PRINCIPLES & FRAMEWORKS FOR MATERIALS DESIGN

In the previous post, I mentioned the choice between being creative or following a set of principles. The question perplexing me at that time was which approach would be more appropriate for me – a teacher with some experience – to work on designing a course with other colleagues. Fortunately, this topic was discussed in more detail this week and fundamental understandings have been reached. Hadfiled (2014: 320) described materials writing as “intuitive”, “recursive”, and “spontaneous”, which requires the writers to be flexible and creative. This view was supported by other studies on the working process of expert writers (Prowse 1998; Samuda 2005). However, Johnson (2003) distinguished between “expert/specialist” and “novice/non-specialist” teachers, in which the former usually demonstrate a certain level of flexibility in their work while the latter may follow only one system. In my understanding, this distinction means that even though the creative process in designing materials can be highly complex and unpredictable, it could be extremely challenging for new teachers to learn from the diverse experiences of expert writers. As a result, a set of principles or frameworks could be explain how to train novice teachers to write and adapt their own materials.

Principles

After the in-class discussion, my group came up with a set of 21 principles which we consider to be most important in materials development. Among those, 10 were from our own ideas and the rest were from the works of Hutchinson and Waters (1987), Nunan (1988), Bell and Gower (1998), and Tomlinson (2011). Although some of the terms were overlapping each other, they all pointed towards what priorities me and my group members have when we choose teaching materials.

Regarding the principles from the books, most of what we have chosen came from Tomlinson (2011). This is understandable because this list of principles is the longest, most updated one among the five choices and it was informed by findings in the field of Second Language Acquisition. Among those, our group seemed to strongly agree on the point that “Materials should expose learners to language in authentic use”. In my previous post, I also mentioned how the view on “authenticity” can influence the way teachers choose and adapt authentic materials into their teaching. With this particular principle, Tomlinson (2011: 14) stated that authentic input must be “comprehensible”, meaning students can understand and respond to the language being used, so as to help learners acquire the target language. Furthermore, this author also emphasised the importance of selecting authentic input from different discourses to familiarise learners with how English is used in various contexts. For example, students should be exposed to language in formal settings (e.g.: a lecture) as well as informal ones (e.g.: daily conversation). This is similar to the idea in last week post in which I explained how an “authentic” text has already been tailored to a specific audience. From personal experience, I think once people focus too much on the presence of “authenticity” in materials, they tend to forget that “variety” is what makes them more valuable.

Additionally, from my group’s pool of original ideas, the principles that we agreed the most on was that materials “should encourage students’ collaboration”, “include the culture of the target language”, “leave room for learners’ creativity” and “need to engage students”. My idea of “learners’ creativity” in developing teaching and learning materials is that students can contribute by bringing content from different sources – much more easily nowadays thanks to the Internet – to their classroom and help teachers build a more engaging and exciting lesson. While this may at first seem like a way for teacher to reduce their workload, it actually requires a lot of additional guidance and support. Teachers who fail to fulfil this responsibility in a task-based lesson could face total chaos in their classroom (I will go into more detail with a funny example when the time comes). Thus, I believe books which encourage learners to create their own materials should include instructions for teachers so that they can offer support when necessary.

Finally, the most valuable lesson I have drawn from the group discussion was that each teacher will bring his/her own experiences, beliefs and values to the table and others may or may not agree with some of those views. Thus, it is crucial to establish fundamental principles from the beginning in order to avoid mismatch or conflict between teachers later on. Even if arguing about whether or not to include a certain type of content into the materials is very time-consuming and stressful, teachers may waste even more time and energy if they skipped this step in the development process.

Frameworks

Following the framework of Jolly and Bolitho (2011), it is clear that materials development is a long and recurring process comprising of multiple steps and feedback loops. Reading the case studies which were analysed using this framework has made realise that I have gone through similar stages when I used to design a course. However, in retrospect, me and my colleagues seemed to stop the materials development process after the “Physical Production” stage. Apparently, we did not spend enough time talking about how we were going to evaluate the quality of the materials created and how can they be revised in subsequent stages. In the future, I will definitely make use of frameworks for materials development in order to approach this task in a more logical and sensible way and also to track the work progress.

“A teacher’s path through the production of new or adapted materials”
(Jolly & Bolitho 2011: 113)

In addition, one of the underlying beliefs in relation to this framework was that “All teachers need a grounding in materials writing (Jolly & Bolitho 2011: 129). Going through the process of designing teaching materials has helped me understand more deeply why and how certain elements in a lesson may or may not work. That kind of experience has definitely had a positive influence on my development as a teacher. I believe only through creating something from scratch can people understand fully how it functions and how they can make profound changes. Therefore, I want to understand the principles and frameworks of materials development to include them in the training of less-experienced teachers and assist them in their professional development.

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.

Hadfield, J. (2014) Chaosmos: spontaneity and order in the materials design process. In: Harwood, N. (ed) English Language Teaching Textbooks: Content, Consumption, Production. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan pp. 320-359.

Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987) English for Specific Purposes: A Learning-centred Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Johnson, K. (2003) Designing language teaching tasks. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jolly, D. & R. Bolitho (2011) A framework for materials writing. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd  ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.107-134.

Nunan, D. (1988) Principles for designing language teaching materials. Guidelines 10 pp.1-24.

Prowse, P. (1998). How writers write: Testimony from authors. In B. Tomlinson(ed.): 130–145.

Samuda, V. (2005) Expertise in Pedagogic Task Design. In Johnson, K. (2008) Expertise in second language learning and teaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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. pp.1-31.