MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT IN

ESP

Presented by:
Nuruladilah Bt. Mohamed
GS 37456
 OVERVIEW
 Definition
 Types of Materials
 Purpose of Materials
 Teachers or Providers of Materials
 Teacher-Generated Material
 Learner-Generated Material
 Materials and Technology
DEFINITION
 DEFINITION OF MATERIALS

 Harsono (2007) states materials refer to anything which is used to

help to teach language learners.

 Tomlinson(1998,2001) defined materials as

 textbook, a workbook, a cassette, a CD-ROM, a video, a photocopied

handout, a newspaper, a paragraph written on a whiteboard or anything

 presents or informs about the language being learned and

facilitate the learning of a language.
TYPES OF MATERIALS
 TYPES OF MATERIALS
(Ellis and Johnson, 1994)
• Focuses on one’s general
General ability
• E.g: GE

• Focuses on a
Subject- particular job or
industry
specific • E.g: ESP – Business
English
 PURPOSE OF MATERIALS

Evans & Source of Tomlinson

John language (2001) Instructional
(1998)

Learning
support Experiential

Motivation &
stimulation Elicitative

Reference Exploratory
SOURCE OF LANGUAGE
 PURPOSE OF MATERIALS
1. Source of language
 If English is a foreign not a second language, the ESP classroom may
be the only source of English.

 Materials play roles in:

 exposing or informing learners to a real language.

 Provide additional materials – max. exposure
 Use of instructions/explanations – fits students’ understanding
 filling the learners’ requirements
 E.g: use of texts from Time and Wall Street Journal in a classroom
( ) …… WHY?
 Differs from pedagogic style of textbooks, different vocab
LEARNING SUPPORT
 PURPOSE OF MATERIALS
2. Learning support

 Materials need to be reliable to work, to be consistent, and to

have some recognizable pattern
 Some materials – mislead objectives

 Involving learners in thinking about and using the language.

 Activities used in the materials: stimulate cognitive process.

 The learners: have a sense of progression.

STIMULATION AND
EVALUATION
 PURPOSE OF MATERIALS
3. Stimulation and motivation

 Materials need to be:

 Challenging
 Achievable – offer new ideas / information
 Encourage fun / creativity
 Can be used in real-life environment
REFERENCE
 PURPOSE OF MATERIALS
4. Reference
- self-study / reference purposes
 Materials need to be:
 Complete, self-explanatory
 Provide explanations, examples, exercises, and answer
keys

 Well-organized
 Through informative contents pages and indexes
 E.g:
 Unit 1 – Reading, Unit 2 – Speaking
PREPARATION OF NEW
MATERIALS: “WRITERS OR
PROVIDERS ?”
WRITERS/PROVIDERS OF MATERIALS
 Preparing materials place high demands and great
pressure on materials writers.

 Each stage is time-consuming: Find suitable carrier

content, match real content to learning and real world
activities, compose clear rubrics, plan an effective layout,.

 Preparing new materials from scratch for every

course taught is clearly impractical, even if every teacher
actually had the ability.
WRITERS/PROVIDERS OF MATERIALS
 A good provider of materials will be able to:

1. Select from what is available

2. Creative with what is available
3. Modify activities to suit learners’ needs
4. Supplement by providing extra activities/ input
 (1) Selective
 Make good choices
- Aim to have good criteria
( factors of the learners, role of materials, topics, language,
presentation, analysis, and validity of materials)

- During selection, consider these questions:

i. Will the materials stimulate and motivate?
ii. To what extent does the material match the stated
learning objectives ?
iii. To what extent will the materials support that learning?
 (2) Creative
 It is not easy to be creative if the working environment is heavily
constrained, based on certain situations:

given materials small range of material freedom to choose from

have to be used to choose from any material

 E.g:
- A TESL classroom – studies Current Issues in Education
-the lecturer/students – out-of-date, different setting
- 2 simultaneous threads of action :
> prepare to change the situation
> be creative with the situation
 (3) Modify
 Modify activities – can occur if input and carrier content are
adequate

 Possible modifications:

1. Select activities that are central to the core objective

2. Replace with activities which focus on real content
3. Change rubric to change the focus/drop the activity
4. Add in activity(s) before the given materials
5. Omit exercises if necessary
 (4) Supplement
 Can be viewed as a form of modification

 Changing the input – supplement/prepare new materials

 Skills that ESP practitioners/teachers need to have:

 Matching carrier content to real content
 Providing variety
 Grading activity level: learning and language
 Presenting good materials
 CATEGORIES OF MATERIALS

 Teacher-Generated Material

 Learner-Generated Material
TEACHER-GENERATED
MATERIAL
 TEACHER-GENERATED MATERIAL

1) Matching carrier content to real content

2) Providing variety

3) Grading exercises

4) Presenting the material well

 1. Matching carrier content to real
content
 The development of new material could be from one of
two directions:

 STARTING POINT A: having some good input/carrier

content (authentic text)

