Materials Development in Language Teaching Brian Tomlinson

Chapter 15: Self-access MaterialsSummary of Part DSynopsis of the book

Introduction Self-access materials are learner-centered activities intended to help students practice at their own pace, to supplement class work and to focus on skills they might find problematic. The drawback with this type of self-assessment is that for learners to use it, it should allow easy self-marking

The predominance of this type has limited the learner’s focus to a narrow left brain activity with limited use of the person’s learning capacity. Self-access materials have also led to a loss in the learners’ procedural knowledge (the use of language in context), and to little contribution to implicit knowledge - acquired subconsciously.

In general, learners are divided into two categories: studial learners who are analytical, visual and independent, and who like to learn in textbooks; and experiential, learners who are global and hands-on and who prefer an overall approach of the language. It is clear that self-access materials fit more the first type.

In recent years, there has been an increasing tendency to overuse self-access materials as cost-effective open learning tools. However, these materials should be closed enough, to be easily self-marked.

In this chapter, Brian Tomlinson suggests to supplement “closed” self-access materials by “open” activities that require the learner’s investment.

Self-access materials should:

1- allow the learner to choose what to work on 2- be open-ended with a range of possible answers3- encourage learners to exploit their prior experience 4- involve learners as human beings5- require the learners’ investment, effort, and energy

6- stimulate left and right brain activities to maximize the brain’s potential for learning

7- provide a diversified input to facilitate informal and selective acquisition

It is a humanistic approach to develop the learners’ in-context acquisition of language

Features of Self-access Materials

a- They should provide exposure to authentic language through purposeful activities.b- Reading activities should facilitate interaction with the texts.c- The pre and post reading activities should elicit a reader-text interaction.

d- Learners should be encouraged to practice high level skills such as: inferring, connecting, interpreting, and evaluating. e- Productive activities (writing and speaking) should involve the use of the target languagef- Learners should make choices that suit their learning style, linguistic level, and level of involvement in the material.

g- Self-access materials are individualistic, but also offer the possibility of group work. h- Feedback should be given through commentaries and not answers keys, during and after tests.

Features of Self-access Materials

i- Self-access activities should involve the learners’ thinking about the cognitive process to make informed choices.j- Suggestions for individual follow-up activities should be given at the end of every unit.

Suitable Reading Self-access Materials

Among possible genres are narrative texts that have the potential to engage the learners cognitively and affectively and engage the readers in an interaction with the story elements (characters, setting, and plot), have the potential to build on the readers’ personal experiences, and provide positive evidence for language acquisition.

Narrative-based self-access materials

As Ronnqvist and Sell (1994) put it: “Reading literary texts in the target language, gives genuine experience in the pragmatics relating formal linguistic expression to situational and socio-cultural contexts.” The advantage of narrative is that it can be adapted for any level of learners without any loss of authenticity.

Frequently, reading materials are based on excerpts from novels, books, or any available piece of contemporary literature. These texts can be used in open-end, holistic activities allowing individual or group work, the purpose being the development of reading skills and a better mastership of the target language.

Narrative-based self-access materials

One way of organizing reading self-access materials is to make the learners try to predict some facts from the excerpt prior to reading it, which will will entice the readers and prepare them for the reading activity.

Then they will be asked to guess the meaning “in context” of some expressions taken at some important points in the excerpt.

They will also have to write a summary outline (or a mind map) and to extract or infer the building blocks of the text, among which the thesis statement, topic sentences, main ideas, and major supporting details.

Conclusion

Self-access materials should be designed to:1 - give the learners the responsibility of deciding what, when, and how much to do2- ask open-end questions (prediction)3- encourage experiential activities4- get peers’ feedback rather than teachers’5- react in writing as a creative critical response6- ask “think” questions pertaining to the elements of the excerpt such as the title, characters, setting and plot7- provide opportunities for feedback.

Most students are visual, analytic learners, probably as a result of the interaction between teachers, publishers, and text-writers. These actors in education encourage learners who can focus on chunks of information, who memorize and retrieve consciously, and who are systematic in their learning.

