to give a very stereotypical image of the target language;
ll they do not take into consideration their main users, more specifically
learners and teachers.
It is in this context that adapting courses becomes vital as it can involve changing
activities, topics and therefore objectives. In an attempt to make the materials more
relevant and useful for their users, the conventional approach to materials adaptation
generally relates to a number of changes to the materials, such as, for example, the
process of deleting, reordering or adding. This chapter attempts to take such a process
further and perhaps propose a more radical view on adapting courses, with the aim of
drawing a rationale behind materials adaptation, thus reducing the above-mentioned
gap between SLA research principles and classroom practice. This chapter is, therefore,
proposing the adaptation of courses as the key to achieving such aim.
Adapting materials
Despite the fact that it seems a relatively under-researched discipline, in many
ways adapting materials is an inevitable process as it is always carried out as part
Adapting Courses 51
of classroom practice. The simple fact of using a piece of teaching/learning materials

inevitably means adapting it to the particular needs of a specific teaching and learning
scenario. In the practice of language teaching, this has been accepted for quite a long
time now (Madsen and Bowen, 1978).
The following section outlines the process of materials adaptation from different
points of view.
A teacher-centred approach to adaptation

Having proposed the importance of materials adaptation as a relevant and useful
link between the reality of the language classroom and SLA research findings,
there is obviously a great need to develop such a process further and put it into
practice in a more systematic manner. However, materials adaptation, in the great
majority of cases, is still left to the teachers’ hands, and it is largely based simply
on their intuition and experience. On the one hand, research has, for decades,
stressed the importance of the learner and their role in the language classroom;
many areas of research, have extensively explored and described the advantages
of learner involvement in programme design, methodology, materials selection and
adaptation, since the 1970s and 1980s (Nunan, 1988; Clarke, 1989). On the other
hand, particularly as far as adapting courses is concerned, learners are traditionally
left with a rather passive role.
A learner-centred approach to adaptation

Clarke (1989) provides a typical example of a learner-centred approach to adaptation:
he acknowledges the importance of learner involvement in the adaptation process
and he distinguishes what he calls a Negotiated Syllabus, from an Externally Imposed
Syllabus. The former is internally generated and it is a result of the product of negotiation
between teacher and students. The latter is a syllabus imposed by an external body such
as the teacher, the institution or any other administrative authority. There is, however,
a fine line between the Negotiated Syllabus and the Externally Imposed Syllabus in
the sense that the former turns out, very often, to also be an imposed syllabus for the
reasons given below.
If we write about the learner’s more active role in the adaptation process and his/
her negotiation with the teacher, we are assuming that the syllabus is the product of
cooperation between the teacher and the learners. However, generally in this case,
the teacher’s input tends to become the dominant one, accepted by the learners as
the ‘right one’ and the one to follow, whereas the learners’ ideas on adapting materials
are very often perceived to be ‘wrong’ if different from those of the teacher. This still
comes from the traditional, teacher-centred concept of teachers feeding knowledge
to the class; hence the learner’s role in this process is still rather limited and not truly
learner-centred.
Adaptation as critical awareness development

This chapter advocates a much more active learner’s role in the adaptation process,
whereby the learner is given the opportunity of sharing the ownership of the classroom
and of the materials used in the classroom, with the teacher. Therefore, learners
participate in the adaptation process and also provide classroom input. This is so
that, gradually they share control of what happens in the classroom, hence also over
their own learning. In this context, adapting courses can be used as an awareness
development activity (Tomlinson, 2003a, 2003b) that potentially facilitates learner
involvement and, eventually, empowers learners to develop their critical thinking. This
approach, therefore, promotes the use of materials adaptation to take awareness
development principles further and apply them also to teacher development (Wright
and Bolitho, 1993; Bolitho, 2003; Bolitho et al., 2003).
The above-mentioned approach to adapting courses can be considered in relation
to at least two teaching and learning scenarios, as a tool for critical awareness
development:
1 The language classroom
2 Teacher development courses
Consider the following example of materials designed specifically for a multilingual

group of learners at an intermediate level.
The activities
Pre-reading
1 You are going to read a poem called ‘The Enemies’, by Elizabeth Jennings.
Before you read it, discuss briefly the following, in pairs/small groups of three
or four:
Who and what do you think the poem is about?
2 Considering only the title, what kind of information do you expect to find in this
poem? Think about and write the following:
A list of questions you are asking yourself before you read the poem.
The possible answers to the above questions, you expect to find in this poem.
Reading
3 While reading the poem, note down the following:

See if you can find the answers to the questions you set before; when you
find them, make a note on the text;
Make a note also when you find points you did not expect before;
Adapting Courses 53
Stop reading the poem, if you are not interested anymore and note down
your reasons for stopping.
The following can be used by the teacher as a stimulus and/or a starting point
for the above activity, to be used if necessary. Remember to ask students to
also justify their answers:
Who do you think are the enemies in the poem?

Do they remind you of anybody you know?
What do you think the people in the poem are feeling?
What do you think they are thinking/talking about?
4 Read the poem again and, in your pairs/small groups decide the following, and
underline the parts that help you answer these questions:
How does the poem make you feel? Why?
Which line, word or verse provoked such reactions?
Which line, word or verse, do you think, best represents the whole poem?
Why?
Discuss the above points with your partner(s) and try to explain your answers
to the above questions.
Try to find linguistic features from the poem to justify your answers (consider
the vocabulary, the tense system, the grammar structures used).
Post-reading
5 You are going to write a short adaptation of this poem to create a different text.
You can either choose a text you know, that you associate with the poem, or
produce a new one of your own;
Consider the following list as possible examples/suggestions:
a drawing;
a painting;
a piece of music;
a play;
a film;
a dialogue between the town inhabitants and the strangers arriving to the town.
Working with your partner(s), talk about and take a few notes on what you are
going to change and how you are going to present your own interpretation of
the poem.
Now, describe your text and explain your response to the rest of your class:
how does it relate to the original poem?
The poem
The Enemies
Elizabeth Jennings
Last night they came across the river and

Entered the city. Women were awake
With lights and food. They entertained the band,
Not asking what the men had come to take
Or what strange tongue they spoke
Or why they came so suddenly through the land.
Now in the morning all the town is filled

With stories of the swift and dark invasion;
The women say that not one stranger told
A reason for his coming. The intrusion
Was not for devastation:
Peace is apparent still on hearth and field.
Yet all the city is a haunted place.

Man meeting man speaks cautiously. Old friends
Close up the candid looks upon their face.
There is no warmth in hands accepting hands;
Each ponders, ‘Better hide myself in case
Those strangers have set up their homes in minds
I used to walk in. Better draw the blinds
Even if the strangers haunt in my own house.’
Suggestions for further developments and possible adaptations:

