Materials Development for TESOL
F. Mishan and I. Timmis
Edinburgh University Press 2015, 218 pp., £19.99
isbn 978 0 7486 9136 4
Materials Development in TESOL is part of the
Edinburgh Textbooks in TESOL series, which is
intended for students on an MA in TESOL or similar
programmes from advanced undergraduate to taught
doctorate programmes. The series aims to provide
‘theory clearly related to practice’ and to present
‘ELT concepts and issues simply’. These are laudable
aims given the vast amount of theory, research and
published advice to teachers in our field, not enough
of which filters down to teachers. Clarity and simplicity
in relating theory to practice can provide an excellent
foundation for exploring diverse views on complex
professional issues in more detail, and would help
teacher-educators and those who are responsible
for designing curricula, assessments and (perhaps
most importantly) teaching materials to mediate
between theory and practice, between researchers and
teachers. It is not the case, unfortunately, that writers
of textbooks and others are always aware of key issues
in second-language teaching theory, and even if they
are, there is no guarantee that publishers are willing to
stray too far from tried and tested formats.
A brief introduction sets out three key questions: Why
do we need a book about materials development?
What are materials? And what do we need materials
for? The third question is answered in an interesting
way by highlighting the debate about the Dogme
ELT approach before arriving at the authors’ own list
of five key purposes of materials. The conclusion
ends by setting out the structure of the subsequent
chapters, which is worth outlining here. Each chapter
contains two or three sections, and within each
section there is a brief summary of key issues and
debates. For example, in the section on materials to
develop reading skills, this input takes up five pages,
with sections on other skills and on grammar and
vocabulary of similar length. This input is supported
by a number of tasks. Many of these relate principles
to the analysis and evaluation of textbook extracts,
which are either provided within the volume or
chosen by learners from their own contexts. Other
tasks provide opportunities for learners to reflect
on and/or apply principles for themselves. Each
chapter ends with some well-chosen guided readings
(chapters or journal papers) followed by longer tasks
involving materials analysis, reviews of research
or materials adaptation/design. There is also a set
of additional online resources to accompany six of
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the nine units, consisting of downloadable PDFs
containing additional tasks, links to further reading,
discussion activities related to key debates, and in
some cases what seem to be large chunks of text that
perhaps could not be fitted into the final version of
the book. The URL for these resources is not the one
printed in the book—I tracked it down to https://
edinburghuniversitypress.com/resources/item/index/.
Note that the reader needs to register (for free) to
access these resources.
Following the introduction, Chapter 2, ‘Principled
Materials Development’, acknowledges the lack
of theory in materials development but argues for
drawing on ‘what we know about how learners
acquire a second language’ (p. 9). It reviews the
important roles of affective and cognitive challenge,
input and output, and awareness raising in language
teaching materials, pointing out deficiencies of
most published materials in all these areas. Bloom’s
taxonomy is discussed as a helpful framework for
evaluating cognitive challenge in materials and
is linked to a matrix of cognitive processes and
sample activity types for TESOL. In connection
with input, the principle of simplifying texts to
provide comprehensible input is challenged and
an interesting task asks readers to compare an
authentic newspaper article with its simplified version
appearing in a coursebook. Output and interaction
are discussed briefly, followed by short sections on
noticing and form-focused instruction. At this point,
readers are asked to evaluate an activity in terms of
meaningfulness, interest and relevance, cognitive
challenge and communicativeness, then draw up their
own sets of principles and guidelines for materials
design. This is followed by guided reading of two
papers, which are not included in this book, although
brief summaries are provided. The first of these, a
chapter from Tomlinson 2011, proposes a set of 6 core
principles and 16 ‘implications’ of these which are
also described as principles. The second is Gilmore’s
2007 article on authenticity in language teaching. Both
papers are followed by tasks that ask readers to apply
ideas from the text to materials, find further articles
on the topics covered, add their own ideas to those of
the authors, and suggest implications for task design
arising from the readings.
