3.1 Establishing criteria and developing evaluation instruments

Much of the early literature on materials development attempted to help teachers and materials developers to develop criteria for evaluating and selecting materials. For example, Tucker (Reference Tucker1975) proposed a four-component scheme for measuring the internal and external value of beginners’ textbooks, Davison (Reference Davison1976) proposed a five-category scheme for the evaluation and selection of textbooks and Dauod & Celce-Murcia (1979) provided checklists of criteria for evaluating coursebooks. Candlin & Breen (1980) proposed criteria for evaluating materials and, unlike many of their contemporaries, also proposed the use of these criteria when developing materials. Rivers (Reference Rivers1981) provided categories and criteria for evaluating materials, Mariani (Reference Mariani and Holden1983) wrote about evaluation and supplementation, Williams (Reference Williams1983) developed criteria for textbook evaluation and Cunningsworth (Reference Cunningsworth1984) provided a very detailed checklist of evaluation criteria ‘for evaluating teaching material’ (p. 74). Breen & Candlin (Reference Breen, Candlin and Sheldon1987) published a principled guide for both evaluators and producers of materials and Sheldon (Reference Sheldon1987, Reference Sheldon1988) suggested criteria for both evaluating and developing textbook material. Skierso (Reference Skierso and Celce-Murcia1991) provided probably the most comprehensive checklist of criteria for textbooks and teachers’ books by combining checklists from various sources. Cunningsworth (Reference Cunningsworth1995), Harmer (Reference Harmer1991, Reference Harmer1998), Roberts (Reference Roberts1996), Ur (Reference Ur1996), Brown (Reference Brown1997), Hemsley (Reference Hemsley1997) and Gearing (Reference Gearing1999) also proposed checklists for evaluating materials. Many of the lists of evaluation criteria in the literature above are specific to a context of learning and cannot be transferred to other contexts without considerable modification. There are exceptions: Matthews (Reference Matthews, Matthews, Spratt and Dangerfield1985), for example, insists that any evaluation should start from a specification of the teaching situation, Cunningsworth (Reference Cunningsworth1995) stresses the importance of determining criteria relevant to the target learners and Byrd (Reference Byrd and Celce-Murcia2001) gives priority to the fit between the textbook and the curriculum, students and teachers.

Tomlinson & Masuhara (2004: 7) proposed the following questions for evaluating criteria:

1. a) Is each question an evaluation question?

2. b) Does each question only ask one question?

3. c) Is each question answerable?

4. d) Is each question free of dogma?

5. e) Is each question reliable in the sense that other evaluators would interpret it in the same way?

Very few of the lists of criteria proposed in the literature satisfy these conditions, and most of them are not generalisable or transferable. For example:

1. a) ‘Are there any materials for testing?’ (Cunningsworth Reference Cunningsworth1984) is an analysis question in the same checklist as evaluation questions such as ‘Are the learning activities in the course material likely to appeal to the learners. . .?’

2. b) ‘Is it attractive? Given the average age of your students, would they enjoy using it?’ (Grant Reference Grant1987: 122) combines two questions in one criterion.

3. c) ‘Does the writer use current everyday language, and sentence structures that follow normal word order?’ (Daoud & Celce-Murcia Reference Daoud, Celce-Murcia, Celce-Murcia and McIntosh1979: 304) contains two questions and both are unanswerable without a data analysis of both a corpus of current language and the complete script of the materials. ‘To what extent is the level of abstractness appropriate?’ (Skierso Reference Skierso and Celce-Murcia1991: 446) is another example of a criterion which is too broad and vague to be answerable.

4. d) ‘Are the various stages in a teaching unit (what you would probably call presentation, practice and production) adequately developed?’ (Mariani Reference Mariani and Holden1983: 29) is dogmatic in insisting on the use of a Presentation Practice Production (PPP) approach.

5. e) ‘Is it foolproof (i.e. sufficiently methodical to guide the inexperienced teacher through a lesson)?’ (Dougill Reference Dougill and Sheldon1987: 32) is unreliable in that it can be interpreted in different ways by different evaluators.

Mukundan & Ahour (Reference Mukundan, Ahour, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) review 48 evaluation checklists from 1970 to 2008 and criticise many of them for being too demanding of time and expertise to be useful to teachers, too vague to be answerable, too context bound to be generalisable, too confusing to be useable and too lacking in validity to be useful. They conclude that a framework for generating clear, concise and flexible criteria would be more useful than detailed and inflexible checklists and also that more attention should be given to retrospective evaluation than to predictive evaluation, to help teachers to evaluate the effect of the materials they are using and make modifications. This point is also stressed by Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003b) and by Ellis (Reference Ellis and Tomlinson2011). Mukundan & Ahour (Reference Mukundan, Ahour, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) also advocate a composite framework for evaluation consisting of multiple components and including computer analysis of the script of the materials (focusing, for example, on the vocabulary load or on recycling). Mukundan (Reference Mukundan and Mukundan2006c) describes the use of such a composite framework to evaluate ELT textbooks in Malaysia, which combines the use of checklists, reflective journals and concordance software.

Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003b) proposes a process for generating principled criteria instead of an unrealistic set of criteria for all contexts. He stresses that evaluators need to develop their own principled criteria which take into consideration the context of the evaluation and their own beliefs. He claims that evaluation criteria should be developed before materials are produced, and used to make decisions about the approach, procedures and activities to be adopted as well as to monitor their development and subsequent use.

Tomlinson differentiates between universal and local criteria, the former being those that can be used to evaluate materials for any learner anywhere. To generate these criteria he advises evaluators to brainstorm a list of principled beliefs that they hold about how languages are most effectively acquired and then convert these beliefs into criteria for evaluating materials, such as ‘Are the materials likely to achieve affective engagement?’ (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003b: 28). He defines local criteria as those specific to the context in which the materials are going to be used, arguing that they are best generated from a profile. He also recommends a procedure for generating such criteria (pp. 27–33), which was used in Tomlinson et al. (Reference Tomlinson, Dat, Masuhara and Rubdy2001) and in Masuhara et al. (Reference Masuhara, Haan, Yi and Tomlinson2008) for evaluating coursebooks and on a number of materials development projects led by Leeds Metropolitan University in, for example, China, Ethiopia and Singapore.

Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003b: 16) recognises that evaluation is inevitably subjective, that it ‘focuses on the users of the materials’ and attempts to measure the potential or actual effects of the materials on their users. In contrast, analysis focuses on the materials and aims to identify what they contain, what they ask learners to do and what they say they are trying to achieve, aiming to provide an objective account of the materials, though the selection of questions is inevitably subjective and there is often a hidden agenda which it is hoped the revealed data will support. Littlejohn (Reference Littlejohn and Tomlinson2011: 181) makes a similar distinction when he says that analysis is concerned with materials ‘as they are’ and ‘with the content and ways of working that they propose’. He suggests first carrying out an analysis of materials to find out how suitable they are for the context of use, followed by an evaluation to predict the likely effects of the materials on their users. Byrd (Reference Byrd and Celce-Murcia2001) makes a rather different distinction between evaluation and analysis when she talks about evaluation for selection and analysis for implementation. The literature, though, often confuses materials analysis with materials evaluation and uses the terms interchangeably. For example, Mariani (Reference Mariani and Holden1983: 28–29) includes in a section on ‘Evaluate your coursebook’ such analysis questions as ‘Are there any teacher's notes?’, and Cunningsworth (Reference Cunningsworth1984: 74–79) includes both analysis and evaluation questions in his ‘Checklist of Evaluation Criteria’.

In the last ten years a number of other writers have proposed frameworks for materials evaluation instead of checklists. McGrath (Reference McGrath2002: 31) distinguishes between ‘general criteria (i.e. the essential features of any good teaching-learning material)’ and ‘specific (or context related) criteria’ and, in relation to choosing a coursebook, proposes a procedure which includes materials analysis, first-glance evaluation, user feedback, evaluation using situation specific checklists and, finally, selection. McDonough & Shaw (Reference McDonough and Shaw2003: 61) suggest that the evaluators first conduct an external evaluation ‘that offers a brief overview from the outside’ and then carry out ‘a closer and more detailed internal evaluation’. They stress that the four main considerations when deciding on the suitability of materials are usability, generalisability, adaptability and flexibility. Riazi (Reference Riazi and Renandya2003) provides a critical survey of textbook evaluation schemes from 1975 onwards, in which he points out the transience of many of the criteria, which he says were based on pedagogic approaches fashionable at the time. In his conclusion he supports Cunningsworth (Reference Cunningsworth1995) in insisting on the importance of collecting data about the context of learning and proposes a procedure which includes a survey of the teaching/learning situation, a neutral analysis, a belief-driven evaluation and a selection. Other writers have offered principled advice on developing evaluation criteria, including Wallace (Reference Wallace1998), who suggests twelve ‘criterion areas’ for materials evaluation; Rubdy (Reference Rubdy2003), who proposes and gives examples of a dynamic model of evaluation in which the three categories of psychological validity, pedagogical validity and process and content validity interact; Tomlinson & Masuhara (2004), with their evaluation procedure for inexperienced teachers and McCullagh (Reference McCullugh, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010), who sets out the procedure she used to evaluate materials for medical practitioners.

3.2 Reporting evaluations

The focus of much of the literature on materials evaluation is on the principles and procedures of conducting evaluations. There are some publications, however, which report on the effectiveness of materials. Many journals publish regular predictive reviews of recent materials, such as ELT Journal, Practical English Teaching, Modern English Teacher, English Teaching Professional, Folio, The Language Teacher, TESOL Journal and RELC Journal. Some of them also include post-use reviews of materials. For example, Modern English Teacher includes a section entitled ‘A Book I've Used’, which consists of reviews by practitioners of their use of a recently published textbook. Most of the reviews are of specific textbooks or courses but ELT Journal, for example, also publishes survey reviews of a number of current textbooks of the same sub-genre. For example, Tomlinson et al. (Reference Tomlinson, Dat, Masuhara and Rubdy2001) is a review of eight currently popular UK coursebooks for adults in which four reviewers from different cultural backgrounds independently subject each course to a rigorous evaluation using the same 133 criteria. A similar review was published by Masuhara et al. (Reference Masuhara, Haan, Yi and Tomlinson2008) in which they subjected eight coursebooks for adults to a rigorous criterion-referenced review. Interestingly, the two reviews came to similar conclusions. They both welcomed the attempts to personalise and humanise the coursebooks and both were critical of the expensive and unwanted increase in the number of components of coursebooks, the neglect of literature as a source of potentially engaging texts, the lack of intelligent content at lower levels, the neglect of extensive reading and listening, and ‘the scarcity of real tasks which have an intended outcome other than just the practice of language forms’ (Masuhara et al. Reference Masuhara, Haan, Yi and Tomlinson2008: 310). Other survey reviews which have appeared in ELT Journal recently include Tribble (Reference Tribble2009) on resources for teaching academic writing, McDonough (Reference McDonough2010) on materials for English for specific purposes, and Wilson (Reference Wilson2010) on materials for IELTS preparation.

Many reports on micro-evaluations of materials are written for sponsors of projects or for publishers and are, understandably, confidential. Some reports of evaluations of materials in action are dotted throughout the literature but are rarely collected in one volume or issue. This is a point made by Ellis (Reference Ellis and Tomlinson2011: 234), who adds that such micro-evaluations are ‘often seen as too localised and too small scale, and so theoretically uninteresting’. In Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2008a) there are reports of macro-evaluations of current materials for young learners, for self-access learning, for EAP and for General English, as well as of nine evaluations of materials currently used in different parts of the world. There are also reports of micro-evaluations of materials in action in Mukundan (Reference Mukundan, Hussin and Mukundan2006a), Harwood (Reference Harwood and Harwood2010a) and Tomlinson & Masuhara (2010).

Very little has been published on the on-going process of evaluating materials in production. However, Donovan (Reference Donovan and Tomlinson1998) has written on the process of piloting commercial coursebooks prior to publication. He discusses the issues involved in making decisions about what is piloted, who pilots it and how, and illustrates these processes with numerous examples taken from actual pilots of Cambridge University Press coursebooks. He also discusses the benefits of piloting and what can go wrong. In his conclusion he advocates the continuing use of piloting as a very effective way of obtaining feedback on the effectiveness of materials in development, but does concede that the increasing expense and decreasing time available might result in publishers making less use of piloting. Thirteen years later, Amrani (Reference Amrani and Tomlinson2011) reports that publishers no longer use piloting as their main means of obtaining feedback on their materials in development. They now use more cost-effective and time-saving methods, such as reviews from experienced teachers and from academics, feedback from focus groups, questionnaires, expert panels, editorial visits and classroom observations, and competitor analysis. Amrani provides examples of some of these in action and also discusses the benefits and problems of evaluating materials in development. In conclusion, she speculates on the future of publisher evaluation of materials and predicts that ‘Increasingly post-publication review will inform future materials development’ (Amrani Reference Amrani and Tomlinson2011: 295). Commendable and impressive as Donovan and Amrani's accounts of evaluating materials in development are, there is no escaping the fact that the main concerns of publishers relate to the extent to which their draft materials appeal to their intended users in terms of appearance, content and approach. We cannot expect piloting or other means of evaluating materials in development to be able to provide reliable evidence of the effectiveness of the materials in relation to language acquisition. This would require the expertise, time and funding which only a consortium of universities could obtain. Nevertheless, such evaluations are undertaken by M.A. and Ph.D. students throughout the world, but are rarely reported in the literature. One exception is Ellis (Reference Ellis and Tomlinson2011), who reports on three micro-evaluations of the effectiveness of actual task materials undertaken by M.A. students at the University of Auckland. Another exception is Barnard (Reference Barnard and Tomlinson2007), who reports a Ph.D. study of the effectiveness of materials using a comprehension approach for the teaching of Bahasa Indonesia to beginners at the National University of Singapore.

