Why are you here? This is the question we were greeted with on our first session of ELT Materials module. Our tutor, Paul Slater, asked us to note what we want from this module. This is what I wrote:
1. To gain a deeper understanding of materials and materials design
2. To get better at evaluating and choosing ELT materials
3. To get better at catering for needs of students and teacher
4. To explore the future of ELT materials
5. To create my own education product
6. To get involved in EdTech

Before this seminar Paul asked us to put together some information on what, how, when and why we use materials in our classroom. Here is what I came up with:

It was so interesting to hear what other teachers had used and the possible variety of resources that can be used in the EFL classroom (many of them technologically based). Paul made an interesting observation that about 5 years ago many of the mentioned materials were not used or simply not available.
So, what are English Language Teaching materials? According to Tomlinson (2012) they are ‘anything that can be used to facilitate the learning of a language’. He talks about some ‘traditional’ materials such as coursebooks, flash cards, graded readers but also goes on to include videos, games, websites, mobile phones or even instructions given by the teacher and conversations between the learners. ( Tomlinson, 2011).
Thinking about my personal practice I can see how my own idea of materials has changed over the years. As a newly qualified teacher I was relying heavily on coursebooks and the materials they provide. However as I gained more experience in the classroom I began to experiment with other types of materials and started to move away from coursebooks. These days if you ask me what is my favourite type of materials I’d say my students. Over time I realised they are the most relevant and real-life material you can get. Last week, for instance, my afternoon class was working on creating a video podcast. Their work then was published on the school’s VLE where everyone can view it. I can also use these podcasts with my other classes as a listening material or as an example of what is needed for the next group working on a similar task. Of course, to capture their production we need to use some kind of technology, and this is where I believe technology makes a difference and creating more opportunities for learning.
I also believe it is what you do with the materials that is important, and as soon as you engage your learners with it, it becomes a material. To demonstrate, Paul gave us a set of Cuisenaire rods and asked to come up with different ways of using them in the classroom. I was amazed by how many excellent ideas that were shared: to highlight the word stress, to show transformation from active to passive, to explain the word order, to work with connected speech and many others. So this is how easily some colourful wooden blocks become a learning material.
Working with Cuisenaire rods reminded me of a talk by Nathan Arthur I saw at Business English UK conference in 2014 where he demonstrated the use of wooden block and Lego in his classroom. Here is the link to his blog http://englishbrickbybrick.blogspot.co.uk/

Tomlinson, B. (ed.) (2011) ‘Materials development in language teaching’. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Tomlinson, B. (2012) ‘Materials development in language teaching’. Language Teaching 42:2. pp.143-179