Materials Evaluation and Design - Week 5 - Principles of Effective Materials Development

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 5 of the course Materials Evaluation and Design. In this class we will review key concepts from a reading about deriving criteria for materials evaluation development from principles of second language acquisition and teaching.

Today's Goals:

• Explore Tomlinson's principled approach to materials design by matching SLA and teaching-learning principles with criteria for materials development and use.
• Share and compare your univeral criteria based on your own principles of language teaching and learning. Evaluate whether they meet the characteristics of effective criteria.

Guiding Questions:

• How can SLA research inform my practice as a materials designer.
• What are my personal principles of materials design?

Task 1: The Columbian Exchange

For our warm up activity, we will take a look at the Columbian Exchange, the movement of plants and animals from the Old World to the New World as a result of contact between Europe and the Americas beginning on October 12th 1492.

Click the link and find your section of the document.

• Group Quiz: CLICK HERE

Task 2: Cataloguing Our Criteria

For homework you read Chapter 1: Materials Evaluation in Tomlinson (2013) and learned his technique for generating lists of universal criteria by first articulating your beliefs about language learning (backed by sound SLA and learning theory) and using them as categories to define criteria that materials should fulfill. You already articulated 5 of your core beliefs and 2-3 universal criteria based on on them. Now you will share and compare your criteria with your peers.

Add three of your beliefs and their corresponding criteria in your section of the document below. Then read though the entire list with your partners and decide if each criterion:

• Avoids ambiguous terminology
• Addresses only one feature at a time

• Group Document: CLICK HERE

Task 3: Matching SLA Principles with Materials Development Principles

In chapter 4 of Harwood (2010), Brian Tomlinson argues in favor of a principled approach to materials development by first identifying principles from second language acquisition research as well as principles about teaching-learning in general in order and then using those as categories to generate materials for materials development. Click your group link below and follow the instructions in the document. 

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE
• Group 3: CLICK HERE

References:

Harwood, N. (Ed.). (2010). English Langauge Teaching Materials: Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press.

McGrath, I. (2016). Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press. 

Tomlinson, B. (Ed.). (2013). Developing Materials for Language Teaching (2nd ed.). Bloosmbury Academic.