Principles and Frameworks for material design

The seminar for Teaching Materials TE714 on Monday the 18th February was about Principles and Frameworks for material design. This session was based on our reading list and our discussion was in reference to the reading of Materials Development in Language Teaching. Our course tutor gave us more than 30 statements of design principles for ELT (English language teaching materials) and we were instructed to first-rate them in order of importance.

These principles for ELT materials were from the taken from the following authors;

(A)Tomlinson, B. (2011)
(B)Bell, J. & Gower, R. (1998)
(C)Nunan, D. (1988)
(D)Hall in: Hidalgo, A.C., Hall, D., et al. (eds) (1995).
(E)Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987)
We selected the statements with the purpose of gathering some specific principle criteria. This was not a fast selection process, because of we had to elaborate on why we had chosen some given statement criteria. As there were four of us in our group of different nationalities, (Anglo-Japanese, Italian, Angolan and I am an Argentinian (UK resident), we decided to analyse each statement in relation to our personal beliefs. Some of these statements were more relevant than others, however we selected the one that each individual considered imperative according to our context of work. Then we compared the provided statements with our own written statements. As a group we immediately agreed on the following criteria, shown in fig.1 below.
This activity has given me opportunity to reflect in terms of how essential it is to acquire knowledge from expertise, and how to follow certain principles and criteria. The principles for materials design can be taken as a foundation for book evaluations. In the literature above researchers analyse book evaluation criteria to validate their utility. These evaluations are an ongoing development. As educators, we need to understand the procedure when considering the evaluation of our materials, as well as to take them as part of our continuous professional development. During our seminar, as students, we tried to generate a list of the best principled criteria. While we were creating our list, we talked about the article State of-the- Art, Tomlinson (2012:148), who proposes in Tomlinson(2003b) “a processes for generating principled criteria instead of an unrealistic set of criteria for all contexts.”

Therefore, we approved a selection of statements. Nonetheless, we thought that the chosen principle from the list would not be necessarily applicable for each individual’s cultural context. Furthermore, there is a differentiation between universal and local criteria according Tomlinson (2012:148)

“to generate these criteria he advises evaluator to brainstorm a list of principles beliefs that they hold about how languages are most effectively acquired and then convert these beliefs into criteria for evaluating materials, such as ‘Are materials likely to archive affective engagement? (Tomlinson 2003b:28)

As an educator I select teaching language materials from those available, those endorsed by the local education authority, also those recommended by other teachers which are suitable for adaption. However, with the guidance of the design principles listed above it could be useful to adapt further and highlight evaluation criteria. It is valid to recognise that for materials evaluation a specific discipline is required to be able to assess the best materials for learners.

Fig. 1
The criteria of how to evaluate a teaching materials for ELT it is a challenging learning experience.

Reference
Bell, J. & Gower, R. (1998) Writing course materials for the world: a great compromise. In:
Tomlinson, B. Materials Development in Language Teaching Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hall, D. & Hewings, A. 2001, Innovation in English language teaching: a reader, Routledge in association with Macquarie University and The Open University, London.
Hidalgo, A.C., Hall, D., et al. (1995) Getting Started: Materials Writers on Materials
Writing. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.
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.
Tomlinson, B. (2011) Introduction: principles and procedures of materials development. In:
Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd ed) Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Tomlinson, B. (2012). Materials development for language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 45, pp 143-179. doi:10.1017/S0261444811000528.