State of the art

Materials can be informative (informing the learner about the target language), instructional (guiding the learner in practising the language),experiential(providing the learner with experience of the language in use),eliciting (encouraging the learner to use the language) and exploratory (helping the learner to make discoveries about the language).

HistoryBefore the nineties there were almost none materials development papers Byrd (1995) published about materials writers in USA, in England was Cunnigsworth(1995) about coursebook, Graves (1996) about teachers as a course developers and on choosing your coursebook, Graves (1996) on teachers as course developers and Tomlinson (1998a) on the principles and procedures of materials development.

EvaluationCunningsworth (1995), Harmer (1991, 1998), Roberts (1996), Ur (1996), Brown (1997), Hemsley (1997) and Gearing (1999) also proposed checklists for evaluating materials. contexts without considerable modification. There are exceptions: Matthews (1985), for example, insists that any evaluation should start from a specification of the teaching situation,

EvaluationTomlinson & Masuhara (2004: 7) proposed the following questions for evaluating criteria:a) Is each question an evaluation question?b) Does each question only ask one question?c) Is each question answerable?d) Is each question free of dogma?e) Is each question reliable in the sense that other evaluators would interpret it in the same way?The literature, though, often confuses materials analysis with materials evaluation and usesNevertheless, such evaluations are undertaken by M.A. and Ph.D. students throughout the world, but are rarely reported in the literature.

AdaptationMadsen & Bowen (1978), did, however, focus on adaptation. It made the important point that good teachers are always adapting the materials they are using contextA different approach to adaptation is taken by Saraceni (2003), who advocates providing thelearnerswithanimportantroleinadaptingthematerialstheyareusing.Inordertoinvolve learners in the process.

How Wrtters writeJohnson(2003) Although some of them mention influence by principles of language acquisition (see 5.2), many report replicating previous materials, adapting activity types which had worked for them before and relying upon creative inspiration. Prowse(2011) (‘coursebook writing is a creative rather than a mechanical process’

Principled development of materials• the language experience needs to be contextualised and comprehensible• the learner needs to be motivated, relaxed, positive and engaged• the language and discourse features available for potential acquisition need to be salient,meaningful and frequently encountered• the learner needs to achieve deep and multi-dimensional processing of the language(Tomlinson 2008b: 4)

Materials exploitationClassrooms depended on the different teachers’ pedagogical needs and goals, Gray (2000)Tsui’s (2003) research on the knowledge base of teachers indicates that while less experienced teachers tend to rely more heavily on their textbook.

TextbooksProponents of the coursebook argue that it is a cost-effective way of providing the learner with security, system, progress and revision.Opponents of coursebooks argue that they can disempower both teacher and learners, cannot cater for the needs and wants of their actual users, are used mainly to impose control and order Mukundan (2009)

Published materialsOver the years many institutions and teachers have replaced published materials with home-made materials in order to achieve greater relevance and engagement.

Approachesthe back are constantly changing. In the sixties and early seventies they stressed they were teaching the language directly, without the use of translation or explanation: in the seventies they boasted that they were following a communicative approach which featured either the learning of functions or notions, or both. Subsequently, they have claimed to be following natural approaches based on topics, themes or tasks and many coursebooks nowadays stress that their syllabus is based on the ‘can do’ statements of the Common European Framework. Tomlinson(2012)

Authentic MaterialSuch researchers as Little et al. (1994), Bacon & Finneman (1990), Kuo (1993), McGarry(1995),Wong,Kwok&Choi(1995),Nuttall(1996),Mishan(2005),Gilmore(2007a, 2007b) and Rilling & Dantas-Whitney (2009) argue that authentic materials can provide meaningful exposure to language as it is actually used, motivate learners and help them develop a range of communicative competencies and enhance positive attitudes towards the learning of a language.An authentic text is one which is produced in order to communicate rather than to teach.

The roles of new technologies in language-learning materialsLewis (2009) describes and demonstrates how technology can be made use of in the ELT classroom and suggests, for example, ways of using cloud computing and mobile technology.Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)

ResearchThera are not many research because it is expensive and requires too much time but there are.Day & Bamford (1998), Elley (1991) and Krashen (2004) report research findings which demonstrate the positive power of free, voluntary reading in facilitating language acquisition.

The last but not the leastAsCanniveng&Martinez(2003),Lyons(2003),Popovici&Bolitho(2003),Tomlinson(2003d) and Bolitho (2008) have told us, such courses and projects are ideal for stimulating teachers to think about how best to facilitate language acquisition and development, to gain self-esteem and confidence and to develop personally and professionally in ways which help them to help others.

Lack Of literature, Future more based on technologies and web resources