The above are examples of activities that can provide the stimulus for discussion and
are purposely designed to be adapted and developed further by their potential users.
Here they are considered in relation to two main groups of learners: language learners
and teacher trainees.
Here are possible ideas for adaptation and further developments:
To the language learner
A With your groups, you can now choose one of the following projects:
a Find a different text about people considered ‘The Enemies’ in your country
today (e.g. a newspaper article, a short story, a song, an extract from a film);
b Find other poems with a similar theme;
c Find other poems with similar linguistic features you found in activity n.4
above;
Adapting Courses 55
B In the following lesson, you are going to present and discuss your choice of
text to the rest of the class. In your groups, take notes and prepare a short
presentation on your findings. You can use any audio and/or visual aids you want;
C Prepare and focus on at least three points you want to present to and discuss
with your classmates;
To the teacher in training
A Consider the above activities (1 to 5) and the text related to them. You are
going to use them in your next teaching practice lesson. In small groups
decide what you think should be kept and what you think should be changed:
expanded, replaced, added, shortened, supplemented;
B In your groups, discuss and take notes of your reasons behind those
adaptations you considered above;
C When planning the above changes, you can consider, more specifically, the
following elements in relation to your learners’ needs:
the instructions,
the text,
the order of activities,
the presentation,
the potential use of visual/audio aids,
the objectives,
D You are going to teach your next lesson. With your groups first, and with the
rest of the class later, decide how to adapt and develop your activities and
supplementary materials, using your own choice of texts and tasks;
E Teach the lesson you have prepared to your students;
F Take a few notes on your considerations as post-evaluation reflections, after
having used your own materials in your class;
G Prepare a few notes on your post-evaluation to present your findings to the
other trainees in your teacher training class.
The above activities represent only a short example of the type of teaching and learning
materials described in this chapter, used with the aim of developing critical awareness.
In the examples used above, the process of adaptation is left to the learners and to the
trainee teachers. In the former case learners are first exposed and stimulated by the
poem and then are gradually becoming more autonomous in their learning, to follow
their own path and the types of activities they choose. In the latter case with trainee
teachers, the aim is related to the improvement and development of existing materials
for the purpose of developing classroom practice. In both cases, however, materials
adaptation is used as a tool to enhance critical awareness development.
It can be argued that these activities are so open-ended that they may leave the
learner confused about what to do and how to carry out the tasks. However, this
process of awareness development can only be achieved rather slowly and gradually,
getting the learner used to sharing control of the lesson with their teacher, who takes
the roles of co-ordinator and facilitator.
The poem itself is quite open to different interpretations; it offers various points of
discussion and the language used is rather simple and accessible. Learners are also
encouraged to consider their own reading process and their reader response (activities
1, 2, 3). To emphasize their awareness further, the teacher/materials could also choose
to ask the learners to compare the tasks they have just used with more traditional
activities found in a typical example of published materials of their choice.
A model for adapting courses

As can be seen in the above example, the process of adapting courses is inevitably
based on an initial evaluation. Moreover, if, on the one hand, adapting courses becomes
also a responsibility of the learners, on the other hand, this chapter takes the view
that materials developers should produce materials with the specific aim of facilitating
the evaluation and inevitable adaptation process: materials purposely designed to be
adapted later by their users.
In the traditional approach to materials writing, where the whole structure is
prescriptively designed, learners and teachers have to follow activities in a specifically
controlled manner for the unit to achieve its aims and objectives. However, this chapter
promotes an approach to adaptation based on two main points. First, the above mentioned
controlled approach should be broken and replaced by a set of materials much more
flexible and open to different interpretations and adaptations. Second, the element of
critical awareness development should generally be preceded by an aesthetic experience
of the input provided, as further explained later on in this section. Such an alternative
model for adapting courses can be used also as a way to make materials more relevant to
a wider group of learners, reducing the risk of becoming superficial and trivial.
List of key features in materials adaptation

The following is a list of basic key points to take into account when evaluating and
adapting courses. However, these can be used simply as a proposal to be developed
further and adapted to different classroom situations.
Learner-centredness and critical awareness development

There is a large amount of literature on learner-centred approaches and principles
(Nunan, 1988). However, there are very few language teaching and learning materials
Adapting Courses 57
which, in my opinion, are truly learner-centred, in the sense that their aims are the
development of learners’ critical awareness, linguistic empowerment and therefore
learner autonomy. The materials should put learners at the centre of the learning
process and make them input providers (hence part of the materials adaption process),
whereas teachers should be facilitators and co-ordinators and should provide a stimulus,
a starting point, for language exposure as well as for different approaches to learning.
Materials adaptation, therefore, should be shared between materials developers,
teachers and learners.
Flexibility and choice

Materials should be flexible, in the sense that they should provide learners with the
possibility of choosing different activities, tasks, projects and approaches, thus of
adapting the materials to their own learning needs. At the same time, however, given
the fact that the majority of learners are not used to this type of approach to learning,
they should also be exposed to a variety of different activities and approaches, so
that they themselves become more flexible learners, having experienced different
ways of learning. Materials, then, should, on the one hand, provide choice but, on the
other hand, also enable learners to develop a variety of skills and learning styles by
encouraging them to experience a wide range of tasks and approaches, so that they
may also become more independent learners. Materials can, for example, include a
choice of tasks ranging from analytical ones (such as those based on grammatical
awareness) to more creative ones (such as those based on creative writing). Learners
can be encouraged to experience them all at one point and then also make choices at
a later stage.
Open-endedness and aesthetic experience

If materials allow only one possible right answer, they do not leave space for interpretation
and adaptation, whereas if they are open-ended they can become more relevant to
learners. In many ways this is related to the concept of Aesthetic Experience, an idea
which originated from the theory of Aesthetic Response as put forward by Rosenblatt
(1995). Aesthetic Response refers to the process of reacting spontaneously when
reading literary texts, hence it involves interaction between readers, language and texts
(Iser, 1978; Hirvela, 1996). Some of the major elements of such type of experiential
response, such as the voice of the narrator and that of the reader, as well as the role of
the receiver and the one of the producer of the literary input, become overlapping and
interchangeable. Aesthetic Experience, therefore, typically represents the immediate
response to language and literature experienced by the receiver and the producer, as
well as their later interpretations and reactions. Literature and Aesthetic Experience
are inevitably part of a subjective process which is created every time the text is read
or written. Reading and interpretation are always different: we have different reactions
every time we aesthetically experience a poem, a novel, etc. (Saraceni, 2010).
A parallel point should be drawn here between aesthetic experience and materials
adaptation. Aesthetic Experience (Rosenblatt, 1994, 1995; Saraceni, 2010) promotes
the subjectivity of texts and their various interpretations. In a similar way, also materials
for teaching and learning purposes should promote an aesthetic experience, in the
sense that they should, not only be based on right/wrong testing and practice but,
rather, they should also focus on open-ended tasks and texts. For example, in relation
to texts, materials should include also those which are open to many different ideas
and points of view and encourage a variety of interpretations. Therefore, texts and
tasks should be included with the main purpose of promoting a subjective response,
whether this be in relation to a reading text or to a listening one. If materials present
open spaces or gaps (Eco, 1993, 1995), they can allow learners to form their own
interpretations and ideas and, therefore, to take control of the adaptation process. In
this context, the aim of materials moves from comprehension testing, which allows
only a rather superficial intake of the input, to a deeper understanding and awareness
of the language exposure, with the emphasis on individual differences.
Relevance
In an attempt to draw a link between the adaptation process and reading, materials left
open-ended, as explained above, have the potential to become relevant to the learners
when they fill those gaps with their ideas, interpretations and discussions. It is only at
this level that materials acquire significance and become potentially beneficial for the
learners. It is, in fact, by virtue of such contributions that materials can be adapted and
developed further. Adaptation is, therefore, essential in making materials relevant and
potentially more effective for learning development.
Universality
Materials should be based on universally appealing topics, which are culturally provoking
in the sense that they are culturally specific but, at the same time, they are present in
all cultures. A rich source of this type of topics comes from Literature, which typically
involves themes based on life experiences, feelings, relationships. These are present in
all cultures but they can be looked at from different angles and experienced in different
ways. Universality of topics provides a stimulus for discussion and it enables learners
to focus on and gain a better understanding of cultural differences as well as cultural
commonalities (Jiang, 2000).
Authentic and non-authentic input

Materials should be based on authentic texts, those texts which have been written
for any purpose other than language teaching. At the same time, there should also be
a combination of authentic and non-authentic tasks, based on realistic scenarios, in
Adapting Courses 59
order to expose the learners to realistic input. In my view a significant role is played by
the use of non-authentic tasks with authentic texts. For example, tasks which aim at
drawing the learners’ attention to certain linguistic features of the input with activities
based on texts selected from authentic sources, can be beneficial for language
awareness development.
Provocative topics and tasks

