Principles of Effective Materials Development

By Professor Viviana Salguero
 visalco@gmail.com

PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
	PRINCIPLE	MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT
1	Learners should be exposed to a rich, meaningful, comprehensible input of language in use	1-     Contain plentiful spoken and written texts 2-     Language is authentic, it represents how it is typically used 3-     Language input is contextualized
2	Learners need to be engaged affectively and cognitively in the language experience	1-     Prioritize the potential for engagement (basing a text that is likely to achieve affective and cognitive) 2-     Use of reading and listening activities that make learners think personally 3-     Use of activities that make learners think and feel before , during and after using the target language
3	Learners should achieve positive affect to achieve communicative competence	1-     Texts and tasks are interesting, relevant, enjoyable to exert a positive influence in learners attitude 2-     Set achievable challenges to raise learners self-esteem 3-       Stimulate emotive responses through the use of music, songs, literature, and art.
4	L2 Learners can benefit from using mental resources they used when acquiring L1	1-     Use of activities that encourage learners to visualize inner speech before, during, and after experiencing a written or spoken text 2-      Use of activities that encourage learners to visualize inner speech before, during, and after using language themselves 3-     Use of activities that help the learners to reflect on their mental activity during a task
5	Learners can benefit from noticing salient features of the input	1-     Provide the learners with experience that engages them holistically 2-     Help learners to make discoveries for themselves
6	Learners need opportunities to use language to try to achieve communicative purposes	1-     Provide opportunities to learners to produce language 2-     Activities should be design to use language 3-     Activities should be design to help learners to develop the ability to communicate fluently, accurately, appropriately and effectively 4-     Activities should be fully contextualized 5-     Provide feedback opportunities

PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE TEACHING
	PRINCIPLE	MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT
1	Content and methodology should be consistent with the objectives of the course	1-     English should be real 2-     Materials need to be written in a way that teachers can make use of them as a resource and not have to follow them as a script
2	Teaching should be designed to help learners to achieve language development and not just language acquisition	1-     Activities should involve and encourage the use of imagination, inner speech, prediciting, interpreting 2-     Activities should not be restricted to the language forms and functions 3-     Materials should help the teacher asses the learners and give constructive feedback
3	Teaching should provide learning opportunities to help learners become more mature, creative, constructive, collaborative, capable, and confident as result of the course	1-     Materials should be cross-curricular, not only focus on language learning 2-     Materials should include some content-based teaching 3-     Activities should help learners to develop skills
4	Personalize and localize the materials to relate them in different ways to the needs and wants and learning-style preferences of every learner	1-     Materials should provide the teacher with ideas for localizing and personalizing generic activities 2-     Materials should help teachers to suggest ways in which learners can make their own choices and work at their own level and speed.