Principles of Effective Materials Development

By Professor M.E.d Yohana Aguirre Alvarez
yoguitika@gmaill.com

According to Brian Tomlinson, author of Principles of Effective Materials Development, "language learning materials should ideally be driven by learning and teaching principles rather tan the developed ad hoc or in imitation of best selling coursebooks". It means that the creation of language materials for teaching-learning should be the result of the practice of certain principles for teaching and the teaching practice itself instead of copy them or modify them from books or other academic sources. 

In my opinion, we teachers should take this idea in to account when designing language materials for classes. First, because many of materials available in books and Internet are not contextualized.  The students would find materials nice, but they can loose their interest because those materials do not fit with their needs or reality. It`s important to create materials that give the students the opportunity to practice the language and communicate with the certain that the language is going to be useful in order to express their opinions or give information about what they know.  Second, the majority of these materials are created or prepared to "teach" a second language. It means that they are artificial.  The usage of authentic material is crucial for the learning of a second language, since  the students need to be exposed to authentic language and settings.

For a teacher is important to know the principles of effective language teaching in order to create effective and relevant materials for the students. In this way, the learning is meaningful and the motivation will be increased.