Introduction
The term āthe discipline of materials developmentā is used in this chapter to refer to the academic study of all the different processes made use of in the development and use of materials for language learning and teaching. āSuch processes include materials evaluation, materials adaptation, materials design, materials production, materials exploitation and materials researchā (Tomlinson 2012:143ā144). All of these processes are important and should ideally āinteract in the making of any materials designed to help learners to acquire a languageā (Tomlinson 2012:143ā144). By materials I mean anything which can be used to facilitate the learning of a target language.
So materials could be a coursebook, a CD ROM, a story, a song, a video, a cartoon, a dictionary, a mobile phone interaction, a lecture or even a photograph used to stimulate a discussion. They could also be an exercise, an activity, a task, a presentation or even a project.
(Tomlinson and Masuhara 2018:2)
Materials can be informative (in that they inform the learner about the target language), instructional (in that they guide the learner to practise the language), experiential (in that they provide the learner with experience of the language in use), eliciting (in that they encourage the learner to use the language) or exploratory (in that they help the learner to make discoveries about the language).
(Tomlinson 2012:143)
It was not until the 1990s that materials development for language learning began to become accepted as an academic discipline. Before that it was often dismissed in tertiary institutions as a practical pursuit without any tradition of research or any theoretical underpinning, and publications focused on advice on how to evaluate and select materials (e.g. Cunningsworth 1984), adapt materials (e.g. Madsen and Bowen 1978), or write materials (e.g. Byrd 1995). I remember in the early ā90s proposing the development of an MA in Materials Development at a British university and subsequently a module in Materials Development for an MA in Applied Linguistics at a prestigious university in Asia. Both proposals were initially resisted by academics who insisted that materials development was insufficiently academic to be the focus of postgraduate study. However both proposals were eventually accepted by committees who I managed to persuade of the potential value of the academic study of the processes, procedures, and products of materials development for language learning. In 1993 I founded MATSDA (www.matsda.org), an international materials development association dedicated to bringing together teachers, researchers, writers, and publishers to work together to inform the field of materials development for language learning. Other universities began to develop materials development modules on their MAs, and publications began to appear theorising the process of materials development and reporting research (for example, Harwood 2010; McGrath 2002; Tomlinson 1998, 2003). Proposals for PhDs on aspects of materials development began to be accepted, and such studies eventually led to further research-informed publications (for example, Garton and Graves 2014; Harwood 2014; McGrath 2013; Tomlinson 2013b, 2016b; Tomlinson and Masuhara 2010), and to presentations at conferences.
Nowadays materials development is accepted throughout the world as an academic discipline. It has become a very popular focus for MA and PhD research, and there are now many books and journals reporting the theories and findings of materials development research (for example, ELT Journal and Folio, the journal of MATSDA, as well as the publications mentioned above).
The first MATSDA Conference in 1993 featured mainly presentations on ideas for the development of effective materials. Most of them were principled but very few focused on the application of theory to practice or reported research findings. In contrast, at the MATSDA/SISU Conference at the Shanghai International Studies University in 2018, 45 of the 75 accepted presentations presented research findings and suggested implications for the development of materials, 14 proposed ways of developing research-informed materials, and 16 described academic materials development courses designed to help teachers develop both theoretical awareness and practical expertise.
The battle now though is not to gain academic acceptance for the discipline of materials development but to ensure a positive interaction between materials development as a practical pursuit and materials development as an academic discipline. We need to make sure that teachers and materials writers are able to access and apply relevant research findings when they develop, select, adapt, and use materials. We also need to make sure that researchers are aware of the realities of language learning in the classroom and that they gain insights and awareness from contact with practice. Fortunately this awareness has been demonstrated in many recent publications about materials development, for example Garton and Graves (2014), Harwood (2010, 2014), Masuhara et al. (2016), McDonough et al. (2013), McGrath (2013, 2016), Mishan and Timmis (2015), Mukundan (2008), Tomlinson (2011a, 2013b, 2013c, 2016b), and Tomlinson and Masuhara (2010, 2018). Nearly all the writers in these books are both practitioners and researchers, and their focus is on both theoretical principles and their practical realisations. This is true too of recent special materials development editions of the journals Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching (Tomlinson 2016c) and the European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TESOL (Tomlinson 2015). Unfortunately there is little evidence as yet that actual commercially produced materials are being effectively informed by research and theory (Tomlinson and Masuhara 2013). This is not too surprising as the commercial imperative warns against the economic risks of radical change and supports the perpetuation of approaches which sell well. A good example of this is the presentation, practice, production (PPP) approach which, in one unit, can introduce a language item, structure, or skill through description and exemplification, provide controlled and guided practice of it, and get students to produce it. This is an approach which has driven the best-selling coursebooks of the last 50 years (Tomlinson and Masuhara 2013) despite being discredited by many researchers (for example, Mishan 2013; Tomlinson 2011b; Tomlinson and Masuhara 2018; and Willis and Willis 2007). It is, though, an approach which appeals to teachers because it can help them to cover a large curriculum quickly and to administrators because it can help them to timetable and to standardise. However, according to the researchers referred to above, the apparent learner success achieved by PPP can only be an ephemeral illusion effected by short-term memory as language acquisition requires multiple, spaced, and engaged encounters in contextual use as well as multiple opportunities for communicative use.
