Material Design: Principles and Frameworks

At our seminar on Material designing and Framework we were asked to come up with some principles we think teachers and material writers should follow when designing materials. It was an interesting and challenging task as all of us create materials for our learners by simply following our intuition and making sure that learners find the materials we make interesting and engaging, which is one of the first and common answer the experienced writers give when asked what principles and framework they follow when writing a course book. Saying that, after have produced and used the materials you start to understand what worked, what didn’t and try to work out why. Unconsciously we evaluate our materials by going through the principles: was it engaging, age appropriate, did it have pedagogical realization, was it politically and culturally sensitive, did it meet students’ needs and expectations and etc. Principles and framework are crucial for material designing and there is plenty of written information on them can be found in (Hadfield 2014; Tomlinson 2013; Tomlinson 2013). Principles contain the aim for writing materials and framework is a guideline on how to do so.
During the task, we came up with a lot of principles and then had to narrow them down to the ones we were given by Paul. It was very hard to agree on, which ones to keep. Personally, I believe that selecting the principles when writing materials have also be done by taken on board who you write this material for. Is it a global coursebook, are you writing it for a particular purpose, institution or a country, as learners are different and have their own learning styles in different countries. Here are some important principles which we came up with for a global coursebook , after trying to narrow it down.
1. Materials should be learner-centered or materials should address the need for student centeredness (Tomlinson, 2011).
Through my practice, I have learned that student centeredness promotes students’ engagement , learning and has better learning outcomes. Everyone in our group has agreed on student centeredness being one of the most important principles when designing materials, but what is student centeredness . At the beginning of my teaching practice I understood and treated it as using tasks allowing and increasing students’ speaking time by ‘invisibly’ correcting and monitoring them. However ,with the time I have understood that student-centredness is not only providing learners with the materials allowing them speaking to each other using the target language but taking on board students’ age, interests, cultural background, needs, task design, instructions, and context. Materials should be personalized and engaging , giving a ground for real and meaningful participation.

2. Materials should encourage intellectual, aesthetic and emotional involvement (Tomlinson, 2011).
This principle is introduced by Tomlinson (2010). Language is the mechanism we use for communication and what we want to communicate has a wide spectrum of topics. This principle is one of the most important to me as learning a language is not only about input and output, lexis and syntax : it is about being able to think and communicate in a target language , being able to express our thoughts and needs, get on with the daily routine without getting upset or being put off by the failure to do so. Materials should contain more engaging exercises and use more interesting content as well as provide more access for students through the use of technology and give them an opportunity to practice, explore and expand their knowledge.
3.Materials should encourage learners to apply their developing skills to the world beyond the classroom (Nunan, 1988).
.Everybody in our group has agreed that this is one of the key principles. As teachers we can only provide learners with the small amount of knowledge, give them the base, guide them but the main process of acquiring the language is to bring the knowledge out of the classroom into the real world practice and experiment with them. I have noticed that better learners are the ones who are more independent , confident , have a strong factor of external or internal motivation and have a degree of autonomy when learning the language.
In my online teaching practice , I mainly work with adults and have to admit the ones who have no other choice as just to through themselves into the target language environment because of studies, kids, work have much quicker and significant progress, they notice the language, pick up new lexis, learn how to work out the meaning from the context without being able to understand every single word. Therefore, the classroom is only the ‘base’ in their overall learning and the real learning has to take place in outside world by the learners themselves.
4.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, but it helped me to remember some cliché or phrases which I later on used in practice trying to blend it in the context. That is why I understand some students who enjoy it and use it as a safety blanket, relying on it when practicing outside the classroom. However, I strongly believe that one of our strongest memory is an emotional memory and it is easier to remember new lexis when we make associations and connections with things on a personal level. Therefore, to facilitate the learners’ development we should promote the use of experiential learning and the ability to personalize content in order to engage.
5.Materials should be relevant to students’ needs and contexts (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987).
Every time when I take on a new student or a group I try to find out as much as possible about learners, their needs, interest. At online school I work for we have always asked our students to write about their needs, learning experience(what worked, didn’t work for them in the past), their expectations, interests, some information about themselves(family, hobby and ect.), how long they have been learning the language and what they would like to focus on the lessons. This information is sent to the teacher prior the lessons, allowing better planning and meeting students needs and expectations . It is hard to do by using only global course books but we always can adapt, supplement or create our own materials.
Every single process requires an order, algorithm, procedure to follow so the same should be done with the material writing and designing. There is a big choice of principles and frameworks offered by ELT researchers ,but being a teacher not a professional material writer ,personally I prefer the principles offered by Jolly and Bolitho( in Tomlinson 2011:113) and find it easy to apply them to my material writing:
 Identification of needs for materials
 Exploration of materials
 Contextual realization of materials
 Pedagogical realization of materials
 Production of materials
 Student use of materials
 Evaluation of materials against agreed objectives
However, it’s suggested that the final part of an evaluation of materials is not necessarily to be evaluated by students, which contradicts to one of the principles of ‘analysing students’ needs. From my experience material have to be evaluated both, by learners and teachers, to see if it caters to their needs and if it works. At our workshops, we did mention earlier the example of presenting Simple Present before Simple Continues which has been corrected in recent publications and there have been done many other changes, presumably based on the teachers’ evaluation who in their turn get the feedback from their learners.

Bibliography:

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

Tomlinson, B. (2012) “Materials Development for Language Learning and Teaching”, Language Teaching, 45 (02) pp. 143-179.

Johnson, K. (2003) Designing Language Teaching Tasks, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bell,J & Gowe,R(1998) Writing course materials for the world: a great compromise. In Tomlinson,B. Material Development in Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press (107-8; 116-129).

Tomlinson, B. (2011) Materials Development in Language Teaching, 2nd Ed, Cambridge Language Teaching Library, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.