Materials should include topics and activities that can potentially provoke a reaction,
hence an aesthetic experience (whether it be positive or negative) that is personal
and subjective. These can make learning more engaging and perhaps also more
humanistic.
From my point of view, topics are not to be considered intrinsically provocative
but the activities associated with them can potentially make the materials more or
less provocative, thus more or less engaging. In my experience, however, certain
topics related to Personal Life, Family, Parents, Relationships, Emotions, Inner Self can
achieve this aim more effectively, rather than those topics very often associated with
controversy such as Politics, War, Racism, Drugs, etc.
However, although students generally feel engaged when exposed to provocative
topics, at first a few may show some resistance to such personal depths. Students
in general are used to traditional ways of being taught; they are not always ready to
be challenged and to step beyond the usual safer topics. In some cases, they are
so used to teacher-centred teaching, that they find it more reassuring and credible.
This, however, further demonstrates their need to be gradually exposed to different
types of input, to enable them to express their opinions and to further develop their
interpretations and points of view, hence to develop their flexibility as learners.
Conclusions
‘As teachers and methodologists become more aware of SLA research, so teaching
methods can alter to take them into account and cover a wider range of learning.
Much L2 learning is concealed behind such global terms as “communication” or such
two-way oppositions as experiential/analytic [. . .]. To improve teaching, we need to
appreciate learning in all its complexity’ (Cook, 2001, pp. 233–4).
The above statement underlines the multiplicity of views on language teaching
and learning and the same is also reflected on L2 materials development thus more
specifically also on materials adaptation. Nevertheless, more research is needed for
the development of principled, criterion-based materials, as classroom practice and
L2 materials are mostly determined by different trends, which tend to swing from
one extreme to the other. There are, however, examples of research-driven materials
(Tomlinson, 1994) and of research-driven projects and hypotheses related to materials

development (Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2010).
The value of certain alternative and innovative approaches and ideas, such as the
ones proposed in this chapter, is not based so much on empirical evidence, but
on the discussion they can provoke in order to, ultimately, constitute a break from
some of the more widely accepted, teacher-centred practices. Rather than provide
answers, the final purpose of this chapter is to open up possibilities and discussions,
to promote research that would take the process of adaptation beyond a superficial
level.
Moreover, L2 materials can be considered as rather static and can intrinsically
achieve very little, however their value is to be found in the way they are used, hence in
the adaptation process and the potential it can develop in terms of promoting learners’
critical awareness in both language and teacher development courses (Tomlinson,
2003a, 2003b; Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2010). Thus, the importance of adaptation
becomes evident as a key step towards the production of innovative, effective and,
most of all, learner-centred/classroom-centred materials.
This chapter also attempts to put forward the need for materials to promote
learner empowerment, enable learners to express themselves in a foreign language
rather than simply communicate, and ultimately, to enable learners to use the target
language in the same way as they would use their native language. This primarily
involves critical awareness development at different levels.
If, on the one hand, the ideas raised in this chapter may or may not be considered
as the basis for the development of a research-driven model for adapting materials, on
the other hand they certainly represent a different approach to adapting courses, and
to developing materials for language teaching/learning purposes. With such a model,
the adaptation process is considered at two levels:
ll adapting materials with the purpose of making them effective and relevant
to a specific classroom;
ll adapting materials with the purpose of changing their objectives, in order
to reduce the distance between research and classroom practice.
The former refers to the more traditional way of looking at the adaptation process,
where teachers and learners contribute to adding value to the materials when adapting
them to their specific context. The latter represents one of the most significant points
of this chapter, for it is probably taking the adaptation process a step further towards
raising awareness of materials development and learner empowerment.
This chapter, therefore, advocates a somewhat different role of learners and
teachers within the framework of L2 materials development. The teaching and
learning context should be considered as a whole, whereby we talk about learner
empowerment (Maley, 1998) rather than learner under-involvement (Allwright, 1978,
Adapting Courses 61
1981). Developing critical awareness of learning and teaching is the main aim of
adapting and evaluating courses; learners can become, gradually, the main input
providers, whereas the teacher’s role is simply that of facilitator, co-ordinator and
monitor. In this context, adapting courses aims at gaining a better insight into the
principles of language learning, teacher development and materials design.
References
Allwright, D. R. (1978), ‘Abdication and responsibility in language teaching’, Studies in
Second Language Acquisition, 2 (1), 105–21.
— (1981), ‘What do we want teaching materials for?’ ELT Journal, 36 (1), 5–18.
Bolitho, R. (2003), ‘Materials for language awareness’, in B. Tomlinson (ed.), Developing
Materials for Language Teaching. London, New York: Continuum, pp. 422–5.
Bolitho, R., Carter, R., Hughes, R., Ivanic, R., Masuhara, H. and Tomlinson, B. (2003), ‘Ten
questions about language awareness’, ELT Journal, 57 (3), 251–9.
Clarke, D. F. (1989), ‘Materials adaptation: why leave it all to the teacher?’, ELT Journal, 43
(2), 133–41.
Cook, V. (2001), Second Language Learning and Language Teaching (3rd edn). London:
Hodder Arnold.
Eco, U. ([1979] 1993), Lector in Fabula. Milano: Bompiani.
— ([1994] 1995), Sei Passeggiate Nei Boschi Narrativi. Milano: Bompiani.
Hirvela, A. (1996), ‘Reader-response theory and ELT’, ELT Journal, 50 (2), 127–34.
Iser, W. (1978), The Act of Reading, A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Jiang, W. (2000), ‘The relationship between culture and language’, ELT Journal, 54 (4),
328–34.
Madsen, K. S. and Bowen, J. D. (1978), Adaptation in Language Teaching. Boston:
Newbury House.
Maley, A. (1998), ‘Squaring the Circle – reconciling materials as constraints with materials
as empowerment’, in B. Tomlinson (ed.), Materials Development in Language Teaching,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 279–94.
Nunan, D. (1988), The Learner-Centred Curriculum: A Study in Second Language Teaching.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosenblatt, L. ([1938] 1995), Literature as Exploration. New York: Appleton-Century.
— ([1978] 1994), The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary
Work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Press.
Saraceni, C. (2010), Readings. An Investigation of the Role of Aesthetic Response in
the Reading of Narrative Literary Texts. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Leeds: Leeds
Metropolitan University.
Tomlinson, B. (1994), Openings: An Introduction to Literature. London: Penguin English.
Tomlinson, B. (ed.) (1998), Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
— (ed.) (2003a), Developing Materials for Language Teaching. London, New York:
Continuum.
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Teaching. www.hltmag.co.uk, Year 5, Issue 4, July 2003.
4
Developing Principled Frameworks
for Materials Development
Brian Tomlinson
Introduction
Creative intuition in materials development
There have been a number of accounts in the literature by materials developers of the
process they follow when developing materials. Rather surprisingly, many of them
describe processes which are ad hoc and spontaneous and which rely on an intuitive
feel for activities which are likely to ‘work’. Prowse (1998) reports the responses of
‘ELT materials writers from all over the world’ who ‘met in Oxford in April 1994 for
a British Council Specialist Course with UK-based writers and publishers’ (p. 130).
When asked to say how they wrote their materials, many of them focused on the
creative process of writing (e.g. ‘writing is fun, because it’s creative’; ‘writing can be
frustrating, when ideas don’t come’; ‘writing is absorbing – the best materials are
written in “trances”’ (p. 136)) and Prowse concludes that ‘most of the writers quoted
here appear to rely heavily on their own intuitions, viewing textbook writing in the
same way as writing fiction, while at the same time emphasizing the constraints of the
syllabus. The unstated assumption is that the syllabus precedes the creation’ (p. 137).
Most of the writers focus on what starts and keeps them writing and they say such
things as, ‘writing brings joy, when inspiration comes, when your hand cannot keep up
with the speed of your thoughts’ (p. 136) and ‘In materials writing mood – engendered
by peace, light, etc. – is particularly important’ (p. 137). However, they say very little
about any principles of learning and teaching which guide their writing or about any
frameworks which they use to facilitate coherence and consistency. This is largely
true also of materials writers who Philip Prowse asked about their writing process for
Prowse (2011) and of some of the writers talking about writing in Hidalgo et al. (1995),
of some of the writers describing their writing processes in Tomlinson (1998c), of some
of the writing processes reported in Richards (2001) and of experienced materials
writers who were asked to develop a language learning task in Johnson (2003). For
example, in Hidalgo et al. (1995) Cochingo-Ballesteros (1995, p. 54) says, ‘some of
them (drills) are deeply expressive of my own beliefs and give me aesthetic fulfilment’
and Maley (1995, p. 221) says that writing instructional materials ‘is best seen as a form
of operationalised tacit knowledge’ which involves ‘trusting our intuitions and beliefs.
If a unit of material does not “feel” right, no amount of rational persuasion will usually
change my mind about it’. Richards (1995, p. 105), however, while referring to his need
to listen to the local classical music station when writing, concludes that the process
of materials writing is ‘10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration’. In Johnson
(2003, pp. 57–65) an experienced materials writer conducts a concurrent verbalization
while designing a task. He creates a ‘new’ activity for the specified target learners by
making use of ideas from his repertoire and while doing so concerns himself mainly
with predicting and solving practical problems (e.g. the language content might be
too difficult; the task might be too easy). He does develop a framework but it is driven
by practical considerations of what the learners are likely to do rather than by any
considerations of language acquisition principles.
Frameworks for materials development