5.1 How writers write

Reports of how writers actually write materials reveal that they rely heavily on retrieval from repertoire, cloning successful publications and spontaneous ‘inspiration’.

Johnson (Reference Johnson2003) says he searched the literature in vain for reports of the actual procedures involved in writing materials. He missed accounts that have appeared, such as those by Byrd (Reference Byrd1995) and Hidalgo, Hall & Jacobs (Reference Hidalgo, Hall and Jacobs1995), as well as Prowse's (1998) report of how a number of well-known authors actually write their material. Hidalgo et al. (1995) consists of reports by materials writers in South-East Asia of how they wrote materials. 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. The writers in Prowse (Reference Prowse and Tomlinson1998) report similar approaches and stress the importance of thinking as you write, of how ‘Ideas come to you at any time’ during collaboration (p. 130), of thinking about the materials whilst doing something else, of being prepared to write many drafts and of being inspired. Some of the writers refer to prior planning but none to developing a principled framework or criteria before starting to write.

Johnson (Reference Johnson2003) focused on expertise in task design. He studied the literature on task-based teaching but found nothing on the procedures involved in actually writing a task, so he set up an experiment in which eight expert materials writers and eight novices were asked to ‘design an activity involving the function of describing people’ (p. 4). He asked each writer to think aloud as they designed the task. Their ‘concurrent verbalisations’ were recorded and then analysed. What they revealed was that the experts wrote their materials in very different ways from the novices. The experts, for example, envisaged possibilities in concrete detail and were prepared to abandon tasks they had spent time developing. They designed in opportunistic ways, instantiated as they wrote, showed learner/context sensitivity and used repertoire a lot. Interestingly, there was no explicit reference by the experts to theory-driven principles. This is true also of Prowse (Reference Prowse and Tomlinson2011), in which he repeats his report of how writers write from Prowse (Reference Prowse and Tomlinson1998) and adds the reflections of a number of writers of recently published coursebooks, which also focus on the creative, inspirational aspect of materials writing (‘coursebook writing is a creative rather than a mechanical process’ (p. 173)) and on making use of prior experience of teaching and writing. None of them 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).

5.2 Principled development of materials

Despite the typical reliance on repertoire and inspiration reported in the preceding section, some writers do describe establishing principles prior to writing.

Flores (Reference Flores, Hidalgo, Hall and Jacobs1995: 58–59), for example, lists five assumptions and principles which drove the writing of a textbook in the Philippines, and Penaflorida (Reference Penaflorida, Hidalgo, Hall and Jacobs1995: 172–179) reports her use of six principles of materials design specified by Nunan (Reference Nunan1988). Hall (Reference Hall, Hidalgo, Hall and Jacobs1995: 8) insists that the crucial question we need to ask is ‘How do we think people learn languages?’ and goes on to discuss the principles which he thinks should ‘underpin everything we do in planning and writing our materials’ (ibid.). Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson1998b: 5–22; Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2011b) proposes fifteen principles for materials development which derive from second language acquisition (SLA) research and from his experience, and a number of other writers outline principled approaches to developing ELT materials in Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson1998a, Reference Tomlinson2011a). For example, Bell & Gower (Reference Bell, Gower and Tomlinson2011) discuss the need for authors to make compromises to meet the practical needs of teachers and learners and match the realities of publishing materials. They also articulate eleven principles which guide their writing. Edge & Wharton (Reference Edge, Wharton and Tomlinson1998: 299–300) talk about the ‘coursebook as ELT theory’ and as a ‘genre whose goal is a dialogue about principle via suggestions about practice’, and they stress the need to design coursebooks for flexible use so as to capitalise on ‘teachers’ capacity for creativity’. Maley (Reference Maley and Tomlinson1998, Reference Maley and Tomlinson2011) suggests ways of ‘providing greater flexibility in decisions about content, order, pace and procedures’ (1998: 280) and Jolly & Bolitho (Reference Jolly, Bolitho and Tomlinson2011) advocate a principled, practical and dynamic framework for materials development. Teachers’ books accompanying coursebooks also often express a rationale for their materials. For example, the introduction to English Access Teacher's Resource 1 (Chandrasegeran, Venkataraman & Poh-Knight Reference Chandrasegaran, Venkataraman and Poh-Knight2010: 3) says that the pedagogic framework ‘begins with the receptive skills to tap students’ prior knowledge and to trigger connections with their world view. The teacher then supports and provides scaffolding for the students to put their productive skills to use, working slowly in groups towards independent work’.

A detailed review of the literature on advice and principles for materials developers is provided by McGrath (Reference McGrath2002: 152–161), from Methold (Reference Methold1972), who stressed the importance of recycling and of localisation, to Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson1998b) and his focus on learning principles. In his review McGrath focuses, in particular, on the theme- or topic-based approach, the text-based approach and the storyline (Nunan Reference Nunan1991).

Tan (Reference Tan2002) is concerned with the role that corpus-based approaches can and should play in language teaching and contains chapters from around the world which discuss the contribution that corpora have made in, for example, the conversation class, and the teaching of vocabulary, fixed expressions, writing and collocation. O'Keefe, McCarthy & Carter (Reference O'Keefe, McCarthy and Carter2007) consider in detail how corpora can be used to inform and generate classroom activities. They focus on such language features as chunks, idioms, lexis, grammar, discourse and pragmatics, listenership and response, relational language, and language and creativity. McCarten & McCarthy (Reference McCarten, McCarthy, Mishan and Chambers2010) are interested in ways in which coursebooks make use of corpora and describe and give examples of an approach to ‘bridging the gap between corpus and course book’ (p. 11) with specific reference to teaching conversation strategies. Gilmore (Reference Gilmore2009) and Farr, Chambers & O'Riordan (Reference Farr, Chambers, O'Riordan, Mishan and Chambers2010) also suggest ways of using corpora as language resources and Willis (Reference Willis and Tomlinson2011) demonstrates ways in which teachers and students can develop corpora of their own. Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson, Mishan and Chambers2010c), however, points out some of the limitations of corpora and suggests ways of supplementing the information gained from them by making use of author, teacher and learner research involving following up insights gained from analysis of texts with searches for further textual evidence.

A publication which gives considerable attention to principles and procedures of materials development is Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003a). It contains, for example, chapters on a writing a coursebook (Mares Reference Mares and Tomlinson2003), principled frameworks for materials development (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003c), creative approaches to writing materials (Maley Reference Maley and Tomlinson2003) and ways of humanising the coursebook (i.e. making it of more personal relevance and value to the human beings using it) (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003d).

