Principles for Effective Materials Development

By  Teacher Stephanie Segura


 According to Brian Tomlinson, author of  Principles for Effective Materials Development, each principle needs to be derived from principle of language acquisition and should them be used to develop frameworks that link together procedures in an organized and coherence way.

Some principles of language acquisition mentioned that called my attention are:

• A prerequisite for language acquisition is that the learners are exposed to a rich, meaningful, and comprehensible input language in use.
• Students need to engaged both effectively and cognitively in the language experience.
• Language learners who achieve positive affect are much more likely to achieve communicative than those who do not.
• L2 language learners can benefit from using those mental resources that they typically utilize when acquiring and using their L1
• Learners need opportunities to use language to try to achieve communicative purposes.

Some principles of language teaching mentioned that called my attention are:

• The content and methodology of the teaching should be consistent with the objectives of the course and should meet the needs and wants of the learners.
• The teaching should be design to help learners to achieve language development and not just language acquisition.
• The teacher needs to be able to personalize and localize the materials and to relate them in different ways to the needs, wants, and learning style preferences of individual learners.