There are exceptions to the focus on creativity reported above. A number of writers in
the books mentioned above focus on the need to establish and be driven by unit outlines
or frameworks. For example, Rozul (1995, p. 213) reports a lesson format (based on
Hutchinson and Waters, 1984) which includes the following key components:
ll Starter
ll Input
ll General Information
ll Language Focus
ll Tasks
Fortez (1995, p. 74) describes a framework (also based on Hutchinson and Waters,
1994) which has eight sequential ‘features’, Richards (1995, pp. 102–3) describes the
process of designing a ‘design or frame for a unit in a textbook’ which can ‘serve as
a formulae which the author can use in writing the book’ and Flores (1995, pp. 60–2)
outlines a lesson format with the following basic stages:
ll Listening with Understanding

ll Using Grammar in Oral Interaction
Developing Principled Frameworks 97
ll Reading for Understanding

ll Writing
ll Literature
In Prowse (2011, pp. 159–61) one of the materials writers outlines ‘a not untypical
writing process which involves researching . . . gaps in the market/weaknesses of other
materials’ prior to drafting a ‘basic rationale’ which includes ‘book and unit structure
and a draft grammar syllabus’.
While I agree with the value of establishing a framework prior to writing, I would
prefer my frameworks to be more principled, coherent and flexible than many of the
frameworks in the literature on materials development, many of which provide no
theoretical justification for their staging or sequencing (one notable exception being
Ribe (2000, pp. 66–77) who outlines and justifies a principled task sequence for a
negotiated project framework).
Jolly and Bolitho (2011, p. 113) have an interestingly different approach to frameworks
and focus not on a unit framework but on a framework for developing materials which
involves the following procedures:
ll Identification of need for materials

ll Exploration of need
ll Contextual realization of materials
ll Pedagogical realization of materials
ll Production of materials
ll Student use of materials
ll Evaluation of materials against agreed objectives
Principles in materials development

Most writers on the process of materials development focus on needs analysis as
their starting point (e.g. Rozul, 1995, p. 210; Luzares, 1995, pp. 26–7; Fortez, 1995,
pp. 69–70). However, there are some writers who report starting by articulating their
principles. For example Bell and Gower (2011, pp. 142–6) started by articulating the
following principles which they wanted to guide their writing:
ll Flexibility
ll From text to language
ll Engaging content
ll Natural language
ll Analytic approaches
ll Emphasis on review
ll Personalized practice
ll Integrated skills
ll Balance of approaches
ll Learning to learn
ll Professional respect
Flores (1995, pp. 58–9) lists five assumptions and principles which were articulated
after initial brainstorm sessions prior to the writing of a textbook in the Philippines,
Tomlinson (1998c, pp. 5–22) proposes 15 principles for materials development which
derive from SLA research and theory, Tomlinson (1999b) describes a principled and
flexible framework designed to help teachers to develop materials efficiently and
effectively and Penaflorida (1995, pp. 172–9) reports her use of the six principles of
materials design identified by Nunan (1988):
1 Materials should be clearly linked to the curriculum they serve.
2 Materials should be authentic in terms of text and task.
3 Materials should stimulate interaction.
4 Materials should allow learners to focus on formal aspects of the language.
5 Materials should encourage learners to develop learning skills, and skills in

learning.
6 Materials should encourage learners to apply their developing skills to the

world beyond the classroom.
And, most emphatically, Hall (in Hidalgo et al., 1995, p. 8) insists that:
Before planning or writing materials for language teaching, there is one crucial
question we need to ask ourselves. The question should be the first item on the
agenda at the first planning meeting. The question is this: How do we think people
learn language?
Hall then goes on to discuss the following theoretical principles which he thinks should
‘underpin everything else which we do in planning and writing our materials’ (p. 8):
ll The need to communicate

ll The need for long-term goals
ll The need for authenticity

ll The need for student-centredness
More recently Ellis (2010) discusses how ‘second language acquisition (SLA) research
has informed language teaching materials’ (p. 33) with particular reference to the design
of tasks and Tomlinson (2010) develops thirty principles of materials development
from six principles of language acquisition and four principles of language teaching.
Tomlinson (2013) argues that second language acquisition is facilitated by:
ll A rich and meaningful exposure to language in use.

ll Affective and cognitive engagement.
ll Making use of those mental resources typically used in communication in
the L1.
ll Noticing how the L2 is used.
ll Being given opportunities for contextualized and purposeful communication
in the L2.
ll Being encouraged to interact.
ll Being allowed to focus on meaning.
He makes use of these principles to develop criteria for the development and evaluation
of materials and then makes use of these criteria to evaluate six currently used global
coursebooks. Similar principled evaluations are reported in Tomlinson et al. (2001),
Masuhara et al. (2008) and Tomlinson and Masuhara (2013) and one conclusion made
by all of them is that coursebooks are not typically driven by principled frameworks but
by considerations of what is likely to sell.
What I am going to do in this chapter is to outline two frameworks for materials
development which aim to be principled, flexible and coherent, and which have
developed from my answers to the question about how we think people learn language.
One is text-driven and ideal for developing coursebooks and supplementary classroom
materials. The other is task-driven and ideal for localizing and personalizing classroom
materials, and for autonomous learning.
A text-driven approach to materials development

The framework
This is a framework which I have used on materials writing workshops in Argentina,
Botswana, Brazil, Japan, Malaysia, Mauritius, the Seychelles, Singapore and Vietnam
and on textbook projects in China, Ethiopia, Japan, Namibia, Oman, Singapore and
Turkey (e.g. Tomlinson, 2001b). In all those countries I found it helped writers (mainly
teachers with little previous experience of materials development) not only to write
principled and coherent materials quickly, effectively and consistently but also to
articulate and develop their own theories of language learning and language teaching
at the same time.
The framework follows the stages outlined below.
1 Text collection
You come across and/or create texts (written or spoken) with the potential for
engagement. By engagement, I mean a willing investment of energy and attention in
experiencing the text in such a way as to achieve interaction between the text and the
senses, feelings, views and intuitions of the reader/listener. Such texts can help the
reader/listener to achieve a personal multidimensional representation in which inner
speech, sensory images and affective stimuli combine to make the text meaningful
(Tomlinson, 1998d, 2000c, 2010, 2011, 2013). And sometimes they can help the reader/
listener to achieve the sort of aesthetic response described by Rosenblatt (1968, 1978)
in which ultimately the reader enters the text and lives in it.
Such a representation can achieve the affective impact and the deep processing
which can facilitate language acquisition. It can also help the learners to develop the
confidence and skills which can give them access to valuable input outside and after
their course (Tomlinson, 1999c, p. 62).
Such texts are those which first of all engage ourselves in the ways described above
and they can come, for example, from literature, from songs, from newspapers and
magazines, from non-fiction books, from radio and television programmes and from
films. Obviously, such texts cannot be easily found and certainly cannot be found
quickly in order to illustrate teaching points (as Bell and Gower (2011) found out when
they tried to find engaging, authentic texts to illustrate predetermined teaching points
in their intermediate-level coursebook). It is much easier and much more useful to
build up a library of potentially engaging texts and then to let the texts eventually
selected for target levels determine the teaching points. And it is obviously much more
effective to teach language features which have first been experienced by the learners
in engaging texts than to impose ‘unengaging’ texts on learners just because they
illustrate predetermined teaching points. This library development stage is ongoing
and context free. Its purpose is to create a resource with the potential for subsequent
matching to particular contexts of learning.
2 Text selection
In this stage you select from your library of potentially engaging texts (either one text
for a particular lesson or a number of texts for a set of materials or a textbook). As the
materials are going to be driven by the text(s) this stage is very important and should
be criterion-referenced. Initially, it is a good idea to apply the criteria explicitly; but

eventually this can be done intuitively.
The criteria which I have found help to achieve effective selection are:
ll Does the text engage me cognitively and affectively?

