Language Learning and Materials Development

Outline of Presentation
•Basic Terms
•Principles of Second Language
Acquisition
•Principles and Procedures of
Materials Development (Reading
Assignment)

REVIEW…

BASIC TERMS
(TOMLINSON, 2011)

AUTHENTIC TASKS • A task which involves learners in using language in a way that replicates its use in
the “real world” outside the language classroom.
AUTHENTIC TEXT
• A text which is not written or spoken for language-teaching purposes.
CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning • An approach in which students acquire a second of
foreign language while focusing or learning new content knowledge and skills.
Communicative Approaches • An approach to language teaching which aim to help learners develop
communication competence.
Communicative Competence • The ability to use the language effectively for communication.
CORPUS • A bank of authentic texts collected in order to find out how language is actually
used. This is often restricted to a particular type of language uses.
Materials Evaluation • The systematic appraisal of the value of materials in relation to their objectives and
to the objectives of the learners using them.
Multimedia Materials • Materials which makes use of a number of different medias.
Simplified Text • These are texts which have been made simpler so as to make it easier for learners to read
them.
Supplementary Materials • Materials designed to be used in addition to the core materials of a course.
News Technologies • A term used to refer to any recently developed electronic means of
delivering language-learning materials or of facilitating electronic communication between learners.
Pedagogic Task - A task which does not replicate a real-world task, but which is designed to facilitate the
learning of a language or of skills which would be useful in a real-world task.

Principles of Second Language Acquisition

Materials should achieve IMPACT.

• Impact is achieved when materials have noticeable effects on learners, that is when learners’
curiosity, interests and attention are attracted.
• IMPACT can be achieved through:
• Novelty
• Variety
• Attractive presentation
• Appealing content
• Achievable challenge

Materials should help learners to feel at ease.

• Research has shown the effects of various forms of anxiety on acquisition: “THE LESS ANXIOUS
THE LEARNER, THE BETTER THE LANGUAGE ACQUISTION PROCEEDS.”
• This can be achieved by:
• Letting learners more comfortable with written materials with lots of
white space rather than they do with materials in which lots of different
activities are crammed together on the same page.
• Providing materials that have texts and illustrations that they can relate
to their own culture than they are with those which appear to them to be
culturally alien,
• Providing learners with materials which are obviously trying to help them
to learn than they are with materials which are always testing them.

Materials should help learners develop self-confidence.

 Relaxed and self-confident learners learn faster (Dulay, Burt and Krashen 1982).
 Most materials developers recognize the need to help learners to develop confidence, but many of
them attempt to do so through a process of simplification.
 They try to help the learners to feel successful by asking them to use simple language to accomplish
easy tasks such as completing substitution tables, writing simple sentences and filling in the blanks in
dialogues.
What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful.
• Most teachers recognize the need to make the learners aware of the potential relevance and utility of the
language and skills they are teaching.
• And researchers have confirmed the importance of this need. For example, Stevick (1976) cites
experiments which have shown the positive effect on learning and recall of items that are of personal
significance to the learner. And Krashe (1982) and Wenden (1987) report research showing the importance
of apparent relevance and utility in language acquisition.
• Perception of relevance and utility can also be achieved by relating teaching points to interesting and
challenging classroom tasks and by presenting them in ways which could facilitate the achievement of the
task outcomes desired by the learners.
Materials should require and facilitate learners’ self-investment.

 Many researchers have written about the value of learning activities that require the learners to make
discoveries for themselves. For example, Rutherford and Sharwood-Smith (1988) assert that the role of
the classroom and of the teaching materials is to aid the learner to make efficient use of the resources in
order to facilitate self-discovery.

 It would seem that learners profit most if they invest interest, effort and attention in the learning activity.
Materials can help them to achieve this by providing them with choices of focus and activity, by giving
them topic control and by engaging them in learner-centered discovery activities.

Learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught.

 Certain structures are acquired only when learners are mentally ready for them. (Dulay, Burt and
Krashen 1982).

 Readiness can be achieved by materials which create situations requiring the use of variational
features not previously taught, by materials which ensure that the learners have gained sufficient
mastery over the developmental features of the previous stage before teaching a new one, and by
materials which roughly tune the input so that it contains some features which are slightly above each
learner’s current state of proficiency.

