Applied Linguistics and Materials Development

Abstract

Twenty years ago, when I started training teachers to write materials, there was very little literature to guide writers of language teaching materials (or those attempting to train them), although handbooks for teachers on how to teach different aspects of language provided useful starting points and examples of different types of activities, for example for teaching reading or vocabulary. Materials development was regarded as a practical area lacking in theory. Since the mid-1990s, however, there has been a steadily increasing stream of publications on principles for materials design and evaluation, a good proportion of them, like this book, edited by Brian Tomlinson (1998, 2003, 2008, 2011), with others including McGrath (2002, 2013), Mishan (2005), Harwood (2010), and Mishan and Chambers (2010). Given the universal importance of materials in language teaching, these publications have the potential for great impact. This edited collection aims to investigate the match between applied linguistics theory and materials development practice. The well-documented gap between the vast amount of theory and research generated in the field of applied linguistics and practice in second language teaching generally, applies as much, if not more so, to language teaching materials. Many reasons have been suggested for the lack of communication between applied linguists and language teaching professionals (and Tomlinson provides several), but what is most useful is to analyse the extent to which applied linguistics knowledge has filtered down into language teaching materials, and explore the value of basing materials on principles derived from applied linguistics. This book ambitiously sets out to:

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