PRACTICAL MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

(Nez & Tllez)

CHAPTER 1
THE IMPORTANCE OF
MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

Materials development is like embarking upon a fascinating task that allows your imagination
to fly and go far beyond your capabilities. It could also be living an enjoyable and rewarding
experience that implies careful thought, fondness, inspiration, originality and the occasion
for you and your students to develop both personally and professionally.

To become an active agent of change in language teaching, teachers should be aware of minor
and major innovations, as suggested by Phillip (2005) who identifies two kinds of
innovations: the first are extensions of the present system and are thus called sustaining
innovations. The second kind of innovations is regarded as disruptive, which imply a
systemic change in the present system of teaching. Our proposal belong to the second case
because for us, teacher innovations in materials development foster change in teachers roles
as they move from a passive role to an active role one by creating and adapting materials.

CHAPTER 2
VITAL ELEMENTS TO
MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

We emphasize that the role of teachers as materials developers is to make use of extrinsic
and intrinsic motivation when developing materials. There are two types of motivation:
intrinsic and extrinsic. For Huitt (2001) the sources of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational
needs include behavioural or external source that are related to innate stimuli in order to have
positive or negative motivational consequences. The author asserts that extrinsic motivation
includes aspects such as operant and social cognition and the intrinsic motivation involves
social cognition, conation, affect, biology, and spiritual aspects.

1. THE ROLE OF AFFECTION IN MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT

2. THE ROLE OF MOTIVATION IN MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT
3. THE ROLE OF TEACHER BELIEFS IN MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 3
THE MATERIALS
DEVELOPMENT SCAFFOLDING

In the theory of language, [Rico] insists, teachers should take into account three theoretical
outlooks: The structural, the functional and the interactional which may inform teachers
about the theory for teaching any language. They also offer the actions and theoretical
framework to opt for a particular teaching method. However, this one needs to be matched
to a theory of language learning.
Acknowledging the theoretical issues we have just presented, and relying on our teaching
practice and experience on the development, implementation, and validation of EFL
materials with general and specific purposes, we have come to group them in three categories:
content form, and personal traits.