Another publication concerned with principles of materials development is Harwood (Reference Harwood and Harwood2010a). In his introduction, Harwood (Reference Harwood and Harwood2010b) discusses in detail the issues involved in matching materials with the TESOL Curriculum and in the content analysis of materials. He also provides an overview of recent accounts by writers of ‘the design process’ (p. 13). He focuses on Johnson (Reference Johnson2003) but also refers to Samuda's (Reference Samuda and Johnson2005) report of the ‘complex, highly recursive and often messy process’ (p. 243) of task design and to Richard's (2006) account of how recent literature altered his approach to developing listening materials. Harwood agrees with Richards that language materials cannot only be shaped by research but need to suit the contexts in which they are used. Also in Harwood (Reference Harwood and Harwood2010a) there are principle-driven chapters by Ellis (Reference Ellis and Harwood2010) on L2 research and language-teaching materials, by Reinders & White (2010) on the theory and practice of technology in materials development and task design, by Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Harwood2010a) on principles of effective materials development and by Benesch (Reference Benesch and Harwood2010) on critical praxis as materials development. These chapters in particular add a new dimension to the literature by focusing on how theory and research can both inform and be informed by materials development.

Tomlinson & Masuhara (2010), in reporting recent research, consider the application of many theoretical principles of language acquisition to the practice of materials development; a number of chapters report research results which could have important implications. Ghosn (Reference Ghosn, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) reports the research results of a project in Lebanon which revealed a superior effect on comprehension and vocabulary development for a group of young beginning learners who followed a story-based course, compared to an equivalent group who followed a conventional communicative course. Fenton-Smith (Reference Fenton-Smith, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) describes the beneficial effects on Japanese university students’ engagement and motivation from carrying out creative and critical output activities after extensive reading. Troncoso (Reference Troncoso, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) reports on the effectiveness of text-driven materials for the teaching of Spanish. Al-Busaidi & Tindle (2010) show the effectiveness of writing materials following experiential approaches in Oman, Mishan (Reference Mishan, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) reveals the positive results of following a problem-solving approach at the University of Limerick and McCullagh (2010) highlights the effectiveness of published materials which follow an experiential approach in helping overseas doctors to communicate in English in the UK and Park (Reference Park, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) shows how process drama materials worked in a Korean middle-school classroom. These chapters are significant in that they provide evidence of the beneficial effects of experiential approaches to materials development and, in particular, of approaches in which the learners are first given a meaning-focused experience of language in use and are then asked to focus more analytically on a particular feature of this use.

Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2011a) is the second edition of Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson1998a) and contains an updated version of the introductory chapter, which relates commonly agreed principles of SLA to the development of language-learning materials. It also contains updated versions of most of the original chapters, many now more concerned with principles than they were previously. Hooper Hansen (Reference Hooper Hansen and Tomlinson2011) explores the principles behind the materials produced and inspired by Lozanov, Maley (Reference Maley and Tomlinson2011) investigates the principles behind ideas for materials development which empower teachers, Masuhara (Reference Masuhara and Tomlinson2011) considers principles informed by an analysis of the materials needs and wants of teachers and Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2011c) examines the principles behind materials which involve the learners in making use of visual imaging. In addition, it contains a number of new chapters, including one by Reppen (Reference Reppen and Tomlinson2011), who provides a critical overview of recent attempts to apply principles to corpora-informed classroom materials, and chapters by Motteram (Reference Motteram and Tomlinson2011) and by Kervin & Derewianka (2011) on making use of new technologies in the delivery and use of principled and effective materials. All these chapters increase our awareness of ways in which theoretical principles can be applied to the practicalities of materials development, but unfortunately they do not provide much empirical evidence in support of their claims.

Tomlinson & Masuhara (2012) explores the connection between applied linguistics theory and materials development. Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of applied linguistics and evaluates the match between current theory and current materials development practice. The authors of each chapter also suggest and provide examples of ways of achieving a closer match.

Other publications with something valuable to say about principled materials development include Byrd (Reference Byrd1995), Fenner & Newby (2000), Richards (Reference Richards2001), Tomlinson & Masuhara (2004), Mishan (Reference Mishan2005), Mukundan (Reference Mukundan, Hussin and Mukundan2006a), Mishan & Chambers (2010) and McDonough, Shaw & Masuhara (Reference McDonough, Shaw and Masuhara2012). Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2008a) provides critical reviews of ELT materials currently being used around the world and most of its chapters make reference to the principles and procedures of materials development. It also contains an introductory chapter on ‘Language acquisition and language-learning materials’ (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2008b), which proposes ways of applying commonly agreed theories of language acquisition to materials development. The principles proposed include:

• • 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 Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2008b: 4)

5.3 Practical guidance to writers

There are very few publications offering practical guidance to materials writers on how to develop effective materials. However, Byrd (Reference Byrd1995) provides advice to materials writers, as does Nunan (Reference Nunan1988, Reference Nunan1989). Johnson (Reference Johnson2003) gives his informed opinion on the expertise needed to be a good task designer and Spiro (Reference Spiro and Mukundan2006) provides advice on how to become an L2 story-writer. Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003b, Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003c) proposes a flexible text-driven framework for developing materials and puts forward ways of ensuring that materials are humanistic, and Tomlinson & Masuhara (2004) provide practical advice on developing materials, writing instructions, using illustrations and layout and design. Coyle, Hood & Marsh (2010) give detailed advice on how to develop materials for content and language integrated learning and Van Avermaet & Gysen (Reference Van Avermaet, Gysen and den Branden2006) and Duran & Ramaut (2006) give advice on writing tasks for young learners. Folio has been publishing articles providing information, advice and stimulus to materials writers twice a year since 1993.

7.1 The value of textbooks

For years there has been debate about whether or not the textbook is the best medium for delivering language-learning materials. The debate started in the eighties with Allwright (Reference Allwright1981) putting forward arguments against ways in which textbooks deliver materials and O'Neil (Reference O'Neil1982) mounting a rigorous defence. Since then there have been numerous contributors to the debate, including Prabhu (Reference Prabhu1989), Littlejohn (Reference Littlejohn1992), Hutchinson & Torres (Reference Hutchinson and Torres1994), Wajnryb (Reference Wajnryb1996), Flack (Reference Flack1999), Thornbury & Meddings (Reference Thornbury and Meddings2001), Gray (Reference Gray, Block and Cameron2002), Mishan (Reference Mishan2005), Dat (Reference Dat and Mukundan2006) and Mukundan (Reference Mukundan and Mukundan2009b). Regardless of the views of experts who criticise the use of textbooks, most language teachers seem to continue to use them. For example, a British Council survey (2008) revealed that 65% of the teachers they polled always or frequently used a coursebook and only 6% never did. A similar survey at conferences in Malaysia, the United Kingdom and Vietnam (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson2010b) showed that 92% of the respondents used a coursebook regularly (mainly because they were required to) but that 78% of them were negative about the books that were available to them.

