Language Acquisition and Language Learning Materials: Brian Tomlinson
Language Acquisition and Language Learning Materials: Brian Tomlinson
Language Acquisition and Language Learning Materials: Brian Tomlinson
Brian Tomlinson
Intention
Notice that I'm deliberately using the term 'language learning materials'
instead of the usual 'language teaching materials' in order to stress that one of
my views is that many ELT materials are designed for teaching English rather
than for learning it. Note also that I'm making a distinction between language
acquisition and language development. For me language acquisition is 'the ini-
tial stage of gaining basic communicative competence in a language', whilst
language development is 'the subsequent stage of gaining the ability to use the
language successfully in a wide variety of media and genre for a wide variety of
purposes' (Tomlinson 2007a: 2). One of my arguments is that many ELT mate-
rials (especially global coursebooks) currently make a significant contribution
to the failure of many learners of English as a second, foreign or other lan-
guage to even acquire basic competence in English and to the failure of most
of them to develop the ability to use it successfully. They do so by focusing on
the teaching of linguistic items rather than on the provision of opportunities
for acquisition and development. And they do this because that's what teachers
are expected and required to do by administrators, by parents, by publishers,
and by learners too. This is a rather provocative opening to a book which much
of the time tries to be as objective as possible and I'm sure it will be resented by
most publishers and textbook writers. I don't think many teachers will disagree
with me though - especially those who responded to my worldwide enquiry
4 Brian Tomlinson
about why a particular global coursebook was so popular by saying they used
it because it meant they d i d n ' t have to spend time preparing their lessons but
that they felt sorry for their students because it was so boring. For other per-
spectives on the global coursebook see Gray (2002).
There is still much debate about how learners can best acquire a second or
foreign language but 'this should not stop us from applying what we do know
about second and foreign language learning to the development of materials
designed to facilitate that process' (Tomlinson 1998a: 6).
This means that materials for learners at all levels must provide exposure to
authentic use of English through spoken and written texts with the potential
to engage the learners cognitively and affectively. If they don't provide such
texts and they don't stimulate the learners to think and feel whilst experiencing
them there is very little chance of the materials facilitating any durable lan-
guage acquisition at all. There is massive evidence that one of the easiest and
most effective ways of providing such exposure is through extensive listening
and extensive reading (Elley 2000; Krashen 1993) in which the learners listen
to or read what they want to without any requirement to complete any tasks
during or after their experience of the texts.
It is my belief that helping learners to notice features of the authentic language
they are exposed to can facilitate and accelerate language acquisition. It can do
so by drawing the learners' attention to language and discourse features which
might otherwise have gone unnoticed (Schmidt and Frota 1986) and it increases
the likelihood of noticing similar features in subsequent input and of therefore
increasing readiness for acquisition (Pienemann 1985). This is particularly true
if the learners are stimulated and guided to make discoveries for themselves
(Bolitho el al, 2003; Tomlinson 1994) and to thus increase their awareness of how
the target language is tised to achieve fluency, accuracy, appropriacy and effect.
Acquisition Research and Teaching Materials 5
This means that not only should materials provide a rich exposure to lan-
guage in authentic use but that they should also include activities which help
learners to notice for themselves salient features of the texts. Ideally the materi-
als should follow the principles of the experiential approach in which appre-
hension is followed by comprehension (Kolb 1984), and therefore the analytical
noticing activities should follow engaging experiential activities in which the
emphasis is on personal response to the meaning of the text.
It is also my belief that helping learners to participate in meaningful com-
munication in which they are using language to achieve intended outcomes is
essential for the development of communicative competence. This is of vital
importance in helping the brain to monitor and modify hypotheses about
language use and to involve the learner in the sort of negotiation of mean-
ing which increases opportunities for language acquisition and development
(Swain 2005). Practice activities which have been designed to give the learner
frequent opportunities to get something right make very little contribution to
language acquisition because they don't add anything new and they make no
contribution at all to language development because they focus on accurate
outputs rather than successful outcomes. What the materials need to do is to
provide lots of opportunities for the learners to actually use language to achieve
intentions and lots of opportunities for them to gain feedback on the effective-
ness of their attempts at communication.
The majority of language learners gain very little from being given infor-
mation about a language and how it is used.
The majority of language learners gain very little from analytical activities
which require them to apply what they have been told about a language
to their attempts to use it.
The majority of language learners gain very little from practice activities
which help them to get most things right by controlling and simplifying
the context in which they are asked to produce language.
Many of the minority of language learners who succeed in acquiring a
language analytically become language teachers, materials writers and
examiners, they set tip a false paradigm of the good language learner as a
hard-working, analytical learner and they cause many experiential learn-
ers to fail.
