Principles to Effective Materials Development

By  Licda. Guiselle Weelkly Williamson

graceb2you@hotmail.com

The word "principle"  according to the Webster Collection English Dictionary on page 627 means: " an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct, the method of formation, operation, or procedure exhibited in a given instance". Taking into considerations description united with the position of many writers and their assumption towards this topic;  I can definitely come to the agreement that there should be certain guidelines to follow in order for things to take place in the right and proper way when referring to creation of materials for students learning development.

Brain Tomlinson presented six basic principles of  language acquisition and four principles of language teaching. He stated that they should not be random recreation of other people's idea or repertoire, or clones;  but rather, whatever, invention is portrait should be coherent following these principled applications amids many others. Some assumptions he gave are: 

• Theories of language acquisition and development.
• Principles of teaching.
• Our current knowledge of how the target language is actually used.
• The result of systematic observations and evaluations of materials in use.

The basic principles to effective materials development mentioned by the authors are:

1.  Learners are exposed to a rich, meaningful, and comprehensible input of language in use.
2. Learners need to be engaged both affectively and congnitive in the language experience.
3. Language learners who achieve postive affect are much more likely to achieve communicaticative competence than  those who do not.
4. L2 learners can be benefit from using those mental resources that they typically utilize when acquiring and using their L1.
5. Language learners can benefit from noticing salient features of the input.
6. Learners need opportunities to use the language to try to achieve communicative purposes.

For materials to be effective they should also satisfy the needs to communicate, to be student centered,  be authentic and also be created for long term goal.

ELT must at all times stimulate interaction as well as to be able to meet the practical needs of teachers and learners matching the realities of publishing materials.

Finally, I would say that the current global course books and many local course books created by publishing houses and writers must always keep in mind that the books published or to be published should not only look good,  have reasonable prices and access to parents, teachers, students or any other person interested in learning foreign language,  but, that the books should be driven by principles of effective learning achievement. The literatures should be contextualized and customize according to the childs':

• Age
• Needs
• Cognitive Development
• Affective Development
• Motivation
• Interest
• Environment ( region, habitat). 

Teachers have the great responsability of motivating the learners'  needs by helping them to develop a positive mentally as they engage in the target language, in their learning environment, as they interact with their teachers and  classmates.