Proponents of the coursebook argue that it is a cost-effective way of providing the learner with security, system, progress and revision, whilst at the same time saving precious time and offering teachers the resources they need to base their lessons on. It also helps administrators to achieve course credibility, timetable lessons and standardise teaching. 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 (e.g. ‘OK, class, turn to page 46 of your textbook’ – Mukundan Reference Mukundan and Mukundan2009b: 99), and provide only an illusion of system and progress. Many also argue that ‘a coursebook is inevitably superficial and reductionist in its coverage of language points and in its provision of language experience. . .it imposes uniformity of syllabus and approach, and it removes initiative and power from teachers’ (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson, Carter and Nunan2001a: 67). It has also been argued that textbooks are invested with so much authority that it is difficult for teachers or students to challenge or adapt them (Luke, de Castell & Luke Reference Luke, de Castell, Luke, de Castell, Luke and Luke1989; Dendrinos Reference Dendrinos1992), though Apple (Reference Apple1992), Hutchinson & Torres (Reference Hutchinson and Torres1994) and Canagarajah (Reference Canagarajah and Canagarajah2005) have demonstrated that such challenges do take place. Another argument against textbooks is that textbooks are ‘designed primarily to satisfy administrators and teachers but in doing so often ignore the needs and wants of learners’ (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson2010b). For detailed discussion of the arguments for and against textbooks, see Mishan (Reference Mishan2005).

My own view is that we need textbooks to save time and money and many teachers want a coursebook which provides everything they need in one source. A textbook can do all that its proponents say it does, but unfortunately many global coursebooks are not considered to be sufficiently engaging or relevant for their actual users. In attempting to cater for all students at a particular age and level, global coursebooks often end up not meeting the needs and wants of any. Based on my experience of talking to teachers and to learners, and of observing teachers using materials in over thirty countries, I would like to see more localised textbooks and more global textbooks which are designed to be flexible and to offer teachers and students opportunities for localisation, personalisation and choice. In addition, publishers could produce web-based global ‘coursebooks’ which offer opportunities for choice, modification and replacement and which facilitate ‘an ongoing process where materials are refined and even changed throughout the life of a product’ (Amrani Reference Amrani and Tomlinson2011: 297).

7.2 The need for published materials

Over the years many institutions and teachers have replaced published materials with home-made materials in order to achieve greater relevance and engagement. For example, Al-Busiadi & Tindle (2010) describe a project at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman on the teaching of writing skills, Jones & Schmitt (Reference Jones, Schmitt and Harwood2010: 225) report on ‘the development and piloting of discipline-specific vocabulary materials on a CD-ROM software program’ at the University of Nottingham, Hewings (Reference Hewings and Harwood2010) reports on a scheme for teaching academic writing at the University of Birmingham, Mason (Reference Mason, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) discusses the effects of delivering a British Culture course at a Tunisian university with teacher-developed paper, video and internet materials, Trabelsi (Reference Trabelsi, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) analyses the results of developing authentic in-house materials for business students at a Tunisian university and Troncoso (Reference Troncoso, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) comments on the effectiveness of teacher-developed materials for developing intercultural competence for learners of Spanish. Many teachers have also replaced published materials without requiring the teacher to find or write materials. For example, Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003d) describes how a teacher in Jakarta made each group of students responsible in one term for bringing her a reading passage on which she then based a reading lesson, and in the next term made each group responsible for actually teaching a reading lesson. He also mentions a class which each week made a video of their own dramatised version of an extract from literature, and a class in Vanuatu who spent every lesson for a term writing their own novels. Jensen & Hermer (1998) describe other such student-initiated activities, Verhelst (Reference Verhelst and den Branden2006) reports task-based activities in Belgium primary schools in which the learners made things out of clay or responded emotionally to stories and poems, Park (Reference Park, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) recounts how she replaced published materials with a process drama approach in a South Korean secondary school and Mishan (Reference Mishan and Chambers2010) describes how she used a problem-based approach. All of these publications are significant in that they support a move away from reliance on textbooks, a move which, in my view, needs to be supported by both initial and in-service teacher training.

The Dogme ELT movement has been especially determined to liberate teachers from their dependence on materials, and has developed into a methodology aiming to return English language teaching to its roots by using approaches which are learner-centred and materials-light. In Meddings & Thornbury (Reference Meddings and Thornbury2009) the authors set out the core principles of Dogme, discuss its beliefs and practices and explore its origins. The methodology recommended is conversation-driven rather than materials-driven and focuses on the language which emerges rather than on a pre-determined language syllabus. As with text-driven approaches, the curriculum is articulated retrospectively and it is important, in my view, to keep checking this curriculum to make sure there are no significant omissions.

My position is that most teachers and students welcome published materials and can gain from them. However, if a teacher has confidence, principled creativity and the respect of their learners, then a textbook-free course can actually be more facilitative in providing the personalised, relevant and engaging experience of language in use and opportunities for observing how the language is used and for meaningful communication, which many textbook authors find it difficult to provide.

7.3 Pedagogic approaches

Over the last forty years, there have been many changes in the methodologies coursebooks claim to be using, but very little change in the pedagogy they actually use. The blurbs on the 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, for example Redston & Cunningham (Reference Redston and Cunningham2005). The reality, though, is that for the last forty years most coursebooks have been and are still using PPP approaches, with a focus on discrete forms and frequent use of such low-level practice activities as listen and repeat, dialogue repetition, matching and filling in the blanks. A number of writers have criticised this continuing use of approaches for which there is no theoretical or research-based justification. For example, Willis & Willis (Reference Willis and Willis2007) have criticised the PPP approach and Long (Reference Long, de Bot, Ginsberg and Kramsch1991) and Ellis (Reference Ellis2001) have raised doubts about the value of focus on discrete forms. Recently many writers have proposed more experiential approaches to using language-learning materials. For example, Bolitho (Reference Bolitho and Tomlinson2003), Bolitho & Tomlinson (Reference Bolitho and Tomlinson2005), Bolitho et al. (Reference Bolitho, Carter, Hughes, Ivanic, Masuhara and Tomlinson2003) and Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson1994, Reference Tomlinson, Fotos and Nassaji2007b) have proposed a language awareness approach, in which learners first experience a text holistically and then analyse it with a view to making discoveries for themselves about language use. Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003c) has advocated a text-driven approach in which learners first respond to a text personally before exploiting it for creative and analytical activities and Prabhu (Reference Prabhu1987), Ellis (Reference Ellis and Tomlinson1998, Reference Ellis2003, Reference Ellis and Tomlinson2011), Van den Branden (Reference Van den Branden2006), Willis (Reference Willis1996) and Willis & Willis (Reference Willis and Willis2007) have advocated task-driven approaches in which the learners’ target is task completion and the teacher's objective is language development. Masuhara (Reference Masuhara and Mukundan2006) and Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson2001b) have suggested multi-dimensional approaches to materials development in which the learners make use of sensory imagery, motor imagery, inner speech, emotion and thought to respond to texts and carry out tasks. What all these approaches have in common is a move away from teaching points driving the material and a belief in the importance of experiencing language in use (e.g. Ellis Reference Ellis2008), a change which was the focus of all the papers delivered at a MATSDA Conference on Innovation in Materials Development at Queens University, Belfast in January 2011.