ll Is the text likely to engage most of the target learners cognitively and
effectively?
ll Are the target learners likely to be able to connect the text to their lives?
ll Are the target learners likely to be able to connect the text to their
knowledge of the world?
ll Are most of the target learners likely to be able to achieve
multidimensional mental representation of the text?
ll Is the text likely to stimulate divergent personal responses from the target
learners?
ll Is the linguistic level of the text likely to present an achievable challenge to
the target learners?
ll Is the cognitive level of the text likely to present an achievable challenge to
the target learners?
ll Is the emotional level of the text suitable for the age and maturity of the
target learners?
ll Is the text likely to contribute to the personal development of the learners?
ll Does the text contribute to the ultimate exposure of the learners to a
range of genres (e.g. short stories, poems, novels, songs, newspaper
articles, brochures, advertisements, etc.)?
ll Does the text contribute to the ultimate exposure of the learners to a
range of text types (e.g. narrative, description, persuasion, information,
justification, etc.)?
I would rate each text on a 5-point scale and would not select any text which did not
achieve at least 4 on each of the criteria above.
Notes
1 Usefulness for teaching a particular language feature is a dangerous criterion

as this can tempt writers into the selection of texts which do not engage the
learners and which, therefore, do not help them to achieve durable learning of
the teaching point.
2 Obviously many of the texts on an ESP (English for Specific Purposes) or EAP
(English for Academic Purposes) course should relate to the target learners’
purposes for doing the course but if all the texts do this explicitly there is a
danger of tedium and, therefore, of lack of engagement. This is a lesson I
learned when a group of Saudi Arabian pilots complained that they were bored
with reading about aircraft and airports and, almost simultaneously, a group of
Iraqi diplomats complained that they were fed up with reading about politics
and diplomacy. Both groups then responded very enthusiastically to the
inclusion of poetry on their courses. The important point is that affect is vital
for learning, even on courses with very specific purposes (Tomlinson, 1999a).
Without it there is a danger that language learning ‘can reduce the learner from
an individual human being with views, attitudes and emotions to a language
learner whose brain is focused narrowly on the low level linguistic de-coding
which . . . prevents the learner from achieving multidimensional representation
of the L2 world’ (Tomlinson, 1998a, p. 20). This means that the learners are not
using their whole minds, that a multiplicity of neural connections are not being
fired and that meaningful and durable learning is not taking place.
3 While it is important to expose learners to a range of genres they are likely

to encounter outside and after their course, I have found that the best way to
achieve affective engagement is to include literature. By this I do not mean
the classics of the literary canon but rather well-written texts which narrate,
describe, argue or evoke in ways which encourage the reader to respond in
personal and multidimensional ways, and which leave gaps for the reader to
fill in (Saraceni in this volume; Tomlinson, 1994a, 1998b, 2000a, 2001a). Ideally
these texts (especially for lower levels) are linguistically simple but cognitively
and emotionally complex (see the example below).
4 It is very rare that a text engages all the learners in a class. What we are
aiming at is engaging most of them in a given class and all of them over a
course. The best way I have found of achieving this is to make sure that many
(but not all) of the texts relate to the basic universal themes of birth, growing
up, going to school, starting a career, falling in love, getting married and dying
(though this is a taboo topic in some countries).
3 Text experience
In this stage you experience the selected text again. That is, you read or listen to it again
experientially in order to re-engage with the text. You then reflect on your experience
and try to work out what was happening in your mind during it. This re-engagement and
reflection is essential so that you can design activities which help the target learners
to achieve similar engagement. Without this stage there is a danger that you study the
text as a sample of language and end up designing activities which focus the learners
on linguistic features of the text. Of course, if you fail to re-engage with the text you
should reconsider your decision to select it to drive your materials.
4 Readiness activities
As soon as you have re-engaged with the text, you start to devise activities which
could help the learners to experience the text in similar multidimensional ways. First
of all, you devise readiness activities which get the learners ready for the reading
experience. You are aiming at helping the learners to achieve the mental readiness
which readers take to L1 texts and to inhibit the word fixation and apprehension which
L2 readers typically take to texts (Tomlinson, 2000b). ‘The activities aim to stimulate
mental activity relevant to the content of the text by activating connections, by
arousing attention, by generating relevant visual images and by getting the learner to
use inner speech to discuss relevant topics with themselves. What is important is that
all the learners open and activate their minds not that they answer questions correctly’
(Tomlinson, 1999c, p. 63). These activities are different from ‘warmers’ in that they are
not necessarily getting the learners to talk but are aiming primarily to get the learners
to think. They could ask the learners to visualize, to draw, to think of connections, to
mime, to articulate their views, to recount episodes from their lives, to share their
knowledge, to make predictions: anything which gets them to activate connections in
their minds which will help them when they start to experience the text.
For example, if the text is about an embarrassing moment, they can be asked to
visualize embarrassing moments in their own lives to help them to empathize with
the sufferer in the text. If the text is about tourists, they can be asked to think about
and then act out in groups typical tourist scenarios in their region. If the text is about a
child’s first day at school they can be asked to think about and then share with a partner
their first day at school. And, because the activities aim at mental readiness rather
than language practice, any activity involving talking to others can be done in the L1 in
monolingual lower-level groups.
The important point is that the lesson starts in the learners’ minds and not in the
text and that the activities help the learners to gain a personal experience of the text
which connects it to their lives.
5 Experiential activities
These are activities which are designed to help the learners to represent the text
in their minds as they read it or listen to it and to do so in multidimensional ways
which facilitate personal engagement. They are things they are encouraged to do while
reading or listening and should therefore be mental activities which contribute to the
representation of the text and which do not interrupt the processing of it nor add
difficulty or complexity to the task. They could include, for example, trying to visualize
a politician as they read about him, using inner speech to give their responses to
provocative points in a text, trying to follow a description of a journey on a mental map
or thinking of examples from their own lives to illustrate or contradict points made in
a text. The activities should not involve writing answers to questions nor discussing
things in pairs or groups, as this can interrupt the experience and make representation
more difficult. These activities need to be given to the learners just before they start to
read or listen to the text and should be given through concise and simple instructions
which are easy to remember and apply. For example:
You’re going to listen to a poem about a child’s first day at school. Imagine that you
are that child and that you are standing alone in the playground at the beginning of
your first day at school. As you listen to the poem, try to see in your mind what the
child could see in the playground.
Experiential activities can be either related to a given text, as in the example above, or
they can be part of a process approach which involves the learners in participating in
the creation of the text, as in the examples below:
ll The teacher reads aloud a text and pauses at salient points while learners
shout out predictions of the next word or phrase.
ll The teacher dictates a text and then pauses at salient points while learners
compare what they have written with their partners and then write the
next line (an approach which can be particularly effective with poetry).
ll The teacher reads aloud a text while the learners act it out (an approach
which can be particularly effective if each group of learners plays a different
character in a story together).
ll The teacher reads aloud most of a text and then gets groups of learners to
write their own endings.
ll The teacher gives the learners draft texts on which an ‘editor’ has written
suggested changes in the wording and then gets them to write out a final
version of their own.
6 Intake response activities