Language acquisition is facilitated and accelerated if the learner is posi-
tive about their learning environment, achieves self-esteem and is emo-
tionally engaged in the learning activities (Tomlinson 1998d).
Achievable challenges help learners to think and feel and to achieve valu-
able self-esteem.
6 Bnan Tomlinson
Learners gain from sometimes being allowed to hide and from not always
being put under a spotlight.
Those learners who participate mentally in group activities often gain
more than those who participate vocally.
Encouraging learners to make use of mental imaging whilst respond-
ing to and prior to producing language facilitates comprehension and
communication and promotes language acquisition and development
(Tomlinson 1996, 1998c; Tomlinson and Avila 2007a, 2007b).
Encouraging learners to use L2 inner speech can have positive effects on
communicative competence and can facilitate and accelerate acquisition
and development (Tomlinson 2000b, 2001a, 2003a; Tomlinson and Avila
2007a,2007b).
L2 learners can use high level skills (e.g. connecting, predicting, inter-
preting, evaluating) from the very beginning of their language learning
experience. Doing so facilitates language acquisition and is essential for
language development (Tomlinson 2007b).
L2 beginners' courses should follow the learner syllabus and should focus
on meaning rather than form (Sato 1990; Tomlinson 1998b).
Reading should be delayed in the L2 until the learners have a sufficiently
large vocabulary to be able to read experientially rather than studially and
then extensive reading should be introduced before intensive reading
(Masuhara 2007; Tomlinson 2001c).
Learners should be encouraged and helped to represent language multi-
dimensionally (Masuhara 2007; Tomlinson 2000a, 2000c, 2001 b).
Newby (2000), Graves (1996), Hidalgo et al. (1995), Jolly and Bolitho (1998),
Lyons (2003), McGrath (2002), Maley (2003), Mares (2003), Mishan (2005),
Prowse (1998), Renandya (2003), Richards (2001), Tomlinson and Masuhara
(2004) and Wala (2003b) for discussions of the process of developing ELT mate-
rials and, in particular, Bell and Gower (1998), Flores (1995) and Tomlinson
(1998b, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d, 2003e, 2003f, in press) for discussion of principle-
driven materials writing. See Search 10 (Fenner and Nordal-Peedesen 1999) for
an example of a commercially published local coursebook which is designed pri-
marily for the learner and which is driven by principles oflanguage acquisition.
I have listed below, in a rather lengthy list, some of the things which many ELT
materials are currently doing which are likely to inhibit language acquisition and
development. Obviously there are exceptions to these generalizations and there
are some materials which are actually and commendably doing the opposite.
activities involving the use of the full resources of the brain (Arnold 1999;
Masuhara 2007; Tomlinson 2000c, 200Ib).
Conclusion
The hope, of course, lies with local, non-commercial materials which are not
driven by the profit imperative and which are driven rather by considerations
of the needs and wants of their target learners and by principles of language
acquisition. I have recently enjoyed being involved as a consultant in a number
of projects contributing to the development of such materials. One example of
such a project has been On Target (1995), a coursebook published by Gamsberg
Macmillan for the Ministry of Education in Namibia. The first draft of this book
was written by a team of 30 teachers in five days in response to the student artic-
ulation of their needs and wants and with the help of a principled, text-driven,
flexible framework (Tomlinson 2003e). Another example is a textbook cur-
rently being developed by a team of 17 teachers at Sultan Qaboos University in
Muscat. In a radical departure from the norm, the starting point has been the
articulation of the writers' beliefs about what facilitates language acquisition
(i.e. universal criteria) and what is needed and wanted by their target learners
(i.e. local criteria). These beliefs have been supplemented by consideration of
the findings of language acquisition research and by the results of triangulated
needs and wants analyses, and they have been developed into criteria which
will be used both to drive the writing of the book and to evaluate it during and
after development. Before starting to write the book the writers are develop-
ing a library of spoken and written texts with the potential for affective and
cognitive engagement, they are developing a principled, text-driven, flexible
framework and they are writing sample communicative tests and examinations
to ensure eventual positive washback on classroom use of the book. Soon they
will start to write the book in small teams and each u n i t will be monitored by
another group, revised and then trialled. Eventually a small team of editors
will match the learning points in the units to a 'secret' syllabus they have devel-
oped, develop final versions of the units and then fit the final versions of the
units together into a structure which will ensure principled cohesion as well as
maximizing student and teacher choice.
Perhaps this type of principled approach to materials development can be
used as a blueprint for commercial production of L2 materials - with due con-
sideration being given, of course, to the face validity and conformity to market
expectation which is necessary to ensure profitability.
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