Brian Tomlinson

Materials Development in Language Teaching aims to help readers apply current theoretical principles and research findings to the practical realities of developing and exploiting classroom materials. The authors also suggest new ideas and directions in materials development, which readers can pursue for themselves. This book is accessible to readers with little previous experience in the field, and is essential reading for all those involved in developing materials for language teaching. In the second edition of this highly popular title, each chapter has been comprehensively revised and updated to take into account both recent research and the significant technological developments since the first edition was published in 1998. Two new chapters have been added to assess the potential of electronic media for materials development. These chapters include an overview of the technologies available, as well as individual case studies and activities.

This important book, with 32 chapters by leading figures in the field, is an up-to-date guide to the central areas of applied linguistics and language studies with particular reference to TESOL. It looks at the current state of TESOL as well as at what is likely to happen in the future.

“In this book we offer the informed and reflective practitioner as the ideal agent for mediating between the practice and theory of language teaching. Some of the contributors might be labelled teachers, some materials developers, some applied linguists, some teacher trainers and some publishers, but all of them share four things in common: they have all had experience as teachers of a second or foreign language, they have all contributed to the development of second language materials, they have are all well informed about developments in linguistic and psycholinguistic theory and they all have respect for the teacher as the person with the power to decide what actually happens in the classroom.”

This article reviews the literature on the relatively new field of materials development for language learning and teaching. It reports the origins and development of the field and then reviews the literature on the evaluation, adaptation, production and exploitation of learning materials. It also reviews the literature, first, on a number of controversial issues in the field, next, on electronic delivery of materials and, third, on research in materials development. It identifies gaps in the literature and makes proposals for future progress in materials development and in the research within the field. Much of the literature focuses on materials for learning English but the same principles apply to materials for learning any L2, as has been acknowledged by some of the authors whose publications focus on materials for learning other languages.