Conclusion

This influence probably comes from the way subjects, other than language, are taught in schools, where effort, conformity and application are generously rewarded by teachers who value discipline and conformity.

Conclusion

Summary of Part D

For Tomlinson all types of learners and learning styles should be catered for in material design.

Mainstream language course books strongly favor the visual, analytic rather than the auditory, experiential learners. This bias comes from school environment where teachers encourage, favor, and reward analytic learners.

However, researchers on language acquisition define good language learners as those who are flexible, able to monitor themselves, pay attention to both form and meaning, practice the language, and aware of the whole learning process.

Self-access materials should help learners make conscious and informed rather than intuitive decisions. Thus, materials designed to allow learners to work experientially will give them a greater repertoire of learning styles and strategies, will help them make conscious decisions, and will help them become better aware of the learning process.

Tomlinson also highlights the fact that the role of the teacher’s book in helping to cater for choices is underestimated. At the moment, the teacher’s books receive little attention and investment in developing their content, and are limited to providing answer keys.

If the student’s book should be a rich bank of exercises, the teacher’s manual should also include a variety of activities to be proposed to the learners, activities that cater for all types of learning styles.

Synopsis of the whole book

A- Existing materials might be acceptable so far but they are not sufficient:

Available language learning materials have certainly taken advantage of technology advancements and the increase in knowledge of how languages are learnt, yet, learners still fail to achieve a satisfactory level of communicative competence.

B- More feedback is needed on existing materials:

Being expensive, very little research has been conducted on the outcomes of language learning materials. Another factor is the diversity of the numerous variables that affect the learning process. The number of copies a book sells is certainly not the “right” indicator of its effectiveness, so we need to find out more about its learning outcomes to be able to judge whether or not it needs improvement. One way could be long-term research in the field.

C- More knowledge is required on the learners’ needs:

So far, we don’t know enough about these needs, but we are sure that very few learners and teachers are truly satisfied by existing materials. Thus, to find out about the real needs in the field, we have to conduct more research that engages experts from various fields with the cooperation of universities and publishing companies.

D- More expertise on material development is needed:

We must look for reliable information about the learning outcomes of existing materials and then experiment to innovate in the field. Institutions, governments, and publishers are satisfied with existing materials that work and are reluctant to participate in this long-term, costly process, and aren’t willing to invest in projects “that might not succeed!” Only serious cooperation between them will lead to an effective change.

E- More knowledge on the use of the target language is needed:

Our knowledge of how languages are used is being incorporated in materials development. Yet, we need to know more about language use in-context and about the patterns of interaction among non-native speakers from different backgrounds. Then, we will need to find out how exposing the learners to “language reality” best serves their learning process.

F- More flexibility is required to cater for the diversity in needs:

As it was stressed in the summary of Part D, we need actual information rather than subjective impressions. We may need to start by identifying the learners who will effectively benefit from diversity of choices in the learning process.

G- More teacher training is needed:

Most language teachers are not trained enough and are, as a result, reluctant to experiment with new approaches. For materials to contribute to teacher and curricula development, they shouldn’t be imposed, but should facilitate the in reflection, evaluation, and adaptation by teachers who will thus become better involved in the development and trialing of new materials.

H- More publishers’ involvement is needed:

Although the economic environment might hinder the involvement of publishers who are mainly motivated by profitability, we have to convince and assist them in taking a more active part in experimenting in the materials development field, for their own benefit. The best way would be by bringing together teachers, publishers and materials writers to pool resources so that they could take advantage of expertise to produce materials of grater value for the learners.

To sum things up, collaboration from private and public institutions involved in education will also be of substantial help in language acquisition, research methodology, data collection and analysis, language pedagogy, and materials design production and distribution. As a fact, joint research is a must if we want to make a major breakthrough in this promising field.

Conclusion to the book

To sum things up, collaboration from private and public institutions involved in education will also be of substantial help in language acquisition, research methodology, data collection and analysis, language pedagogy, and materials design production and distribution. As a fact, joint research is a must if we want to make a major breakthrough in this promising field.