“Materials should…” – 5 principles that govern my selection and use of materials as a teacher
This week we took part in an activity that helped us establish what principles we hold regarding materials in EFL. We were asked to complete the sentence “Materials should…” with our own ideas. Interestingly some of our answers in our groups and as a class as a whole were very similar and others were very different. However, there seemed very little contradiction between any of the ideas. This process made me realise that as teachers we very much bring our personal experience, background, teaching circumstances and cultures (classroom, institution, heritage etc) in to the judgement process of what we consider to be the main principles in materials creation and therefore, it seems almost impossible to have universal principles that the whole of EFL could conform to together.
Initially this idea sat very comfortably with me, “we cannot have a universal set of principles”, but after a few days I began to realise that all the textbooks I’ve ever used/seen as a teacher aim for global use and the activities and content are nearly always in a very similar format and layout. And this led me on to questioning why are the textbooks very similar when the set of materials principles cannot be fixed or universal?
Attempting to answer this question in one blog post seems inappropriate. However, as the course develops and my reading goes deeper into the subject I hope to gain some understanding as to why textbooks are similar but principles aren’t.
During the seminar, we looked at several principles that have been adopted within EFL for many decades. As a group we reduced the principles down to our top 15. In this post I have reduced those 15 down to 5 which I have posted here with a small explanation why I value the principles.
- Materials should encourage learners to apply their developing skills to the world beyond the classroom (Nunan, 1988).
Interestingly all three members in the group agreed that this was an important principle. But it was the only principle we all agreed on. As a teacher I feel that I can only provide students with a small amount of learning and skills development during class time. I also believe that the best learners are the ones who are independent and have a degree of autonomy when learning the language. Therefore, the classroom is only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in their overall learning. As their teacher I aim to guide them and help them develop skills which are of use in the ‘real world’ and when they leave the classroom they attempt to use these skills, practise them and experiment with them outside. In my opinion a lot of deeper learning can take place if students are taking these skills from the classroom to the outside world.
- Materials should provide personal rather than mechanical practice (Bell & Gower, 1998)
From my own personal experience of learning a language I know that mechanical practice never worked well for me. Some students enjoy it as they may feel more familiar and/or safer with this unhumanistic approach but the reason students are learning English is to communicate which is far from a mechanical practice in the outside world. Also, I believe one of our strongest memories is our emotional memory and as humans we make associations and connections with things on a personal level. Therefore, to facilitate the learners’ development we should be promoting the use of experiential learning and the ability to personalise content so that it engages and focuses our students.
- Materials should address the need for student centredness (Tomlinson, 2011).
Personally, this principle seems obvious. At the very beginning of my teaching practice I learnt that student centredness increases student engagement, involvement and learning. However, do the materials honestly promote student centredness? In my opinion, I think many course books and supplementary resources superficially adhere to this idea. For example, “now check your answers in pairs.” Followed by a freer practice of “in small groups ask and answer the questions from the previous exercise with your own words”. Is this really student centred? Yes, the students are using each other’s knowledge to correct their own, and yes the students are required to speak to each other using the target language so maybe if we are to define student centredness as the learning is focused around the students through the interaction of each other then the materials are student centred. But I always arrive at an issue after that. Personally, ‘centredness’ implies that everything revolves around a centre (the students), including task design, context and instruction. In the examples I gave earlier, the instructions are requiring the students to work together, but is the content and task engaging? Is it promoting student participation or simply telling them they need to complete these tasks in order to practise the language. Maybe this issue stems from the personalised and engaging materials that are needed for real and meaningful participation.
- Materials should be relevant to students needs and contexts (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987).
Again, I learnt about this principle at the beginning of my teaching practice. It seems obvious to me that this should exist in any classroom. But I would say that it is a very difficult challenge to produce such materials when they are generally developed for a more global use. However, generally the materials attempt to address this problem and they do offer supplementary materials and extra practice for students and teachers. A good example of this are the materials developed for IELTS students. More and more I have seen new textbooks that focus on exam skills and other strategies to help them achieve better results. Even though these are the needs of the students, I believe they are only their needs to pass the exam, and often not for use outside the IELTS environment. But that is an issue with the IELTS exam procedure and testing and not with the materials.
