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uk/lucindamaterials/2016/02/24/writing-materials/

Materials Evaluation
February 24, 2016Uncategorized
Clarity of instructions is a useful starting point in materials evaluation, often
teachers books give supporting grammar advice but the real workings of materials lie in
students’ instructions.  Firstly activities and tasks need to be understandable, something that
will be clear to learners.  This moves onto the next most important and intertwined factor
which is task achievability, if tasks in materials provided cannot be realised they need to be
decisively removed.  Tasks need to be evaluated for content, is it culturally acceptable?  Are
the materials practical, teachable or flexible?  Do the Materials build confidence to
achieve student independence?  The following micro-evaluation is my own micro-
compilation of daily questions to answer for course book materials being used:

microevalutation

The diagram below allows me as a teacher to follow another micro-evaluation for materials I
choose for non-syllabus based general English classes where a course book is not
provided, I must be able to answer all the questions positively.

Mishan and Timmis suggest that stand alone evaluation can be created, ad hoc, for exam
classes and materials; using four or five questions about potential materials suitability for any
given exam class.  For example questions such as “does the activity display the exam
format?“.   Materials can be systematically evaluated to make daily teaching organised and
rewarding.  The process below suggests a route to follow on one’s daily teaching,
preparation and evaluation.
https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/lucindamaterials/2016/02/24/writing-materials/

[Beyond the language classroom]

The following framework is useful when choosing course books as it allows one to look at all
the tasks within a unit and check if they are offering students a variety of tasks
types, genres, inputs, outputs, skills and a variety of factors that add to the effectiveness
of the unit’s content.  It also acts as a reminder of all the useful devices in daily materials and
teaching that aid language acquisition.

Course books can be evaluated as a whole, considering other factors such as cohesion of
units and recycling of language to ascertain if a book would be a helpful addition to a
school’s syllabus. A useful question in the evaluation process is to consider necessary and
desirable features of proposed materials, desirable features should be classified
as extremely desirable, very desirable and quite desirable.  More general questions can be
asked about the teaching context in which materials will be used.  Other important factors in
the evaluation process are the time available to students, age, student interests, students’
background, class size and student level.

Coursebooks offer “a coherent syllabus, satisfactory language control, motivating

texts, audio, CDs and other accessories such as video DVD material, CD-ROMS and
extra resource material.”   Littlejohn makes an further interesting point about evaluation,
that course books may be the “most powerful device” in relation to methodological
innovations and revolutions in syllabus design.  Choosing the right course book can therefore
have countless rewarding effects in the classroom so implementing a thorough evaluation
procedure is an important issue.  Both Dauod and Celce Murcia [1979] and Williams [1983]
evaluation frameworks cover wide-ranging questions to answer but Penny Ur offers a more
easily accessible and current framework that can easily be used, with financial
considerations and questions about level quality as additional extras, to add an exciting
course book to any good English Language Teaching classroom.
https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/lucindamaterials/2016/02/24/writing-materials/

Raizi proposes three different types of evaluation the most useful for me is for books
already in use, to be able to “identify strengths and weaknesses” of any one set of
materials.  This evaluation should be made in conjunction with both Davidson’s [1975] and
Dauod & Celce-Murcia’s [1979] (evaluation schemes) where the student’s language
background plays an important role.  Students can easily be actively involved in the
evaluation process and get the most out of their materials by using a questionnaire such as
below included in Hedge’s book, Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom:

The questionnaire above is of personal interest to me as it answers a question I am always a

little unsure of, whether or not to ask students to complete writing tasks in
class or independently, It also encourages students to take personal control of their course
and to streamline their studies for their individual aims.
https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/lucindamaterials/2016/02/24/writing-materials/

Cunningsworth, A. (1995) Choosing your Coursebook. Oxford:  Heinemann ELT

Ellis, R. (2011) Macro-and micro-evaluation of task-based teaching 

Harmer, J. (2015) The Practice of English Teaching.  (5th ed) London Pearson.  

Hedge, T. (2000) Teaching and Learning in the Language Classrooom. Oxford:  Oxford
University Press

McGrath,I. (2013) Teaching Materials and Roles of the EFL/ESL Teachers:  Practice and
Theory.  London Bloomsbury.  Chapter 3 he professional literate and chapter 5 How
teachers evaluate coursebooks

LittleJohn, A (ed).  The analysis of language teaching materials:  inside the Trojan Horse.  In
Tomlinson, B. (ed) Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd ed) Cambridge
University Press.  pp 179 – 211

Masuhara, H. (2011) What do teachers really want from coursebooks? In Tomlinson, B.

(ed) Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd ed) Cambridge University Press.
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Mishan, F. & Timmis, I. (2015) Materials Developent for TESOL. Edinburgh:  Edinburgh

University Press (Chapter 4 Materials evaluation and adaption).

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Teaching and Learning Settings.

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evaluation schemes of three decades. In: Renandya, W.A. (ed). Methodology and Materials
Design in Language Teaching: Current Perceptions and Practices and their Implications.
Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre. pp.52-68.

Tomlinson,B. (2013 Materials Evaluation).  In Tomlinson, B. (ed). Developing Materials for

Language Teaching. (2nd ed) London: Bloomsbury. pp. 21 -48

 Ur,P.  (2012) A Course in English Language Teaching 2nd edn Cambridge:  Cambridge
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