There have, of course, been pedagogical innovations in published materials, especially in the supplementary materials published in the 1970s and 1980s and in recently published series of resource books for teachers. However, most of the core materials I know of which have successfully followed innovative pedagogical approaches have been on projects. Some have used Total Physical Response and discovery approaches for young beginners (such as the PKG Project in Indonesia (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson1995)); others have been driven by texts (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson1995, Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003c), tasks (Prabhu Reference Prabhu1987) or CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) (Eurydice Reference Eurydice2006). The most popular approach at the moment seems to be task-based, in which the learners are set tasks with non-linguistic outcomes (e.g. arrangements for a trip, an agenda for a meeting, the solution to a problem). Many books are available outlining the theory and procedures (e.g. Ellis Reference Ellis2003; Nunan Reference Nunan2004; Willis & Willis Reference Willis and Willis2007), and some which give advice relevant to materials development (e.g. Bygate, Skehan & Swain Reference Bygate, Skehan and Swain2001; Samuda & Bygate Reference Samuda and Bygate2008). There are few, however, that report task-based materials development projects or which give examples of classroom materials. One book that does both is Van den Branden (Reference Van den Branden2006), which contains chapters on developing task materials for beginners (Duran & Ramaut Reference Duran, Ramaut and Van den Branden2006), for primary and secondary education (Van Gorp & Bogaert Reference Van Gorp, Bogaert and den Branden2006) and for science education and vocational training (Bogaert et al. Reference Bogaert, Van Gorp, Bultynck, Lanssens, Depauw and Branden2006). CLIL is popular on projects nowadays; in this, learners focus on learning content knowledge and skills (e.g. maths, playing a musical instrument, agricultural processes), whilst at the same time gaining experience of using English. Again, there are many publications focusing on the principles and procedures, but few on materials development, though an exception is Coyle et al. (Reference Coyle, Hood and Marsh2010), which includes a chapter on ‘Evaluating and creating materials and tasks for CLIL classrooms’.

My own preference is the text-driven approach, in which an engaging written or spoken text drives a unit of materials in which readiness activities activate the learners’ minds in relation to the text, initial response activities stimulate engagement whilst experiencing the text, intake response activities encourage articulation of personal responses, input response activities invite exploration of features of the text and development activities encourage learner production (Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003c).

7.4 Authenticity of texts and tasks

It has been argued that explicit teaching of language through contrived examples and texts helps the learners by focusing their processing energies on the target feature, and this is what most coursebooks typically do. However, many SLA researchers argue that this over-protects learners and does not prepare them for the reality of language use outside the classroom. Such researchers as Little et al. (1994), Bacon & Finneman (Reference Bacon and Finneman1990), Kuo (Reference Kuo1993), McGarry (Reference McGarry1995), Wong, Kwok & Choi (Reference Wong, Kwok and Choi1995), Nuttall (Reference Nuttall1996), Mishan (Reference Mishan2005), Gilmore (Reference Gilmore2007a, Reference Gilmore2007b) and Rilling & Dantas-Whitney (Reference Rilling and Dantas-Whitney2009) 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. Mishan (Reference Mishan2005) gives a detailed account of the debate about authenticity and provides a rationale for using authentic materials, as does Trabelsi (Reference Trabelsi, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010), who argues for providing university students with materials which are authentic because they ‘are tailored to the learners’ profile and are suitable to the stakeholders’. . .expectations and demands’ (p. 116). A number of researchers have compared data from corpora of authentic language use with data from coursebooks and have criticised the lack of authenticity of the latter. For example, Gilmore (Reference Gilmore2004) compares textbook and authentic interactions and Lam (Reference Lam2010) reports the high frequency of the discourse particle ‘well’ in the Hong Kong corpus of Spoken English compared to its infrequency in the coursebooks used there. However, other researchers, such as Widdowson (Reference Widdowson1984, Reference Widdowson2000), Yano, Long & Ross (Reference Yano, Long and Ross1994), Day & Bamford (Reference Day and Bamford1998), Ellis (Reference Ellis1999) and Day (Reference Day and Renandya2003) claim that authentic materials can pose too many problems for learners: they put forward arguments for contriving materials that will simplify and facilitate learning. Widdowson (Reference Widdowson1984: 218), for example, believes that ‘pedagogic presentation of language. . .necessarily involves methodological contrivance which isolates features from their natural surroundings’, Ellis (Reference Ellis1999: 68) argues for ‘enriched input’ which has been flooded with examples of the target structure for use in a meaning-focused activity, and Day (Reference Day and Renandya2003) attacks what he calls the cult of authenticity, saying there is no empirical evidence that authenticity facilitates language acquisition, and citing evidence that learners find authentic texts more difficult than simplified or elaborated texts. Prodromou (Reference Prodromou1992) and Trabelsi (Reference Trabelsi, Tomlinson and Masuhara2010) have also raised the issue of authenticity in relation to the learners’ culture. What might be authentic for one location (or for one learner) might not be authentic for another. It is not the text or the task which is authentic but the learner's interaction with it. Widdowson (Reference Widdowson1978) distinguished between the genuineness of a text and the authenticity of its use, Breen (Reference Breen1985: 61) focused on ‘the authenticity of the learner's own interpretation [and] the actual social situation of the classroom’ and Van Lier (Reference Van Lier1996: 128) stressed that authenticity ‘is basically a personal process of engagement’.

For me, an authentic text is one which is produced in order to communicate rather than to teach, and an authentic task is one which involves the learners in communication in order to achieve an outcome, rather than practice the language. The text does not have to be produced by a native speaker and it might be a version of an original which has been simplified to facilitate communication. The task does not have to be a real-life task, but can be a classroom task which involves the use of real life skills in order to achieve not just communication but a non-linguistic outcome (e.g. one member of a group getting the others to draw a replica of a drawing she has been shown). Given these definitions, I think that every text that learners encounter should be authentic and that most tasks should be authentic too – otherwise the learners are not being prepared for the reality of language use.

7.5 Acceptability

Most publishers are understandably anxious to avoid giving offence and often supply their authors with lists of taboo topics, as well as guidelines on how to avoid sexism and racism. A number of authors have objected to what they see as sometimes excessive caution (e.g. Wajnryb Reference Wajnryb1996; Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson, Carter and Nunan2001a) and have complained about the unengaging blandness of commercially published materials. Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson1995), in particular, has contrasted this with materials published on national projects and especially with the Namibian coursebook On Target, in which such provocative topics as marital violence and drug abuse are included, with the permission of the Ministry of Education, in response to a nationwide survey in which students requested such topics.

