TESL 0150 - Resources Development and Integration - Unit 3

Unit 3: Adapting Resources using Effective Principles for 
Materials Development

Applying effective principles when creating evaluation criteria for 
educational resources. What are my principles?

 

The underlying principles that an educator believes are the roots in their practice as 
educators. These principles drive and motivate us, alert us when something is amiss and 
correct us when we drift from our original intent. Identifying your driving principles and beliefs 
about language education are paramount when embarking on the task of choosing materials 
for your classroom.

Your principles will guide the criteria that you use to evaluate new materials. Creating 
concrete criteria will help you to build a reliable system to choosing resources and one that 
you can defend since it has been defined and articulated clearly. Compare this structured 
approach to the emotional and fickle criteria you might use if you hadn’t taken the time to 
define your criteria in a thoughtful way. Emotional responses to colourful covers and fancy
illustrations might lead you to choose a resource that was wildly ill-fitted for use in your context. 
This is exactly why we need to self-reflect on our principles and create standard criteria.

These are the criteria that I came up with under the guidance of Brain Tomlinson’s
“Developing Materials for Language Teaching”. These criteria are based on 4 underlying 
principles I have for evaluating resources. I think teaching materials should:

1. Support the needs of both the educator and learner
2. Address practical concerns
3. Be of high educational value
4. Consider the emotional and social factors in the classroom

These are the 18 criteria that I came up with based on these 4 principles:

A) Supports the needs of both the educator and learner

1. Are the materials related to the future goals of the learners?
2. Do these materials seem credible to learners, teachers and administrators?
3. Do these materials support the teacher in prep, delivery and assessment?
4. Do these materials provide an appropriate warm-up and gateway to assessment?

B) Practical concerns

1. Are these materials flexible - ready to be used in a number of different situations and 
   adapted easily?
2. Are these materials simple, straightforward and easy to use?
3. Are these materials affordable within the given budget?
4. Are the activities outlined in this resource practical and feasible for this context?
5. Is the technology used in these materials a good match for the learners?

C) Educational value

1. Are these materials valid? (Is is teaching what it’s supposed to be teaching?)
2. Are these materials reliable? (Is is consistent and dependable?)
3. Are these materials valuable to the goals of this course and/or for preparing for the 
   summative assessment?
4. Are these materials valuable to the long term learning of the student beyond the scope 
   of this course?
5. Do these materials reflect authentic use of language?

D) Emotional and Social Factors

1. Will this resource encourage emotional engagement?
2. Are the materials likely to help the learners to build connections with their own life?
3. Will the activities in these materials foster community within the classroom?
4. Is this resource going to develop cultural and social awareness and sensitivity? 
   

To use these 18 criteria I would make a table and give each criteria a score out of 5. 
The final score would determine if I would use this material in my classroom.

Here is my submission for Assignment #2: ESL Materials Evaluation. In this assignment 
I evaluated a lesson on minimum wage from ESL Library.com.  

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14aQMfOU2J-KS58R2wAR-Er5z855DAcg7iVAYuHQKpRM/edit?usp=sharing

References:

[Photograph of tree with roots] (2015). 
Retrieved from: https://www.thetreecenter.com/tree-roots/

Tomlinson, B. (Ed.). (2014). Developing materials for language teaching. United Kingdom: 
Bloomsbury Academic.