Materials Session 3 – Materials should / shouldn’t…

• What are we looking for in materials? – 18 February 2013
• Principles and frameworks for materials design

Session 3 was really interesting. First of all, we did some thinking on what we are looking for in materials. Then, we wrote your ideas down individually and discussed them. We also had some help from Tomlinson, Hutchinson & Waters, Jolly & Bolitho, Richards, Cunnigsworth and Dudley-Evans & St. John on materials design principles. Finally, we gathered all these ideas and by deciding on what we think are the most important ones, we came up with a list.

The best things about this task were putting our ideas into words (which is challenging, but makes you realize what you prioritize) and collaborating; to discuss, eliminate and group these thoughts. We were really lucky because we had a mixed group of teachers in the room. I think it was extremely interesting to see what teachers from other parts of the world value most when it comes to materials.

In our group there were teachers from the UK, Russia, Korea, Thailand, Kuwait and Turkey (where I’m from). We divided the final list (which we have managed to do after a long process of discussing and eliminating) into 3 parts in order of importance. I will write them down starting from the bottom of the list and moving towards the top.

Here is the bottom 6 (still very important! You should have seen the ones we had to give up).

• Materials should be up to date.
• Materials should allow learners to develop learning skills, and skills in learning.
• Materials should encourage learners to learn more.
• Materials should provide sufficient knowledge which learners need.
• The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of input.
• Materials should encourage learners to apply their developing skills to the world beyond the classroom.

And now we move on to the middle where we have another 6 criteria.

• Materials should help learners to develop confidence.
• Materials should require and facilitate learner self-investment.
• Materials must include various activities to appeal to different kinds of learners (visual etc.)
• Materials should encourage students to talk and share with their peers.
• Balance of approaches.
• Materials should make people think.

We have finally reached the top of the list where we can see 7 lucky pieces of paper that managed to stay until the very end.

• Materials should be engaging and motivating.
• Materials do not have to be serious.
• Materials must be challenging.
• Materials should be clear and systematic but flexible enough to allow for creativity and variety.
• Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language  to achieve communicative purpose.
• The need for student-centredness.
• The need for authenticity.

Now that I think of it, I am surprised that despite coming from different countries and having taught in quite different contexts, we all share similar ideas on how ELT materials should be. I also believe materials should engage both teachers and learners. In my opinion, being genuinely interested in something always makes a difference in the way you use it.

We had guidance from Brian Tomlinson thanks to his very useful ‘glossary of basic terms for materials development in language teaching’ and ‘introduction’ in this book.