SELECTION AND GRADATION IN MATERIALS DEVELOPMENTA Language-Centered and Learner-

Centered PerspectiveINTRODUCTIONAmong the major initials of any language program is the

specification of content of language teaching and learning in developing materials. As the aim of
content specification is to prepare the list of items in the order they will be taught, different factors
like the environment in which the course will be used, needs of the learners, and teaching and
learning principles should be taken into account (Nation & Macalister, 2010). Therefore, the process
of content specification maximizes the interaction between the input or content, learner, and
learning process. In curriculum development, once the input is determined, issues concerning the
content and design of classroom activities and materials should be addressed (Kumaravadivelu,
2006).Based on the principles of language teaching and learning, the content of a language lesson
may mainly focus on language, functions, topics and themes, genre, skills and subskills, situations and
roles, strategies, or task outcomes which are called units of progression. In a language-centered
curriculum, in the area of grammar, choices have to be made regarding the units of vocabulary,
grammar, verb forms, verb patterns, sentence patterns, or language functions. In a learner-centered
curriculum, in the area of task, the most appropriate pedagogic tasks are determined through needs
analysis. The tasks provide language samples to learners and allow negotiation of difficulty (Nation &
Macalister, 2010). Therefore, depending on the goal of a language lesson, certain units of
progression might be used to select and sequence the materials in a course.Moreover, due to the
limited amount of time in teaching language, a major problem to be solved is specifying what units of
progression should be selected from the total list of units of analysis. Once the units are specified,
other problems to be solved include gradation and sequencing (Stern, 1983). Hence, making
reasonable decisions about the content compliant with the teaching and learning principles whether
through a language-centered and learner-centered approach is a crucial element in materials
development

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ZERAATPISHE44CONTENT SPECIFICATION IN LANGUAGE-CENTERED SYLLABUSESContent specification

in language-centered syllabuses has been one of the most fluctuating and controversial areas of
second language pedagogy. In making decisions about the content in developing materials, a variety
of perspectives on the triple principles of selection, gradation, and sequencing of language should be
considered (Kumaravadivelu, 2006).Materials development in language-centered syllabuses
demands a choice of what to be included from the total field of the subject through the selection of
certain features of the language and the intentional or unintentional exclusion of others (White,
1988). Selecting content, therefore, primarily focuses on grammatical structures, notional-functional
categories, situations, and topics (Kumaravadivelu, 2006; Nunan, 2001; Pica, 1985).A major factor in
content selection, which also differentiates language-centered syllabuses from learner-centered
types, is the degree to which they call for the analysis of the language before it is presented to the
learner. In language-centered syllabuses, the selection of content depends on syllabus designers’
priorities, experiences, and beliefs about the nature of language and learning (Nunan, 1988) which is
in line with Breen’s (1984) idea in that judgments in the selection of materials are value-laden.
Therefore, in a language-centered syllabus like structural syllabus, steered by realistic philosophy in
curriculum development, the content and what of language teaching is determined in advance.
Realistic philosophy spotlights the precise, measurably stated objectives to be written prior to
instruction which specify the content of the teaching. Hence, materials developers in language-
centered syllabuses attempt to prespecify the content based on the general question of “what
linguistic elements do learners need to master?” (Nunan, 1988). In fact, they tend to give more
importance to the artful selection and organization of structures (White, 1988) through focusing on
grammatical, phonological, and vocabulary items which should be mastered by the learners (Nunan,
1988).Since language is so complex and it is not possible to teach the whole language, one of the
foremost problems in developing materials is to decide about the components that should be
selected from the total corpus of language and introduced into textbooks and other teaching
materials. Among language components, vocabulary and grammar were two aspects that received
primary attention and their selection laid the foundations for developing materials in language-
centered curriculums in the first few decades of the twentieth century (Richards, 2001).Vocabulary
SelectionDiscussing the question of vocabulary selection, Wilkins (1976) claimed that the attention of
methodologists was first directed to vocabulary because the actual day-to-day use of language
includes words that are different from the somewhat literary and arbitrary vocabulary that learners
encounter in their reading based courses

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