Chapter 3, ‘Materials, Methods and Contexts’, deals
with the important issue of matching materials to
the different contexts in which they are used. Three
questions are explored: Which English? Which
culture? Which pedagogy? The first of these is related
to the globalization and diversification of English,
the use of English as an international language and
lingua franca, and attitudes towards native-speaker
 and standard varieties of English. The ‘Which culture?’
section reviews the roles of target culture, source
culture and international target culture materials. The
goal of intercultural competence is flagged up but not
really discussed. The section on ‘Which pedagogy?’
flags up the well-documented problems of importing
a pedagogy such as CLT from Western settings, where
it originated, to contexts where other approaches are
the norm. These questions are linked to a discussion
on global textbooks and the need for localization.
Chapter 4, ‘Materials Evaluation and Adaptation’,
covers the important distinction between evaluation
and analysis and reviews different frameworks for
generating evaluation criteria. It then moves on to
consider some general issues in adapting materials.
Chapter 5 discusses materials in the technological
environment and distinguishes between materials as
products and materials as processes such as using
tools for socializing, networking or collaborating.
Chapters 6, 7 and 8 return to more conventional
ground, covering material to teach the four skills
(Chapters 6 and 7) and grammar and vocabulary
(Chapter 8). Skills are described as automatic
and subconscious and therefore not susceptible
to teaching. The authors see the role of materials
as opportunities to practise skills and to teach
strategies for using the skills efficiently. Chapter 6
covers reading and listening, Chapter 7 writing and
speaking, although the authors emphasize the value
of integrating the skills. In the section on reading,
the difference between working with written texts
and practising reading is highlighted, and various
objectives associated with using reading texts are
discussed. Key processes and cognitive skills in
reading are applied to samples of textbook materials
and the authors point out the lack of cognitive
engagement in textbook reading tasks. They then
make some general suggestions for involving
cognitive skills. The ‘further reading’ paper from
this section is Diana Freeman’s 2014 chapter on
reading comprehension questions, which provides a
taxonomy of question types which readers are invited
to apply to their own materials. Sections on listening,
speaking and writing similarly cover a range of key
issues in language skills development, together with
analysis and discussion tasks and further guided
readings.
Chapter 8 discusses materials for teaching vocabulary
and grammar. Vocabulary selection criteria are
discussed followed by a brief list of types of word
knowledge. Research evidence is applied to traditional
and current vocabulary-learning techniques, and
vocabulary-learning strategies are also discussed.
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A wide range of vocabulary-learning activities are
presented in task 8.3 for readers to analyse, and a set
of evaluation criteria for vocabulary work are presented
for readers to apply in task 8.4. In the grammar
section, PPP is discussed and principled eclecticism is
advocated. Chapter 9, ‘Materials Design: From Process
to Product’, covers processes involved in writing
materials for commercial publication. It also offers a
number of frameworks such as the CEFR and Willis’s
task cycle that may be helpful to materials writers.
The choice of topics covered would be a good match
with the materials development module on the MA
course in my own institution, and this volume provides
a rich and comprehensive resource for academics
and teacher-educators designing or teaching on
this type of module. It is thus clear to see how the
book was developed out of the authors’ experience
of teaching this type of module. Within each topic, a
range of key issues is dealt with at a fairly advanced
level. It is probably most useful for students who are
experienced teachers nearing the end of a Masters
in TESOL, where it would serve as a reminder of key
principles and processes and a guide to how these
can be implemented via materials. It is more than a
handbook or toolkit for materials writers, as it provides
opportunities to reflect critically on frameworks and
principles and the ways in which these have been
implemented in teaching materials. The book could
thus serve almost on its own as a textbook for a
module, but to my knowledge few universities work
in this way. For this review, I based one session of an
MA module closely on a chapter of this book. One
student commented disparagingly in the end-of-module
feedback that I had lifted almost an entire lecture from
a book. As a resource for lecturers it provides really
good, challenging and thought-provoking study tasks,
and a helpful checklist of topics to be covered and
key issues to discuss. It would also provide a really
useful resource for students as key reading. It fills the
space between very practical handbooks for teachers
on aspects of materials writing and more theoretical
volumes on principles and processes of materials
writing.
The reviewer
Nick Andon is a Senior Lecturer in English Language
Education and Programme Director of the MA in
TESOL at King’s College London. His research
interests include language teaching materials,
task-based language teaching, teacher development
and teacher beliefs.
Email: nick.andon@kcl.ac.uk
doi:10.1093/elt/ccx062
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