These are activities which help the learners to develop and articulate what they have
taken in from the text. They focus on the mental representation which the learners have
achieved from their initial reading of the text and they invite the learners to reflect on
this representation rather than return to the text. Unlike conventional comprehension
questions, these activities do not test learners on their comprehension of the text.
Instead they give the learners a positive start to their post-reading/listening responses
by inviting them to share with others what the text means to them. They cannot be
wrong because they are not being asked about the text but about their personal
representation of it. However, it is possible that their representation is only partial (or
even superficial) and the process of sharing of it with others can help to extend and
deepen it. Intake response activities could ask the learners to think about and then
articulate their feelings and opinions about what was said or done in the text.
They could ask them to visualize, to draw or to mime what they can remember from
the text. Or they could ask them to summarize the text to someone who has not read
it or to ask clarification questions of the teacher or of someone else who knows the
text well.
These activities should not be graded or criticized but the teacher can help the
learners to deepen their initial responses by asking questions, by guiding them to think
back to particular sections of the text or by ‘feeding’ them extracts from the text to
stimulate further thought and discussion.
7 Development activities
‘These are activities which provide opportunities for meaningful language production
based on the learners’ representations of the text’ (Tomlinson, 1999c, p. 63). They involve
the learners (usually in pairs or small groups) going back to the text before going forward
to produce something new. So, for example, after experiencing a story called ‘Sentence
of Death’ about a man in Liverpool being told that he has four hours to live, the learners
in groups rewrite the story so that it is based in their own town. Or, after experiencing
a story called, ‘They Came from the Sea: Part 1’, they sit in a circle and take it in turns
to suggest the next sentence of ‘They Came from the Sea: Part 2’. Or, after working out
from an advertisement the good and bad points of a vehicle called the C5, they design
an improved C6 and then write an advertisement. The point is that they can base their
language production both on what they have already understood from the text and on
connections with their own lives. While talking or writing they will gain opportunities
to learn new language and develop new skills and, if they are affectively engaged in an
achievable challenge, they will learn a lot from each other and from the teacher (if she/he
moves around the room helping learners when they ask for assistance).
8 Input response activities

These are activities which take the learners back to the text and which involve them in
studial reading or listening tasks aimed at helping them to make discoveries about the
purposes and language of the text.
Interpretation tasks
These are input response tasks which involve the learners thinking more deeply about
the text in order to make discoveries about the author’s intentions in creating it. They
are aimed at helping learners to develop critical and creative thinking skills in the target
language and they make use of such task types as:
ll Deep questions (e.g. What points about society do you think the writer is
making in his modern version of Little Red Riding Hood?)
ll Debates about issues in the text
ll Critical reviews of the text for a journal

ll Interviews with the characters
ll Interviews with the author
Awareness tasks
These are input response activities which provide opportunities for the learners to
gain awareness from a focused study of the text (by awareness I mean a gradually
developing apprehension which is different from knowledge in that it is internal,
personal, dynamic and variable). The awareness could be of language use (Bolitho and
Tomlinson, 1995, 2005), of communication strategies (Tomlinson, 1994b), of discourse
features, of genre characteristics or of text-type features. The awareness tasks usually
involve investigation of a particular feature of a text plus ‘research’ involving checking
the typicality of the investigated feature by analysing the same feature in use in other,
equivalent texts. So, for example, you could ask the learners to work out generalizations
about the form and function of ‘in case of’ from the poem by Roger McGough called
‘In Case of Fire’, and then get the learners to find and compare examples of ‘in case of’
in notices and instruction manuals. Or you could ask learners to make generalizations
about a character’s use of the imperative when talking to his father in a scene from
a novel; or ask them to work out typical features of the genre of advertisement from
examining a number of advertisements in a magazine. The important point is that
evidence is provided in a text which the learners have already experienced holistically
and then they are helped to make focused discoveries through discrete attention to a
specified feature of the text. That way they invest cognitive and affective energy and
attention in the learning process and they are likely to increase their readiness for
acquisition (Pienemann, 1985; Tomlinson, 1994b, 2013).
When I use this framework I often get learners to revise the product of the
development activity making use of the discoveries they have made as a result of
the awareness activity. For example, learners could revise the advertisement they
have designed for their C6 after making discoveries about the language and strategies
of advertisements from an analysis of the authentic advertisement for the C5 (and
possibly other vehicle advertisements too).
Using the framework

The above framework is best used flexibly. Obviously some stages must precede
others (e.g. readiness activities before experiential activities) and there are strong
arguments for some stages preceding others (e.g. intake response before input
response so that the learners progress positively from what they already understand
to what they need to think more carefully about). However, there is no need to follow
all the stages in the framework (it depends on the engagement and the needs and
wants of each particular class, as well as the focus of the core text), the sequence of
some of the stages can vary (e.g. the development activities can come before or after
the input response activities) and sometimes the teacher might decide to focus on a
particular type of activity because of the needs of the learners (e.g. after a brief intake
response activity the teacher might spend the rest of the lesson on a genre awareness
activity because the particular genre exemplified by the text (e.g. scientific report) is a
new and important one for the particular class). It is useful, though, for the materials
developer to include all the stages in the actual course materials so that the teachers
(and possibly the learners) can make decisions for themselves about which stages
to use and what sequence to use them in. The important point is that apprehension
should come before comprehension (Kolb, 1984) and that the learners are encouraged
to respond holistically, affectively and multidimensionally to a text before being helped
to think more deeply about it in order to learn something explicitly from it.
By using the framework as a guide you can very quickly develop principled and
engaging materials either for a particular class or for a course of materials. I have used
it myself to prepare cover lessons at 5 minutes’ notice and I have used it in Belgium,
Japan, Luxembourg, Singapore, Turkey and Vietnam to help teachers to produce an
effective unit of material in just 15 minutes.
An example of the framework in use

Here is an example of a text-driven framework used to produce the materials for a
90-minute lesson:
‘I’m an old, old lady’
1 Tell the learners to think of an old woman they know. Tell them to try to see
pictures of their old woman in their minds, to see where she is, to see what
she is doing, to see what she is wearing. Tell them to talk to themselves about
their feelings towards the old woman.
2 Tell the learners to form pairs and to tell each other about their old woman. Tell
them to describe the pictures of their old woman in their mind and to express
their feelings about her.
3 Tell the learners you are going to read them a poem about an old woman and
that, as they listen, they should change the pictures in their minds from their
old woman to the woman in the poem. They should also talk to themselves
about their feelings towards the old lady in the poem.
4 Read the poem below to the learners:
I’m an old, old lady

And I don’t have long to live.
I am only strong enough to take
Not to give. No time left to give.

I want to drink, I want to eat,
I want my shoes taken off my feet
I want to talk but not to walk
Because if I walk, I have to know
Where it is I want to go.
I want to sleep but not to dream
I want to play and win every game
To live with love but not to love
The world to move but me not move
I want I want for ever and ever
The world to work, the world to be clever.
Leave me be, but don’t leave me alone.
That’s what I want. I’m a big round stone
Sitting in the middle of a thunderstorm.
There you are: that’s true.
That’s me. Now: you.
John Arden, ‘Phineus’, from the The Happy Haven
5 Tell the learners to think back over the poem, to see pictures of the old lady in
their minds and decide what they think about her.
6 Tell the learners to get into groups and discuss their responses to the following
statement about the old lady in the poem: I don’t like this lady. She’s very
selfish.
7 Give the learners the poem and three pictures of very different old ladies.
Then tell them to decide in their groups which of the old ladies wrote the
poem.
8 Get each group to join with another group and discuss their answers to 6 and 7
above.
9 Tell the learners to do one of the following, either individually, in pairs or in

small groups:
●● Learn to recite the poem in the voice of the old lady.
●● Paint a picture of the poem.
●● You are the old lady. Write a letter to your son in Australia.
●● You are the old lady. Write your diary for today.
●● The old lady goes to the park and meets an old man on a park bench. Write
the conversation between them.
●● You are the old lady’s family. Hold a meeting to decide how you can help
her.
10 Get the students in groups to discuss the following questions:

●● What do you think the old lady means when she says, ‘I’m a big round
stone/Sitting in the middle of a thunderstorm’?
●● How do you think old ladies that you know are similar to or different from
the lady in the poem?
●● What similarities and differences do you think the poem illustrates
between your own culture and British culture?
11 At the end of the poem the old lady says:
There you are: that’s true.

