Leydis payares-Claudia Vergara

Selection And Gradation

In Material Development
A Language-Centered and Learner – Centered Perspective

carmenjuliasotoromero2017@gmail.com

Based on the article by Akram Faravani and Mitra Zeraatpish establish a

comparison clarifying what are the criteria to select and grade materials
according to both approaches: Language-centered and Learner-Centered.
Which one do you think is more useful and effective for nowadays instruction?
why?

We think, that student-centered perspective is more useful, because the content

of the syllabus is created between the teacher and the learner and is not
predetermine. There is a form of negotiation, between the two that we think
make the whole experience enriching for the students because we consider that
the student must feel like his or her opinion are taken into account that are
important for the development of a course. Something to highlight here, is that
things like autonomous learning and contextualized situations are very helpful
for the learners and teacher; because pupils can learn something that they can
use in their life, taking into account their background
Language-Centered Perspective Student-Centered Perspective
Content selection  The degree to which they  White, Follow analytic
call for the analysis of the approaches to syllabus
language. designing
 Selection of content  Teacher and learner
depends on syllabus make decisions of the
designers’ priorities, content and the
experiences and beliefs. gradation.
 Objectives are written to  Teachers can obtain
specify the content of the more evidence regarding
teaching the learners’ needs.
 Selectin and organization  The content is shaped
of structures, through rather than determined
 grammar, phonologic,
and vocabulary.
 The language of text
needs to be relevant to
the needs of learners
 Availability of a word to
more than one meaning.
 White, “Teach ability and
learnability are important
because motivate the
selection of sentence
pattern,
 Richards “principles
intuitive criteria of
simplicity/centrality and
learn ability.” In
simplicity/centrality
structures that are simple
and more central to the
basic structure of the
language should be
selected. Learnability
focus on the order in
which grammatical items
are acquired in second
language learning
Grading  White, different
considerations in grading,
including combinability,
grouping and contrast
 Richards, gradations is
concerned with grouping
and sequencing of
teaching items in syllabus,
items and their order of
teaching should be
specified.
 Grouping in a system is
about: phonetic
grouping, lexical
grouping, grammatical
grouping, semantic
grouping and structure
grouping
 Carter and Nunan “skills
Sequencing and abilities that are
organized in a syllabus in
 Focus on course books
that emphasizes
communicative task or
participation,
 Consulting and
negotiation is important
between teacher and
student
 The selected content is
not clearly decisive but
will be redefined as
learners involve in
different kinds on learning
activities
 The couserbook is about a
task based syllabus.
 Nunan, Grading relies on
various factors.
 Language is
contextualized
 The language event
makes demands on
learners
 The background
knowledge is important
 The learner’s demands in
a language event
 Brindley, motivation and
confidence are also
important in grading
objectives.
 Task are very important
because the learner can
use prior knowledge and
can use oral and written
communication to do it.
 Corbel, proposed an
action-sequence
approach with four steps.
 order to follow a path or  Learners’ areas of interest
progression of it. and need can be very
 Mackey, “Two types of helpful
sequence, the sequence  Communication situations
of individual item and the linked to the context or
combination of each item the background of the
into various structures” learner
 The number of items  Selecting or devising
determine the number of material to the situation
sequences  Choosing language to
 Graves, in sequencing focus on the material.
materials building from
simple to complex.
 Nation- Macalister, the
organization of a course
can be sequenced in a
variety of ways, linear and
modular.
 In the linear development
the materials in one lesson
depend on the learning in
previous lessons and in the
modular, each lesson is
separated from other so
materials can be
arranged in any order.