 It can also be achieved by materials which get learners to focus attention on features of the target
language which they have not yet acquired so that they might be more attentive to these features in
future input. 

Materials should expose the learners to language authentic use.

 Krashen (1985) makes the strong claim that comprehensible input in the target language is both
necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of that language provided that learners are ‘affectively
disposed to “let in” the input they comprehend’.

 Few researchers would agree with such a strong claim that exposure to authentic use of the target
language is necessary but not sufficient for the acquisition of that language.

 Materials can provide exposure to authentic input through the advice they give, the instructions for
their activities and the spoken and written texts they include. They can also stimulate exposure to
 authentic input through the activities they suggest (e.g. interviewing the teacher, doing a project in the
local community, listening to the radio, etc.)

Learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input.

 There seems to be an agreement amongst many researchers that helping learners to pay attention to
linguistic features of authentic input can help them to eventually acquire some of those features.

 For example, the learners might be paying conscious attention to working out the attitude of one of
the characters in a story but might be paying subconscious attention to the second conditionals which
the character uses. Or they might be paying conscious attention to the second conditionals, having
been asked to locate them and to make a generalization about their function in the story.

Materials should provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve
communication purposes.

 Most researchers seem to agree that the learners should be given opportunities to use language for
communication rather than just to practice it in situations controlled by the teacher and the materials. 

 Communicative interaction can provide opportunities for picking up language from the new input
generated, as well as opportunities for learner output to become and informative source of input.

 Using the language for communication involves attempts to achieve a purpose in a situation in which
the content, strategies and expression of the interaction are determined by the learners.

 Ideally teaching materials should provide opportunities for such interaction in a variety of discourse
modes ranging from planned to unplan.

Materials should take into account that the positive effects of instruction are usually delayed.

 Research into the acquisition of language shows that it is a gradual rather than an instantaneous
process and that this is equally true for instructed as well as informal acquisition.

 It follows that learners cannot be expected to learn a new feature and be able to use it effectively in
the same lesson.

 The inevitable delayed effect of instruction suggests that no textbook can really succeed if it teaches
features of the language one at a time and expects the learners to be able to use them straightaway.

 It is equally important that the learners are not forced into premature production of the instructed
features (they will get them wrong) and that tests of proficiency are not conducted immediately after
instruction (they will indicate failure or an illusion of success)
Materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles.

 Different learners have different preferred learning styles. This means that activities should be
variable and should ideally cater for all learning styles.
 Styles of learning which need to be catered for in language-learning materials include: 
 visual (e.g. learners prefer to see the language written down); 
 auditory (e.g. learners prefer to hear the language).
  Kinesthetic (e.g. learners prefer to do something physical, such as following instructions for a
game); 
 studial (e.g. learners like to pay conscious attention to the linguistic features of the language and
want to be correct); 
 experiential (e.g. learners like to use the language and are more concerned with communication than
with correctness); 
 analytic (e.g. learners prefer to focus on discrete bits of the language and to learn them one by one); 
 global (e.g. learners are happy to respond to whole chunks of language at a time and to pick up from
them whatever language they can); 
 dependent (e.g. learners prefer to learn from a teacher and from a book); 
 independent (e.g. learners are happy to learn from their own experience of the language and to use
autonomous learning strategies). 

Materials should take into account that learners differ in affective attitudes.

 This can be achieved by: 

 providing choices of different types of text; 
 providing choices of different types of activities; 
 providing optional extras for the more positive and motivated learners: 
  providing variety; including units in which the value of learning English is a topic for discussion; 
  including units in which the value of learning English is a topic for discussion; 
 including activities which involve the learners in discussing their attitudes and feelings about the
course and the materials; 
 researching and catering for the diverse interests of the identified target learners; 
 being aware of the cultural sensitivities of the target learners; 
 giving general and specific advice in the teacher’s book on how to respond to negative learners (e.g.
not forcing reluctant individuals to take part in group work). 

Other Basic Principles are:

 Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction.

 Materials should maximize learning potential by encouraging intellectual, aesthetic, and
emotional involvement which stimulates both right and left-brain activities.
 Materials should not rely too much on controlled practice.
 Materials should provide opportunities for feedback.