Principles of Effective Materials Development

By Teacher Elicia Barton

It is important to know that language learning materials should ideally be driven by learning and teaching principles rather than be developed in best selling course books.
This chapter presents six principles of language acquisition and four principles of language teaching that the author ( Brian Tomlinson )thinks should be given a lot more attention in materials development.We can check outlines and principles and procedures to be applied to the actual development of materials.
The author takes position in regards to how materials should not be as random recreation but should be coherent applications of
i- Theory of language accessioned development
ii- Principle of teaching.
iii- Our current knowledge of how the target language is actually used.
iv- The results of systematic observation and evaluation of materials in use.

Brian Tomlinson along with other authors suggest that ELT materials should stimulate interaction and give six examples of  Principles of Language Acquisition that should drive ELT materials:

a- Learners are expose to a rich, meaningful,and comprehensible input of language in use
b- They need to be engage both effectively and cognitively in the language experience.
c- Language learners who achieve positive affect are much likely to achieve communicative competence that those who do not.
d- They can benefit from using those materials resources that they typically utilize when acquiring and using their L1.
e- Language learners can benefit from noticing salient features of the input.
f- Learners need opportunities to use language to try to achieve communicative purposes.

when developing classroom materials we should consider of language teaching here are a list of principles to follow:
a- The content and methodology of the teaching should be consistent with the objectives of the course that should meet their needs and wants to learners.

b- Teaching must be designed to help learners to achieve language development.

c-It should be designed to provide learners opportunities to develop educationally.

d-The teacher needs to be able to personalize materials and relate them in different ways, to the needs and learning styles for individual learners.

to conclude what is needed are principled frameworks to help future materials writers to manage to achieve principled coherence in their contextualized application of theory to effective practice.