That’s me. Now: you.
Get the learners to write a short poem about themselves beginning I’m a . . .
12 Get the learners to do the following:
i What tense does the old lady use throughout her poem. Why do you think
she uses this tense? Find examples from other texts of this tense being
used with this function.
ii The old lady uses a number of imperatives.

●● List all the imperatives in the poem.
●● Write a generalization about the form of the imperative as illustrated by
the examples in the poem.
●● Write a generalization about the function of the imperatives which the
old lady uses in the poem.
●● Find examples from other texts of the imperative being used with the
same function as it is in the poem.
13 Invite the learners to improve their poems in 11 by making use of their

discoveries in 12.
There are a lot of activities in the example above, Obviously the teacher would not be
obliged to use all of them. It would depend on the ability and the engagement of the
class and principled choices could be made from the menu of activities by the teacher
and/or by the learners themselves. The activities however are designed and sequenced
to follow a framework based on principles of language acquisition and this principled
coherence should not be disturbed (Table 4.1).
Table 4.1 Recommended stages for a text-driven approach

Stages Learner activities Principles
1 Readiness activities Thinking about something 1 Personal connection.

personal which will help the 2 Visual imaging.
learners to connect with the 3 Use of inner speech.
content of the core text.
2 Experiential activities Linking the images and 1 Personal connection.

thoughts from the readiness 2 Visual imaging.
activities to the text when 3 Use of inner speech.
first experiencing it. 4 Affective and cognitive
engagement.
5 Use of high-level skills.
6 Focus on meaning.
3 Intake response Developing and then 1 Personal connection.

activities articulating personal 2 Visual imaging.
responses to the text. 3 Affective and cognitive
engagement.
4 Use of inner speech.
5 Interaction.
4 Development activity 1 Developing the text by 1 Personal connection.

continuing it, relocating it, 2 Visual imaging.
changing the writer’s views, 3 Use of inner speech.
personalizing it, responding 4 Affective and cognitive
to it etc. engagement.
5 Use of high-level skills.
6 Focus on meaning.
7 Interaction.
8 Purposeful
communication.
5 Input response activity Focusing on a specific 1 Personal connection.

linguistic, pragmatic, 2 Visual imaging.
discourse, genre or cultural 3 Use of inner speech.
feature of the text in order 4 Affective and cognitive
to make discoveries about engagement.
its use. 5 Use of high-level skills.
6 Interaction.
7 Noticing.
6 Development activity 2 Revising the first draft from 4 As for 4.

above making use of their
discoveries in 5 above.
Adapted from Tomlinson, 2013, p. 24.

A web-based adaptation of the framework

Although the framework above is primarily text-driven it can be adapted to become
an activity-driven framework with the text to base the activities on being chosen by
the learners from a library of texts either provided for them or built up over a period
of time by themselves. Or the materials can be based on units of text genres (e.g.
advertisements, reports, jokes, announcements, stories, etc.) and the learners can be
asked to find an appropriate and engaging text from the internet, as in the following
example.
NEWSPAPER REPORTS 1
1 Get Ready
Think about a story which is in the news. Then:

●● create pictures in your mind of what has happened;
●● see the story in your mind as a series of headlines in English;
●● predict in your mind a picture of what will happen next in the story;
●● see in your mind a caption in English underneath the picture;
●● see in your mind future newspaper headlines in English for the story.
If you are working with other learners, talk about your creations with them.
2 Reading the News

Try to find articles, editorials, letters and photographs relating to your story
from any newspaper in English available to you and from some of the following
newspaper websites:
_ http://news.excite.com/news
_ http://news.excite.com/news/reuters (Reuters)
_ www.iht.com (The Internation Herald Tribune)
_ www.guardian.co.uk (The Guardian)
_ www. sunday-times.co.uk (The Sunday Times)
_ www.the-times.co.uk (The Times)
_ www.telegraph.co.uk (The Telegraph)
_ www.ireland.com (The Irish Times)
_ www.latimes.com (The Los Angeles Times)
_ www.nytimes.com (The New York Times)
_ www.news.com.au (The Australian)
_ www.smhcom.au (The Sydney Morning Herald)
_ www.japantimes.co.jp (The Japan Times)
_ www.straitstimes.asial.com.sg (The Straits Times – Singapore)
_ http://mg.co.za/mg (The Daily Mail and Guardian – South Africa)
3 Making Notes
Make notes on what you have found relating to your story under the following
headings:
My (Our) Reactions
The Facts
Opinions
The Issues
My(Our) Predictions
If you are working with other people compare notes and then revise your own
notes if you wish.
4 Article Writing
Use your notes above to write a summary article on the story for an English
language newspaper or magazine in your own country (you can make one up if
you like). In your article focus:
on your views about what has happened;
the issues which this story raises.
Try to lay your article out using the conventions of the news genre. For
example, use headlines, headings, bold type, photographs, captions, etc. Look
at other newspaper articles to help you.
5 Comparing Reports
Go back to the web pages which you read in 2 and focus on 3 of them.
Read each one carefully and then make notes on the differences between
them under the following headings:
Prominence Given to the Story

The Facts
Main Emphasis
Attitudes
Style
Compare your notes with those of other people if you can.
6 Language Work
i Direct and Reported Speech
a Using examples from the texts you have used above (and any other
newspaper articles available to you), complete the following statements:
Direct speech is used when the actual words . . . (e.g. . . .)
Reported speech is used when it is the content rather than . . . (e.g. . . .)
or when the reporter does not want to . . . (e.g. . . .)
b Read again the texts which you analysed above and consider how they
report what people said. Then do the following:
●● Does the article use mainly reported speech or direct speech? Why
do you think this is so?
●● Select five instances of reported speech and say why you think the
writer used reported speech instead of direct speech.
●● Select five instances of direct speech and say why you think the
writer used direct speech instead of reported speech.
●● Is there anything distinctive you notice about the use of reported
speech in news reports/articles?
●● Is there anything distinctive you notice about the use of direct
speech in news reports/articles?
c If you can, compare your discoveries above with other people’s

discoveries. Then together look at other news stories on the web to
confirm or develop your discoveries.
d Write notes on Direct and Reported Speech in your Use of English file.
ii The Passive
a Find five examples of the passive (e.g. ‘The gate was left open.’) in your
newspaper articles and for each one say what you think its function is.
b Look at the headlines on a newspaper web page and predict one report
which is likely to make frequent use of the passive and another report
which is unlikely to use the passive.
Read the two reports to check if your predictions are correct. For each
passive used in the two reports say what you think its function is.
c Complete the following generalizations about the typical use of the
passive in newspaper reports and write them in your Use of English file:
The passive is typically used in newspaper reports to:
●● avoid direct . . . (e.g. . . .)
●● indicate that the doer of an action is . . . (e.g. . . .)
●● indicate that it is the action rather than . . . (e.g. . . .)
7 Writing an Article
Find a news story which interests you by surfing some of the newspaper
websites listed above.
Predict what is going to happen tomorrow in the story you have chosen.
Imagine that it is now ‘tomorrow’ and that you are a news reporter. Write the
report of what has happened. Try to keep to the genre conventions and style of
the original report but also try to make the report as appealing and interesting
as you can.
Wait until the next day and then read the new real report and compare it with
your report for:
●● content
●● style
●● use of language
8 Follow-Up
i Read a news story on the web every day for a week. For each story:
Read it first of all for content and then talk to yourself about it after you
have read it.
Read it again and think about the use of language (especially direct and
indirect speech and the passive).
ii Revise and improve the article you wrote in 7 above.
Other types of principled framework

