Course syllabus
LANGTCHG 746 : Materials Development and Evaluation
SEMESTER 2, 2018
15 points
Course Convenor: Associate Professor Tan Bee Tin
About this course
Materials play a vital role in language teaching. The course examines various key issues, concepts and principles that underlie language teaching materials, which not only have ‘a ubiquitous presence in the language classroom’ but also seem to have ‘a magical hold over teachers and students’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2008, p. 186).
The course is divided into three parts. In the first part, we examine some basic issues concerning the pros and cons of published materials and the criteria and principles for evaluating and selecting materials. The second part focuses on the criteria for adapting materials. The third part deals with the development of materials for teaching language systems and language skills and the role materials development play in professional development and reflective teaching. In this course we will work through the basic concepts and issues in a systematic way.
By the end of the semester, I hope that you will be more confident in your understanding of what materials development and evaluation is all about. You should also have gained the ability to evaluate the potential value of particular language learning materials, as well as having some of the skills you need to develop good language learning materials of your own.
Course Objectives
By the end of the course participants should be able to:
- Understand the current issues and debates in materials development and evaluation.
- Demonstrate knowledge of some of the key literature in the field.
- Evaluate existing materials evaluation frameworks and their suitability for particular educational contexts.
- Design a unit of language learning materials for a particular language teaching context and evaluate it.
Course Readings
Key readings and recommended readings
The key readings are those which you have to do as part of the activities for each unit. One of these readings for each week is usually taken from the course text:
*Tomlinson, B. (ed). 2013 (2nd edition). Developing materials for language teaching. London: Bloomsbury.
(ebook available, but some chapters are not available in the e-book. Students are required to get a hard copy of the book to have access to all chapters. The book is available from the University of Auckland Library. You should buy a copy of your own if you have no access to the library.).
Welcome to the homepage for this course in Materials Development and Evaluation. I'm Tan Bee Tin and I have developed this distance learning course. If you click on Course Homepagelisted on the left you will find resources and material about this course. The material in each of these sections will help you become familiar with the online learning environment, and work in this environment in a way that feels comfortable for you. Please let me know how are you doing, and contact me if you are running into problems.
Course development details and credits
This course was authored as part of the Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MTESOL) by: Dr Tan Bee Tin (Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics).
The design of this course is supported by the Centre for Learning and Research in Higher Education, The University of Auckland. Our approach to course design is a team approach. The following people made up the team for this course.
| Academic Author: | Associate Professor Tan Bee Tin |
| Course Librarian: | Chie Emslie |
| Copyright: | University of Auckland 2008 |
| Disclaimer: | Every effort has been made to ensure that copyright requirements are not infringed in the production of this course. However as there are links to external sites we cannot guarantee this. If any infringements are apparent, please contact us at Centre for Learning and Research in Higher Education. |
You are being provided with copies of copyright material made for educational purposes. These include extracts of copyright works copied under copyright licences. You may not make these materials available to other persons, nor make a further copy for any other purpose. Failure to comply with the terms of this warning may expose you to legal action by a rights owner and/or disciplinary action by the University.
Course summary:
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