Banegas (Reference Banegas2011) describes a two-part syllabus in use at a secondary school in Argentina. Syllabus 1 follows a mainstream coursebook while Syllabus 2 is a negotiated syllabus driven by teacher-suggested topics such as gay marriage and child abuse and student-suggested topics such as divorce and single parenting. To resource this deliberately provocative syllabus, the teachers have produced a sourcebook of authentic reading and listening texts from which to develop activities. Gray (Reference Gray2010) examines publishers’ documents which prohibit their authors from using controversial topics such as politics, alcohol, religion and sex and also reports interviews in which publishers discuss their need to regulate materials to match the sensitivities of their markets. Gray comments on how the permitted topics portray a successful, materialistic and aspirational EFL world. Waijnryb (1996: 291) complains that this world is too ‘safe, clean, harmonious, benevolent, undisturbed’. Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson, Carter and Nunan2001a: 68), whilst understanding the cautious stance of the publishers, comments on how affect is undoubtedly an important factor in learning and says ‘it is arguable that provocative texts which stimulate an affective response are more likely to facilitate learning than neutral texts which do not’. This is still my position: I have run many courses in which I have helped materials developers make use of controversial topics and texts that would be acceptable in their cultures and would have the potential for stimulating affective engagement.

7.6 Humanising materials

A number of recent publications have stressed the need for the humanisation of language-learning materials (e.g. Arnold Reference Arnold1999; Arnold & Brown Reference Arnold, Brown and Arnold1999; Maley Reference Maley and Tomlinson2003, Reference Maley and Tomlinson2008, Reference Maley and Tomlinson2011; Rinvolucri Reference Rinvolucri2003; Tomlinson Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003d, Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2008b; Masuhara Reference Masuhara and Mukundan2006, Reference Masuhara and Tomlinson2007; Tomlinson & Avila Reference Tomlinson and Avila2007a, Reference Tomlinson and Avila2007b; Masuhara et al. Reference Masuhara, Haan, Yi and Tomlinson2008; Mukandan 2009b and Hooper Hansen Reference Hooper Hansen and Tomlinson2011), and Mario Rinvolucri has started a web journal publishing articles proposing ways of humanising language teaching (Humanising Language Teaching: www.hltmag.co.uk).

Most of these publications refer to learning theories and stress the need to help learners to personalise, localise and make meaningful their experience of the target language, as well as the need for materials to be affectively engaging and cater for all learning style preferences. Arnold & Brown (Reference Arnold, Brown and Arnold1999), for example, refer to researchers who advocate whole-brain learning and quote Gross (Reference Gross, Collins and Mangieri1992:139), who claims that ‘We can accelerate and enrich our learning, by engaging the senses, emotions, imagination’. Canagarajah (Reference Canagarajah1999) gives examples of the re-writing of textbook comprehension questions so as to elicit localised and personalised responses. Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003d) agrees with Berman (Reference Berman1999:2), who says, ‘We learn best when we see things as part of a recognised pattern, when our imaginations are aroused, when we make natural associations between one idea and another, and when the information appeals to our senses’. Tomlinson goes on to advocate a humanistic coursebook which engages affect through personalised activities and which provides imaging, inner voice, kinaesthetic and process activities. When criticising the excessive control exerted by coursebooks, Mukundan (Reference Mukundan and Mukundan2009b: 96) says that the classroom should be like a jungle ‘where chance and challenge and spontaneity and creativity and risk work in complementary fashion with planned activity’. Hooper Hansen (Reference Hooper Hansen and Tomlinson2011: 407) advocates helping the learner to achieve ‘a state in which the mind is optimally relaxed and fully expanded’ and suggests, for example, using paintings as texts. Masuhara (Reference Masuhara and Mukundan2006) and Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson2001b, Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003d) advocate and illustrate multi-dimensional approaches to language learning in which learners are encouraged to make use of sensory imagery, motor imagery, inner speech, associations, connections and emotions in order to personalise their language-learning experience.

Many of the publications referred to above criticise commercially published coursebooks for being insufficiently humanistic. Arnold & Brown (Reference Arnold, Brown and Arnold1999: 5), for example, believe that we need to add ‘the affective domain’ to ‘the effective language teaching going on in the classroom’ in order to make language learning more humanistic, and Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Tomlinson2003:6) says that ‘most coursebooks make little attempt to achieve affective engagement. . .and they present learners with bland texts and activities in which the learners remain neutral without their emotions being engaged’. Maley (Reference Maley and Tomlinson2011) points out that the norm for coursebooks is to pre-determine the content, the order in which is it presented, the rate of progression and the procedures for using the content. He suggests using process options such as projects, community language-learning, drama, extensive reading and creative writing to give learners an opportunity to determine content and language use for themselves. Masuhara et al. (2008: 310) are critical of coursebooks for not making enough use of ‘engaging and extensive reading and listening texts’, of the developmental opportunities offered by extensive writing, of ‘the resources of the mind by stimulating multi-dimensional mental responses which are at the same time sensory, cognitive and affective’, of extended projects and of opportunities to stimulate the imagination of learners.

My position is very clear. Without affective and cognitive engagement there is little possibility of deep processing (Craik & Lockhart Reference Craik and Lockhart1972) and therefore little hope of enduring acquisition. Deep processing comes from personal involvement as an individual human being, and the coursebooks most likely to achieve more than coverage of teaching points are those that take a humanistic approach to language learning and help the learners to localise, to personalise and to achieve confidence and self-esteem.

7.7 Ideology in materials

For a long time critical theorists and socio-cultural theorists have deprecated the role of English language teaching in a globalisation process which they see as promoting western, capitalist, materialistic values. Ferguson (Reference Ferguson2003) uses the term ‘Angloglobalisation’ to identify what he sees as a positive connection between the British Empire, English and globalisation but Phillipson (Reference Phillipson1992), Pennycook (Reference Pennycook1994, 1998), Gray (Reference Gray, Block and Cameron2002) and Block (Reference Block2006) have been much more critical of these links, and Whitehead (Reference Whitehead and Coleman2011: 357) discusses ways in which materials can help to ‘develop counter-hegemonic discourses’ by encouraging critical engagement with issues relating to globalisation. Gray (Reference Gray2010: 16–17) points out how English has become ‘a form of linguistic capital, capable of bringing a profit of distinction to those speakers with the ability to access it (or more accurately, its socially legitimated varieties), and as an increasingly commodified dimension of labour-power’. Gray focuses on how the global coursebook is an artefact, a commodity which promotes socio-economic norms through its texts, activities, values and, especially, its illustrations. He analyses four popular British coursebooks and concludes that they all celebrate personal and professional success, individualism, pleasure, mobility, egalitarianism and materialism. He also examines publishers’ guidelines and interviews publishers before concluding that a standardised product is being ‘delivered through the standardized methodology embodied in the coursebook into the global marketplace – in which all are assumed to want and need exactly the same thing’ (p. 138). This is seen mainly as a result of the publishers’ taboo on inappropriate topics and their insistence on discrete-item approaches in which linguistic content is ‘made deliverable for teachers in manageable portions and finally made testable by examinations’ (p. 137). Not all students and teachers would accept these criticisms of neo-colonialism: see, for example, Bisong (Reference Bisong1995) for the perspective of Nigerian users.