 STARTING POINT B: where there is a gap in the course

material (course objective)
 Carrier Vs. Real Content
Carrier content
- aspects that is used to assist the real content
(e.g.: English for Banking)

Real content
- the main purpose of the course
Continue…
 A: - having a good input/carrier content
- analyze to determine what real content could be exploited
- try to fit the content into the course

 B: - there is a gap in the course material

- no suitable material is available
 Process for Preparing New Materials

Starting point A Starting point B

Have some Need material for

carrier content specific objective

Determine its Search for suitable

real content carrier content

Match real and carrier content to

course framework
 2. Providing variety
 Variety is essential in any language class as well as ESP
class – motivate learners

Variety in micro-skills

Variety in activity types

Variety in class interaction

 Variety in the micro-skills
 Focus more than one macro-skill
(e.g writing, speaking, reading, listening)

 The use of other macro-skills will both help the learning of

the target macro-skill and provide variety for the class.

For example:
 In a writing class, not only focusing on writing skills but
try to combine with other macro skills : reading
 Variety in activity types
 A visual used in an exercise is often effective

 It increases variety and avoids of too much texts to be

read and understand as input for a task.

 Visuals include diagrams, flow charts, graphs, bar

and pie charts, matrices, photographs and sketches
 Variety in interaction
 ESP class is varied in the nature of its interactions.

 Changes from teacher input > individual work >

pair work > class discussion

 Class size and learners’ expectation should be taking

into consideration by the teacher
 3. Grading exercises
 Grading - amount of support provided to enable learners
to do a set of exercises and tasks at different levels of
difficulty.

 Many ESP practitioners find themselves in the situation

where their groups are of very mixed abilities.

For instance:
 A situation requires an approach to material which to some
extent caters for everyone.
Continue…
 Three levels to present each task/set of exercises
(Nunes, 1992):

1) Unsupported
2) Partially supported
3) Fully supported

 Activities differ based on conceptual levels and can be

graded according to its complexity (Nunan, 1989)
Continue…
 Bowler and Parminter (2002) present the three levels
proposed by Nunes (1992) as ‘tiered-tasks’

Top Tier : Weaker Students = Fully supported

Middle Tier : Middle-level Students = Partially

supported

Bottom Tier : Advanced Students = Unsupported

 4. Presenting material well

 Consistency helps learners to focus on learning rather

than working out what to do.

 It includes: writing good, consistent rubrics, planning

layout and proofing

 A unit of material might have the following broad

format.
How to Prepare Material
LEARNER-GENERATED
MATERIAL
 LEARNER-GENEREATED MATERIAL

1) Framework materials

2) Activities devised by the learners

 1. Framework Materials
 Materials: provide carrier content and activities for input and
practice

 Role: Remove a difficulty to balance the levels and appropriateness

of carrier and real content
 Set a context or a framework

 Learners fit their own carrier content and their existing language
competence into the framework

 Types: compare and contrast chart, lists of advantages and

disadvantages diagram
Continue…
Advantages and Disadvantages
Production process
Advantages Disadvantages

• A key aspect for using framework materials is what

Ellis and Johnson (1994) refer to as “the setting
box”.
 2. Activities devised by learners

 Text comprehension

- A pair of learners prepare some comprehension questions

(as well as the answers) and exchange them with another
pair. Each pair will answer the other pair's set of questions.
Continue…

 Note taking / Information transfer

- Learners themselves can think of some creative activities to transfer
information for their peers (and their teachers)

 Vocabulary Development
- Learners can generate their own sets or word partnerships
- E.g : matching and grouping activities
MATERIALS AND
TECHNOLOGY
 MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGY
 Technology offers alternative materials and classroom
interactions.

 Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) programs are

largely linear, constructed along certain thought patterns.

 CD-ROM offers information and opportunity for repetitive

practice.

 Internet is bringing further changes as courses can be

downloaded from all over the world.
CONCLUSION
 Materials are not just a simple tools that can be randomly
used to assist the teaching and learning process

 Materials are one of the important aspects in teaching ESP

to guide the teachers and learners in understanding the
subjects better.

 Developing materials in ESP require certain aspects to be

considered.
THANK YOU
 REFERENCES
 Bowler, B. & Parminter, S. (2002). Mixed-Level Teaching:Tiered Tasks and Biased Tasks.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 Dudley-Evans, T.,& St John, M. (1998). Developments in ESP: A multi-disciplinary

approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 Ellis, M. & Johnson C. (1994). Teaching Business English. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

 Harsono,Y.M.(2007). Developing learning materials for specific purposes. Retrieved October,

25, 2013 from
http://www.journal.teflin.org/index.php/teflin/article/viewFile/191/109

 Tomlinson, B. (2001). Materials Development. In Carter, R. & Nunan, D.(Eds.), The

Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.