SELECTION MATERIAL TYPES

 Selection of Material

Aspects of material that focus on in evaluating them will largely depend upon the purposes one has in looking at the materials. if consider the selection of material as involving two stages of analysis, as  conventional wisdom suggests, the first stage would consists of assessing the content of the book in relation to its  professed aims.  The second stage of analysis would involve assessing the effectiveness of materials in terms of the specific needs and context of the intended learners as well as how well they serve the teaching-learning process.

Based on Tomlinson (2003:45-54) stated that the framework proposes basically addresses this stage of evaluation and consists of three broad categories, each assessing the potential validity of the materials in relation to:

1.      the learners’ needs, goals and pedagogical requirements;

2.      the teacher’s skills, abilities, theories and beliefs; and

3.      The thinking underlying the materials writer’s presentation of the content and approach to teaching and learning respectively.

These categories will term psychological validity, pedagogical validity, and process and content validity.

Psychological Validity

Taking this aspect of student-centeredness a step further, one might wish to find out to what extent the materials have the potential to foster self-directed, independent learning. One way of doing this is to channel their energies towards making existing materials more relevant and motivating; another would be to involve them in generating their own materials s out of the reading and listening texts provided, as well as other source materials, to suit their own level and interest. And here the following criteria these issues:

§  Rationale/Learner Needs

·         Materials make a positive contribution to heightening and sustaining learner motivation

·         Materials give the learners confidence to initiate communicate events and persist with the attempted communication despite difficulties.

§  Independence And Autonomy

·         Materials provide explicit instruction on various language learning strategies and suggest ways of using and developing materials.

·         Materials help individual learners discover their learning styles and preferences, study habits and learning strategies.

·         Materials involve the learner in thinking about the learning process and in experiencing a variety of different types of learning activities.

§  Self-Development

·         Materials/texts engage the learners both cognitively and affectively

·         Material allow for development of creative and critical thinking skills.

·         Materials allow scope for development of a desirable set of attitudes.

§  Creativity

·         Materials exploit the learners’ prior knowledge and experience and provide opportunities for further development.

·         Materials allow sufficient opportunities for student inventiveness and energy and encourage their participation in resource generation

·         materials provide additional challenging activities for highly motivated learners

§  Cooperation

·         Materials offer opportunities for cooperative learning, through pair and group work activities and information exchange tasks.

·         students encouraged to learn from  and one another and, more importantly, able to work in a less stressful atmosphere in the classroom

·         Encouraging positive independence by giving each individual a specific role to play in the activity allowing him/her contributes actively to the group interaction.

Pedagogical Validity

current trends in education, technological advances, information explosion and the communications revolution have all come together to cause new and diversified demands to be made on the teacher. As Edge and Wharton rightly observe, then “a course book design to encourage teacher development, if it is successful, will itself be the subject of evaluation, adaptation, and critical ‘use (1998:297).

Edge and Wharton point out that the most obvious prerequisite for teachers to take responsibility for their professional development is choice. The kind of materials facilitate in course book:

§  Guidance

·         Materials cater for different teaching style and personalities

·         Materials allowance made for the perspective, expectations, and preferences of non-native teachers of English

§  Choice

·         Teachers encourage presenting the lessons in different ways.

·         The materials offer the teacher scope for adaptation and localization

·         The material fosters in teachers a sense of choice and control in exploiting the content.

§  Reflection/exploration/innovation

·         the teacher foster material receptively to innovation and experimentation

·         Teacher encourages the materials creativity, imagination, and exploration.

Process and Content of Validity

The design of a course book and the way in which its author intend it to be used is an essential part of its theoretical position. This set of criteria, therefore, relates to the overall view the course book writer holds, or wishes to project, about the nature of language, a nature of language learning and his educational philosophy in general. It also relates to the way in which these views are carried over into the tasks and activities that learner are required to perform and the nature of these activities in terms of their clarity and coherence of presentation, their sufficiency, accessibility and appropriacy. The information gathered under this category thus related methodology, content, format layout and design features of the materials as well as the theoretical assumptions about language and language learning that underpin them.

§  Methodology

·         The course book reflect the insights that findings from current theory and research on second language acquisition

·         The learner need to know what the sentences /texts mean or simply to manipulate form

·         The material help develop both the declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge of the learners as well as contribute to broader educational goal

·         The materials make use of what we know about the value of permitting a silent period at the beginning stages or in learning of a new feature

§  Content

·         The materials provide a rich, varied and comprehensible input in order to facilitate informal acquisition as well as conscious attention to linguistic and pragmatic feature of the text

·         Topic or text current and cognitively challenging and do they help enrich to learners’ personal knowledge and experience and foster a positive personality

·         Material well contextualized

§  Appropriacy

·         The level and the intended audience clearly spelt out

·         The material interesting, varied and topical enough to hold the attention of learner

§  Authenticity  

·         Materials provides extensive  exposure to authentic English through purposeful reading and listening activities

·         The task exploit language in a communicative or ‘real-world’ way

·         The activities relate the pupils’ interest and real life tasks

§  Cultural Sensitivity

·         The materials reflect awareness of and sensitivity to sociocultural  variation

·         Aspects of culture are in focus

·         The material relevant/suitable/appropriate to the learners’ cultural context and sensitive to their values and beliefs

§  Layout/Graphic 

·            There a clarity of design and layout

·            There an optimum density and mix of text and graphical material on each page, or is the impression one of clutter

§  Accessibility 

·         The material clearly organized and easy to access

·         The learner given clear advice about how the book and its contents could be most effectively exploited

·         The instructions for carrying out activities clearly and concisely but adequately articulated

§  Linkage

·         The units and exercises well linked in terms of theme, situation, topic, pattern of skill development or grammatical/lexical progression

§  Selection/Grading

·         The selection and grading of tasks and activities based on a clearly discernible system

·         Balance/Integration/Challenge

§  Stimulus/Practice/Revision

·         There sufficient opportunities for students to use and practice their conversational and skill

·         Material provide for recycling to language data through opportunities for extensive reading

§  Flexibility 

·         The material make too many demands on teachers’ preparation time

·         The material expect students to spend too much time on their homework

§  Educational Validity

·         The text book accord with broader educational concern  

REFERENCES

Tomlinson, Brian. 2003. Developing Materials for Language Teaching. Continuum: London

Tomlinson, Brian. 2011. Materials Development in Language Teaching Second Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press