Others have written about the development of the coursebook as a commodity to be consumed. Tickoo (Reference Tickoo, Hidalgo, Hall and Jacobs1995: 39) views textbook-writing in a multilingual and multicultural society as satisfying different sets of criteria. ‘Some of them arise from such a society's need to teach the values it wants to foster. Some arise in the desire to make education a handmaiden of economic progress and social reconstruction’. Toh (Reference Toh, Tan, Gopinathan and Kam2001) reports how the content of Singapore coursebooks reflects conformity to Western socio-cultural norms. Singapore Wala (Reference Singapore Wala and Tomlinson2003) views the coursebook as a communicative act, ‘a dynamic artefact that contributes to and creates meaning together with other participants in the context of language teaching’ (p. 59). She analyses coursebooks used in Singapore and concludes that ‘a coursebook is not just a collection of linguistic items – it is a reflection of a particular world-view based on the selection of resources’ (p. 69).

Holliday (Reference Holliday2005) argues that education has become increasingly commodified and that students have become recast as learners and consumers, Bolitho (Reference Bolitho and Tomlinson2008) claims that textbooks have acquired iconic status as symbols and Mukundan (Reference Mukundan and Mukundan2009b) talks about the ‘declared agenda’ of the classroom, in which the teacher is orchestrated by the textbook writer to create a ‘zoo-like environment, where learners behave like caged animals, performing planned tricks for the animal trainer. . .’ (p. 96). See also Adaskou, Britten & Fahsi (Reference Adaskou, Britten and Fahsi1990), Alptekin (Reference Alptekin1993), Zhang (Reference Zhang1997), Cortazzi & Jin (Reference Cortazzi, Jin and Hinkel1999), Gray (Reference Gray2000) and Tomlinson (Reference Tomlinson and Hinkel2005) for discussion of issues relating to culture and materials development.

In my opinion it is inevitable that coursebooks communicate a view of teaching and learning, a view of the target language and the culture(s) they represent and the worldview of their producer. This is potentially dangerous as the coursebook is revered in many classrooms as the authority and there is a risk of its users uncritically accepting its views. However, my experience throughout the world is that teachers and learners are more critical than they are given credit for and often resist the commodity they are being asked to consume. However, to protect the intended consumers it is important that teachers’ and language courses focus on developing constructive criticality as one of their objectives.

7.8 The roles of new technologies in language-learning materials

In recent years there have been radical developments in the use of new technologies to deliver language-learning materials. In general these have been welcomed but a number of materials developers have pointed out the dangers of excessive reliance on electronic delivery of materials. For example, Mukundan (Reference Mukundan and Tomlinson2008b: 109) has warned against the danger of educationalists thinking that ‘multimedia can drive pedagogically sound methodology’ and gives the example of Malaysia where, in his opinion, teaching courseware ‘directs teaching in a prescriptive manner’. Reinders & White (2010:68) make the obvious but very important point that whether Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) materials facilitate learning depends on ‘how the technology is implemented’. Maley (Reference Maley and Tomlinson2011: 390) points out how IT can be used as a resource ‘for the freeing of teachers and learners alike from the constraints of the coursebook’ and for providing ‘rapid and flexible access to unlimited information resources’. However, he also points out that change is so rapid that the resources are bound to be ephemeral, that there is a danger of ‘total capitulation to technology’ (p. 392) and, like Wolf (Reference Wolf2008), believes that the ‘multi-tasking, rapidly switching, superficial processing of information might. . .impair more reflective modes of thinking’ (p. 392). Lewis (Reference Lewis2009) 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.

Many journals (e.g. ELT Journal) now have regular features reviewing new electronic materials and ICT applications and numerous experts have written about the potential impact of electronic materials on language learning. For example, Chapelle (Reference Chapelle1998, Reference Chapelle2001) and Chapelle & Lui (2007) have described the effects of CALL materials on their users, Eastment (Reference Eastment1999), Derewianka (Reference Derewianka and Tomlinson2003a, Reference Derewianka and Renandya2003b), Murray (Reference Murray and Renandya2003), Blake (Reference Blake2008), Reinders & White (2010), Kervin & Derewianka (2011) and Motteram (Reference Motteram and Tomlinson2011) have given accounts of the development and use of electronic materials and Ferradas Moi (Reference Ferradas Moi and Tomlinson2003) has written about the development of materials which make use of hyperfiction. There are also a number of journals, such as Language Learning & Technology, which publish articles on electronic delivery of language-learning materials.

When thinking or writing about electronic materials it helps to distinguish between CALL materials (i.e. ELT materials available from websites, computer software, courseware and on-line courses), web sources of language experience (e.g. Google, YouTube, Facebook) and ICT applications which can be made use of both to deliver materials and to facilitate interaction (e.g. mobile phones). It is worth keeping these distinctions in mind when considering the potential benefits of electronic materials put forward below:

• • facilitating reading by making hidden information available, by providing on-the-spot help, by supporting comprehension with graphics, video and sound, and facilitating writing through modelling the genre, demonstrating the process, facilitating brainstorming and research, helping to draft and providing the potential for conferencing, editing and revision (Derewianka Reference Derewianka and Tomlinson2003a)

• • organisational advantages such as easy access, convenient storage and retrieval, easy sharing and recycling and cost efficiency; pedagogical advantages such as authenticity, interaction and situated learning; learner advantages such as instant feedback, choice of route and sequence, monitoring of progress, control and empowerment (Reinders & White Reference Reinders, White and Harwood2010)

• • localised adaptation of materials; free source of a variety of authentic texts; out-of-class opportunities for spoken interaction between learners; development of digital literacy through comparing and evaluating sources of similar information; choice of routes and activities when using teacher blog materials (Motteram Reference Motteram and Tomlinson2011)

• • collaborative problem solving activities inside and outside the classroom; interaction in simulated environments such as Second Life; modelling and feedback for pronunciation practice; resources for intensive and extensive listening (and viewing) at the learner's convenience; opportunities for integrated learning environments (Kervin & Derewianka Reference Kervin, Derewianka and Tomlinson2011).

I welcome the use of new technologies in language learning, especially for the opportunities this can provide for teachers and learners of flexibility and choice, and for the window on the real world they open up to learners in their classrooms and their homes. I see the mobile phone, in particular, as offering great potential for learners (especially in South and South-East Asia where many teenagers have access to mobiles but not to schools). However, I am wary of the misuse of new technologies and have seen examples of schools wasting money on electronic delivery when they do not have any books, of institutions depending on electronic delivery but not having the resources to ensure reliability, and institutions providing so much electronic delivery that they neglect face-to-face interaction.