Principles of Effective Materials Development

By: MEd. Andrea Rodríguez Vega

The author starts talking about the way ELT materials are written by other authors and the different procedures they follow. Most of them rely on their intuitions but very few are guided by principles.

As the author offers his opinion saying that materials should be coherent and guided by theories of language and principles of teaching, I may add that authors should pay attention to what teachers and learners believe because they are the ones who spend more time observing and being influenced by the language. As I later found out, Bell and Gower believe so; they discuss the need for authors to make principled comprimises to meet the practical needs of teachers and learners.

Tomlinson continues talking about the development of ELT materials saying that they should expose the learners to language, help learners to focus on features of authentic input and arouse their curiosity and attention.

He stresses the importance on principles and procedures of materials development; he states that each principle needs to be derived from principles of language acquisition and then used to create or develop frameworks.

Tomlinson states six principles of language acquisition and immediately he offers the principles of materials development  according to each one of them; he later refers to principles of language teaching as an important part of materials development.

At the end, Tomlinson states principled frameworks as a basis to achieve coherence in the application of theory to develop materials.

As teachers, we sometimes expect textbooks or any other material to do wonders in the learning process. Although we are not much into textbook development, we should be taken into account as a positive media, with the needs of learners and the learning process.