Materials Adaptation Materials Development

The teachers can modify, replace, reorganize, re-sequence, and converse texts andor activities.

b. Materials Writing

Bell and Gower, as described by Tomlinson 2004:19, start writing materials by articulating the principles which they want to guide their writing although most accounts of materials development describe processes which are spontaneous and which rely on an intuitive feel for activities which are likely to ‘work’. Tomlinson also describes that Hall 1995:8 starts writing by articulating his theories of language learning and insists that before starting to write we need to answer the question: “How do we think people learn language?” The procedures of materials writing are also described by Tomlinson. They include articulating the main theories of language learning, profiling the target learners, listing objectives and aims, listing procedures which could help to match the theories, the profile, the objectives and the aims in principled ways, and developing a flexible unit framework using procedures from the list. There are some aspects that should be considered in writing materials. Those are about selecting texts, writing instructions, using illustrations, and arranging design and layout. 1 Selecting Texts Tomlinson 2004:27 describes that obviously the criteria for the selection of texts depend on what the texts are going to be used for. If the text is used as a basis 26 for a unit in a set of materials the text should have the potential to engage the learners affectively and cognitively and should offer the learners a rich experience of both language and life. If the text is used as a basis for a readinglistening skills lesson, the text should not be selected just because it focuses on a particular skill which is taught. It still has to fulfill the same criteria as if it is used as a basis for a unit in a set of materials. If the text is for use in language teaching, besides the criteria mentioned in previous part, the text also has to include sufficient samples of the typical use of a particular language item or feature e.g. the simple past, reported speech, and requests and provide sufficient contextual information to help the learners understand and generalize about the use of the language item or feature selected for particular attention. 2 Writing Instruction There are nine aspects discussed by Tomlinson 2004:29 that can help the materials writers to write clear instructions. First, it should be very clear for the learners which words are instructions and which words are not. It can be achieved by putting the instructions in bold, in a distinctive font, in a different colour or in a box. Second, each instruction should refer to one action only. It should also contain only one clause, use an imperative or a simple tense, be in the active voice, and only use vocabulary known to the students. Third, an instruction should use nouns rather than pronouns and use clear indicators by mentioning numbers, letters, colours, or bold type rather than such words as ‘opposite’, ‘above’, or ‘below’. Fourth, it is often 27