Materials Development in Language Teaching edited by Brian Tomlinson

Materials Development in Language Teaching consists of four sections, divided into seventeen chapters on theoretical and practical issues relating to creating or evaluating EFL materials. Section A deals with data collection and language analysis, which was interesting to read, but I'm not sure if I'll ever get round to doing a concordance by hand! Section B is about the process of materials writing, from the exploration of language, its contextual and pedagogical realisations, to the physical production of materials, their use and their evaluation. These chapters also focus on learner differences and learner choice, the need for constant evaluation and revision of one's work and the importance of compromise when dealing with publishers, schools, teachers, and learners. Section C focuses on the process of materials evaluation. It includes chapters on piloting, evaluating teaching materials, evaluating communicative tasks, and an investigation into what teachers are looking for when they choose a coursebook. All these papers are well worth reading, but I particularly enjoyed Andrew Littlejohn's systematic approach to the analysis of textbooks. As there are many more teachers who use textbooks than there are writers who write them, I suspect that his chapter will also have the widest appeal. Finally, section D is called "ideas for materials development", but unfortunately, rather than give much in the way of practical examples, it instead focuses on the weaknesses of present-day coursebooks, which typically do not cater to different learners or learning styles very well. One suggestion is to give students more autonomy by developing sourcebooks, which sounds like a great idea, but perhaps for practical or financial reasons, this may be difficult to realise. The final note comes from the editor, Brian Tomlinson, in the final summary when he looks ahead and behoves researchers, teachers, writers and publishers to pool their resources and expertise in order to create materials that will have greater value to learners. I enjoyed reading Materials Development in Language Teaching and I think that there is something in it for everyone in the language teaching profession. I only wish that I had been able to read it before I wrote and had my own textbook published!

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