Since the original version of this chapter was published in 2003 task-based approaches
to the development of materials for language learning have gained prominence. In these
approaches the learners are set tasks to complete in which their focus is on meaning
rather than form and in which their goal is successful task completion rather than explicit
learning of language. The theory is that they will acquire language, language strategies,
learning strategies and communication skills from their experience of performing the
tasks (e.g. from organizing and conducting a meeting to make decisions about a class
outing; from ordering books online for the class library; from inventing a device to save
water). Strong versions put the main focus on task performance with the teacher as a
language resource to make use of; but some of them have a ‘post-mortem’ reflection
stage on the learners’ use of language after the task has been completed. Weak
versions include a preparation stage which includes ‘teaching’ of language which is
going to be useful during the performance of the task.
The main shared characteristics of task-based approaches are that a task:
ll specifies a non-linguistic outcome

ll sets an achievable challenge
ll requires language use in order to achieve the specified outcome
ll replicates real-life use of language
ll has both a learner goal and a teacher target
When I develop tasks I use the following principled framework to help me:
1 Readiness activity (making connections between the learners’ prior experience

and the task they are going to perform)
2 Task-related experience
3 Personal response to the experience
4 Task specification
5 Task performance 1
6 Discovery of language features (from a ‘post-mortem’ analysis of task
performance by the learners and/or by proficient users of the language)
7 Task performance 2 (of a similar task)
For discussion, suggested frameworks and examples of task-based approaches see

Van den Branden (2006); Willis and Willis (2007); Ellis (2010, 2011) and Tomlinson
(2013, pp. 21–3).
One type of task-based approach which is gaining popularity with teachers and
especially with learners is the problem-solving approach. In this approach the learners
are set a problem and their task goal is to solve it. When I have used this approach I
have made use of the same principled task-based framework outlined above with Task
performance 1 and 2 consisting of attempts to come up with solutions to problems.
The problems I have posed have included developing a solution to the problem of
water shortages, coming up with a proposal for introducing salmon fishing in Oman
and deciding where fish keep their money. For a detailed discussion and examples of
problem-solving approaches see Mishan (2010).
Another principled approach which is gaining popularity is CLIL (Content and
Language Integrated Learning). In this approach the learners are taught a subject
(e.g. maths), topic (e.g. football around the world) or skill (e.g. how to play a trumpet)
through the medium of a language they are learning.
CLIL materials apply SLA theory to practice by providing a rich and meaningful
exposure to the language in use, by stimulating affective and cognitive engagement
(if the content is something which the learners are enthusiastic about) and by
providing a need and purpose for learners to interact with each other, as well as
to produce lengthy spoken and written texts (e.g. in presentations and projects).
Some of these materials also include activities helping learners to notice how the
language is used. Tomlinson (2013, p. 22)
When I have developed CLIL materials I have used either the text-driven or the task-
based framework outlined above. For discussion of the principles and procedures of
differing versions of CLIL see Snow (2005) and for examples of CLIL materials see
Coyle et al. (2010) and Tomlinson (2013, pp. 22–3).
Conclusion
The examples of the use of principled frameworks outlined above are intended as
illustrations of the value of developing frameworks prior to developing materials. My
main argument is that the activities in a course should match with learner needs and
wants and with principles of language learning, and that they should be developed in
ways which provide flexibility of use to learners and teachers as well as coherence of
connection. The best way to achieve this is to consider both the target context of use
for the materials and the principles and experience of the writers, and then to develop
a flexible framework to guide the development of the units. Later on, compromises
might have to be made in relation to the realities of administrative and publisher
needs but at least the writing process will start with the learner as the focus and with
principles in mind.
References
Arden, J. (1962), ‘The happy haven’, New English Dramatists 4. London: Penguin.
Bell, J. and Gower, R. (2011), ‘Writing course materials for the world: a great compromise’,
in B. Tomlinson (ed.), Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 135–50.
Bolitho, R. and Tomlinson, B. (1995, 2005), Discover English (new edn). Oxford:
Heinemann.
Cochingo-Ballesteros, C. A. (1995), ‘Spoken English handbooks and audio tapes for the
elementary grades’, in A. C. Hidalgo, D. Hall and G. M. Jacobs (eds), Getting Started:
Materials Writers on Materials Writing. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language
Centre, pp. 46–56.
Coyle, D., Hood, P. and Marsh, D. (2010), Content and Language Integrated Learning.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ellis, R. (2010), ‘Second language acquisition research and language-teaching material’,
in N. Harwood (ed.), English Language Teaching Materials: Theory and Practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 33–57.
— (2011), ‘Macro- and micro-evaluations of task-based teaching’, in B. Tomlinson (ed.),
Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 212–35.
Flores, M. M. (1995), ‘Materials development: a creative process’, in A. C. Hidalgo, D. Hall
and G. M. Jacobs (eds), Getting Started: Materials Writers on Materials Writing.
Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, pp. 57–66.
Fortez, G. E. (1995), ‘Developing materials for tertiary level expository writing’, in
A. C. Hidalgo, D. Hall and G. M. Jacobs (eds), Getting Started: Materials Writers on
Materials Writing. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, pp. 67–81.
Hidalgo, A. C., Hall, D. and Jacobs, G. M. (eds) (1995), Getting Started: Materials Writers
on Materials Writing. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.
Hutchinson, T. and Waters, A. (1984), Interface: English for Technical Communication.
London: Longman.
Johnson, K. (2003), Designing Language Teaching Tasks. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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What is Materials Development

Materials development is both a field of study and a practical undertaking.

As a field it studies the principles and procedures of the design, implementation

As an undertaking it involves the production, evaluation and adaptation of

There is also a third aspect of materials development, that is the use of

This concrete experience of developing materials as a basis for reflective

A fourth aspect of materials development is the use of materials to actualize

Materials’ ‘include anything which can be used to facilitate the learning of a

They can be linguistic, visual, auditory or kinesthetic, and they can be

They can be instructional, experiential, elicitative or exploratory, in that they can

and so do administrators, with their concerns for standardization and conformity

and the language policies of a government

These days most commercial materials are written by professional materials

This observation is contrary to my experience (Tomlinson, 2001 ), as I have

In my experience the result very often is a drop in creative energy as

My own preference is for a large team approach to writing

In the writing of the Namibian coursebook, On Target (1996), 30 teachers were

The teachers managed

Materials are often evaluated in an ad hoc, impressionistic way, which tends to

. . . However, Widdowson (1984, p. 218) says that ‘pedagogic presentation of language

in relation to the learners culture (Prodromou, 1992; Trabelsi, 2010),

in relation to the learners’ interaction with a text or task (Widdowson, 1978),

in relation to the ‘authenticity of the learner’s own interpretation’ (Breen, 1985)

in relation to the personal engagement of the learner (van Lier, 1996)

• even greater personalization and localization of materials;

The activities are mostly based on language manipulation, such as drills,

• they tend to undermine and demotivate learners;

The conventional approach to materials adaptation generally relates to a

A teacher- centered approach to adaptation

1 The language classroom

In the traditional approach to materials writing, where the whole structure is

In an attempt to draw a link between the adaptation process and reading,

• Materials should be based on universally appealing topics, which

What is materials evaluation?

ll the appeal of the materials to the learners;

ll Analysis of the target situation of use.

Principles in materials evaluation

The evaluator’s theory of learning and teaching

ll Language learners succeed best if learning is a positive, relaxed and

ll There are superficial cultural differences between learners from different

ll Deep processing of intake is required if effective and durable learning is to

Second language acquisition research (SLA)

ll Materials should achieve impact (through novelty, variety, surprise,

ll help the learner to develop cultural awareness and sensitivity (Tomlinson,

ll Provides a pleasurable learning experience.

Types of materials evaluation

ll McGrath (2002), who suggests a procedure involving materials analysis

ll Mukundan (2006), who describes the use of a composite framework

a Is each question an evaluation question?

b Does each question only ask one question?

c Is each question answerable?

d Is each question free of dogma?

ll Achievement of performance objectives

Most of the above can be estimated during an open-ended, impressionistic observation

ll tests of what has been ‘taught’ by the materials;

difficult to separate such variables as teacher effectiveness, parental support, language

Standard approaches to materials evaluation

ll Is the list based on a coherent set of principles of language learning?

Developing criteria for materials evaluation