CREATING TEACHING MATERIALS: PUTTING THE PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE

closer alignment to the principles of good materials for cultural competence, and also through the application of a consistent framework. For both kinds of teaching materials, it is important to consider the end user and ensure that the final product meets that user’s needs and is therefore essential to conduct research into the user needs for developing materials.

The field of study around how materials for language teaching and learning ought to be developed is still an emerging one, despite calls to develop practices and to systematise the processes over many years (e.g. Tomlinson, 2012a). Even since 2012, new

publications are limited and reiterate the same calls for materials developers to connect

research and pedagogy4_{. In general, developers use their experience and their intuition}

as a dual method for creating original materials and adapting existing materials. Although they implicitly take into consideration many aspects while doing this,

experience and intuition are not systematic processes guaranteed to result in successful materials. Tomlinson (2012b) argues that a better approach to materials development is one using frameworks and criteria.

None of them [materials developers] refer to making use of principled frameworks or criteria. My own preference is for an approach to materials writing in which the ongoing evaluation of the developing materials is driven by a set of agreed principles, both universal principles applicable to any learning context and local criteria specific to the target learning context(s). (Tomlinson, 2012b, p. 153)

Throughout the AusDICT project I have applied this logic and employed a set of principles to guide the creation of the dictionary and the teaching materials. These principles have been drawn from materials development as well as from the field of lexicography and through teacher consultation.

3.4.1 User, scope, and context

The first decision of a materials developer is to define their user. In the case of this project the teachers are the targeted users for the AusDICT project overall, and while the student is the main user for the teaching materials (Tomlinson, 2012b), the teacher is the one taken into consideration throughout the creation process via the evaluative criteria, discussed in §3.4.2. The best way of considering these needs is by conducting a user needs analysis (Atkins & Rundell, 2008). The current project used surveys and focus groups to conduct such an analysis, the results of which are discussed in Chapter 8.

Following this, the materials developer must determine the scope of the materials, including how many hours of teaching it will cover; whether the materials are for a course or an activity (or something in between); whether they are for a specific topic, a sub-topic, a general feature etc. For the example teaching materials in my project, I have developed samples from several of these categories to illustrate the range of materials possible using STE and the AusDICT. Chapter 9, where I describe STE and its applications, offers further discussion of these example materials.

4 _{Many of the publications in this developing field are pegged on the authorship or editorship of}

As discussed in Chapter 2 (§2.4) language teachers draw on a number of different theories of language teaching and learning. As such, it is crucial for a materials

developer to understand their own position in regard to teaching and learning languages, as well as the teaching theories and approaches to be used in the materials. The key approaches for this project, and the teaching materials in particular, are intercultural language teaching and learning, and task-based language teaching.

These approaches to language learning and teaching also govern the content for

materials. In some cases, this can be limited to selecting YouTube videos for students to watch, and in others the creation of entirely new courses. For the current project, the materials are generally activities drawing on the content of the AusDICT, which is why it is so important for the AusDICT to keep student needs in mind, even while it is aimed at teachers. During this process, the developer must also decide on the ideal structure for the materials. This is more relevant for the creation of a coursebook than for

individual activities, but the structure and flow from one concept to another must still be considered. As discussed in §3.2.1, the 6R framework for acquisition of pragmatics provides an ideal overall structure for materials in cultural competence, and the materials in this thesis are structured around it. However, in many cases the example materials in the AusDICT only address a small part of that framework, in some cases a single step in the progression. More generally, it is worth considering the traditional overall structure of a unit of instruction, regardless of size.

Figure 4 Typical structure of a unit of instruction (adapted from Singapore Wala, 2013, p. 124)

The structure in Figure 4 illustrates that units of instruction are not only made up of learning tasks, but also the information around them. In the AusDICT project, two of the example materials (Appendix VI) are supported by proposed lesson plans, including introductions, and connections between different activities. The introductory material is also supported by the introduction to the AusDICT.

To meet the various needs of classroom contexts, Tomlinson (2012a) recommends not only making the aforementioned decisions before developing materials, but also using teachers’ evaluative criteria for assessing course suitability to guide materials

development. This means using evaluative criteria—usually used on finished materials

pre, during and post classroom practice—before the materials are even developed. By

designing the resources intentionally to meet the user’s criteria for suitable materials, the result will inherently be able to better meet the needs of students and teachers. To that end, I have adopted Tomlinson’s recommendations and developed evaluative criteria for the AusDICT. The criteria relevant to the teaching materials and the teacher needs will be presented in the following section (§3.4.2). A summary of all evaluative criteria, including those drawn from lexicography and the NSM approach, is presented in Chapter 7 in a summary of the theoretical position which forms the basis of the AusDICT.

Title Introduction Learning task Learning task (repeat as needed)

Closing/ connection to

3.4.2 Evaluating materials

Evaluating and analysing materials is a common way to assess their suitability or value for a particular course, group of learners, or teaching situation. Many authors have proposed specific criteria for evaluating materials (see overview in Tomlinson, 2012b), however the specificity of the different situations and contexts mean that each

evaluation will have a different set of criteria, specific to the situation. This section will outline and justify the evaluative criteria used for the AusDICT project.

Despite the wide variation in evaluative criteria, there are some universal criteria which apply to all teaching materials in all contexts. Writing a good set of criteria can be a challenge, but by using general principles of evaluation criteria—such as ensuring each criterion asks only a single question, each question is actually answerable and free of dogma, and able to be answered in the same way by all evaluators (Tomlinson &

Masuhara, 2004)—a materials developer can create clear and consistent criteria for their work.

According to Tomlinson (2013, p. 37), some examples of criteria which can apply to all teaching materials, and are therefore ‘universal’, are:

- Do the materials provide useful opportunities for learners to think for themselves?

- Are the target learners likely to be able to follow the instructions? - Are the materials likely to achieve affective engagement?

These criteria are intended to apply to any teaching material in any context, but the first criterion assumes a certain perspective on language learning which is not necessarily universal (Ye, 2007). It is therefore easy to see how the criteria—even ‘universal’ ones—should be written specifically for the developing resource and the contexts in which it is intended. In §3.5 I discuss the evaluation criteria created for this project. Traditionally, language teachers develop their own criteria, and then apply them to a resource by responding to the criteria as yes/no questions or Likert scales. The materials with the best scores are therefore the most appropriate for the course. These evaluations are useful in applying materials to a specific situation and evaluating their suitability. This can be done before the materials are used in teaching, to assist teachers to select appropriate materials for their course; during teaching, to evaluate their effectiveness in achieving the course goals; or after teaching, to evaluate their effects on student

outcomes. However, using these evaluative criteria before publication or even before development would assist developers in creating effective materials for specific user groups (Tomlinson, 2012a).

A second way in which materials are evaluated for language teaching is through a process of piloting the materials with language teachers and target student groups, prior to publication. This process involves the users in the development process to gather their feedback on the materials under development and use that feedback to improve the

materials (Tomlinson, 2012b). The process of piloting materials is also a way for publishers to get information about the target market’s reactions to the materials. For this project, I have used both approaches—creating pre-development evaluation criteria and using piloting with end-users—to evaluate the materials under development. The universal evaluation criteria have guided the beginning of the process of developing the AusDICT and the teaching materials, which was then taken to focus groups using design-based research (Amiel & Reeves, 2008) (see Chapter 8 for a description and discussion of these focus groups). These focus groups also informed some of the more specific evaluative criteria for the project.