- Materials should maximise learning potential by encouraging intellectual, aesthetic and emotional involvement which stimulates both right- and left-brain activity (Tomlinson, 2011).
This final principle was introduced to me by Tomlinson (2010). Language is the mechanism we use for communication and what we want to communicate has a wide spectrum of topics. By using the right- and left-brain we are simply recreating what happens when we leave the classroom. When we are going about our everyday lives we are constantly confronted with issues and tasks that must be completed in order to continue with our lives. For example, we meet a friend and have coffee whilst reminiscing about school; we go to work and solve problems; we get a bus and count the change in our pocket to pay for a ticket; we visit a cultural heritage site and it ignites our imaginations; we watch a film and read a book; we watch and read the news and think about issues in our current lifetime; we cook dinner and make a mental shopping list when running out the door. If life cannot be learnt through a 12 unit book and supplementary material, then why do we expect students to learn a language through a book when communication is what constantly takes place in our everyday lives.
This final principle is probably the most important one for me. Learning a language is so much more than learning lexis, syntax and input and output skills: it is a part of a student’s life. Materials at the moment seem to be attempting to foster more engaging exercises and using more interesting content as well as providing more access for students through the use of technology and are set to continue. But is it enough?
References
Bell, J. & Gower, R. (1998) Writing course materials for the world: a great compromise. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.116‐129. (Taken from pgs: 107‐8)
Hall in: Hidalgo, A.C., Hall, D., et al. (eds). Getting Started: Materials Writers on Materials Writing. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre. pp.172‐86.
Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987) English for Specific Purposes: A Learning‐centred Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nunan, D. (1988) Principles for designing language teaching materials. Guidelines 10 pp.1-24.
editors, Tomlinson, B. and Masuhara, H. (2010) Research for Materials Development in Language Learning: Evidence for Best Practice. Edited by B. Tomlinson and H. Masuhara. London: Continuum International Pub. Group.
Tomlinson, B. (2011) Introduction: principles and procedures of materials development. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching (2nded) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.1-31. (Principles drawn from Second language acquisition research.)
This is my first ever comment so please forgive me it is rubbish but I am trying to get into the habit of this. The post you have written is great and I agree with those principles, alot. The second principle is really difficult in larger classroom. Is it the materials or the task that needs to be perosnalised? IS there difference between a task and a material? Is it not a good idea to have more generic scaffolding materials and then I personalised production task?
Just thoughts
Mark
That is a really good point. Is it the task or materials? I guess what I look for is material that can offer tasks for learners to personalise. Often I find the materials in a textbook require a student to read a text for example and then they need to answer questions about their own experience or opinion and I feel the text is so removed from their culture (sometimes) that the task becomes useless. And yes, in larger classes this is very difficult. I guess removing things like pop culture is important for larger groups.
Thank you for your post. Looking forward to reviewing your posts.
I think that personalising “aka humanising” materials is related to tasks somehow. Tasks are essentials in designing any ELT material, but they are actually part of the material and not the material itself. Humanising a task would ultimately result in humanising the material itself, however, it all depends on who is using the teaching material and how it is being used..For example, you use a video from the BBC website (this is the material), now the trick is to use this video to achieve your educational purposes, so it all depends on how you use it ( this is the task). You need to think of a task which makes this video more relevant to your learners , and this would naturally humanise your teaching material ( the video).
Great! This is pretty much what is needed on the blog i.e. proper engagement with the themes of the module on a week-by-week basis. I think it would be worth reflecting on the principles you value most as you head towards the end of the module. Have you developed or refined them? Can you see how these principles guide your selection, adaptation, and creation of materials? However… you have been reading, I know that, but is this evident in your post? Simply saying which texts your principles were drawn from would show that you know you are participating in a debate (I did circulate this information.)
It was interesting to see questions emerging for you days after the session, and to see what those questions were. I note your comment on the diversity of principles and wondered where and why those differences occurred within the group. Were they the result of teacher beliefs, context, culture, age, gender, or what? How could you address them if you designed materials for publication?
(Some minor glitches in this post – typos, etc. – to weed out.)
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