Jack C Richards University of Sydney, Australia

Regional Language Centre, Singapore

www.professorjackrichards.com

• Print and electronic

• Course-books

• Skills based

• Self-study materials

• ESP materials

• EAP materials

• Resource books

• Readers

• Exam preparation materials

• Grammar materials

• As the basis of a course

• As a resource for independent learning

• As a reference source

• As a support for teacher training

• As a source for supplementary materials

• They can provide structure and a syllabus

• They can provide a methodology

• They help standardize instruction

• They provide a variety of learning resources

• They can provide good language models

• They provide support for inexperienced teachers

• They can motivate learners, through design and choice of activities

• Relieve teachers of planning work

• Add-ons provide rich resource bank

Component list

• Students’ books with self-

study CD-ROM and video

• Workbooks

• Online workbooks

• Full contact editions

• Split Editions

• Class audio CDs

• Placement test

• Video DVDs

• Classware

• Animated presentations

• Teacher’s editions with:

•Classware Tips

•Tests & quizzes in PDF and MS

Word

•Video worksheets and teaching

notes

•Full CEFR Correlations

• Teacher’s support site

• Not relevant to local needs

• Lead to teacher-centred teaching

• Lead to deskilling of teachers

• Reification

• Cultural imperialism

• Product driven approach

• Market driven approach

• Author driven

• Author seeks to develop materials based on personal beliefs and individual ideas

• Often very creative

• May be too linked to author’s teaching style and understanding and experience

• Publisher identifies market needs

• Tries to develop profile of market gaps

• Identifies writer or writing team

• Writers write to specifications

• Might be mass market based or locally targeted

• Homogenization of content often results

• Worldwide market

• British or American English

• World Englishes

• Integrated

syllabus

• Short snappy titles – not identifiable as textbooks

• Title suggests a journey or intercultural experience

• Multiple Levels

• Similar methodology

• Inoffensive content – lack of seriousness

• Risk avoidance

• Design rich

• Full color

• Photographs and illustrations

• Links to international

exams or benchmarks

• Geared to teenagers/young adults

• Aimed at private sector

• Non-native speaker teachers

• Extensive teacher support

• Untrained teachers

• Multi-components

• Electronic supplements

• Blended options

• Ease of use

• Success rate

• Relevance

• Teacher appeal

• Learner appeal

• Price

• Marketing

• Components

• Teacher support

• Author and publisher reputation

Goals –

• Communicative competence or intercultural

competence

• Mimics of native-speaker usage or expert L2 users

• Language teaching as skills training

• Impoverished and conservative

• Instructional and monologic

• Culture occupies the background

• Communicative competence the aim

• Language teaching as education

• Rich and critical

• Educational and dialogic

• Culture occupies the foreground

• Intercultural competence the aim

• Native-speaker model

• Aim to enable learners to survive as tourists/consumers

• Learners constructed as skills acquirers

• Textbook as carrier of superficial view of target culture

Intercultural speaker model

• Aim to create learners who are internationally socially aware

• Learners construed as apprentice ethnographers

• Textbook as carrier of realistic view of target culture

• Varieties of English to include: British, North

American, EIL

• Models of pronunciation: standard, regional

• Pronunciation feature: segmental/suprasegmental

• Registers: formal, casual

• Authentic or scripted

• Conversational or written grammar

• Grammar, lexis, texts, skills, tasks, competencies

• Choice criteria: frequency, complexity, communicative

need, L2 correspondence

• Basic user – A1, A2

• Independent user – B1, B2

• Proficient user – C1, C2

C2 – Proficient user

• Can converse comfortably and appropriately,

unhampered by any linguistic limitations in

conducting a full social and personal life.

C1 – Proficient user

• Can use language flexibly and effectively for social

purposes, including emotional, illusive and joking

usage.

B2 – Independent user

• Can engage in extended conversation on most

general topics in a clearly participatory fashion,

even in a noisy environment.

• Can sustain relationships with native speakers

without unintentionally amusing or irritating them

or requiring them to behave other than they would

with a native speaker.

• Can convey degrees of emotion and highlight the

personal significance of evens and experiences.

B1 – Independent user

• Can enter unprepared into conversations on familiar topics.

• Can follow clearly articulated speech directed at him/her in everyday conversations, though will sometimes have to ask for repetition of particular words and phrases.

• Can maintain a conversation or discussion but may sometimes be difficult to follow when trying to say exactly what he/she would like to.

• Can express and respond to feelings such as surprise, happiness, sadness, interest and indifference.

A2 – Basic user

• Can establish social contact: greetings and farewells; introductions; giving thanks.

• Can generally understand clear, standard speech on familiar matters directed at him/her, provided he/she can ask for repetition or reformulations from time to time.

• Can participate in short conversations in routine contexts on topics of interest.

• Can express how he/she feels in simple terms, and express thanks.

A2 – Basic user

• Can handle very short social exchanges but is rarely able to understand enough to keep conversation going on his/her own accord, though he/she can be made to understand if the speaker will take the trouble.

• Can use simple everyday polite forms of greeting and address’.

• Can make and respond to invitations, suggestions and apologies.

• Can say what he/she likes and dislikes.

A1 – Basic user

• Can make an introduction and use basic greeting and leave-taking expressions.

• Can ask how people are and react to news.

• Can understand everyday expressions aimed at the satisfaction of simple needs of a concrete type, delivered directly to him/her in clear, slow and repeated speech by a sympathetic speaker.

• CLT or post CLT?

• Principled Eclecticism

• Presentation activities

• Comprehension activities

• Guided production activities

• Modelling activities

• Practice activities

• Role play

• Personalization activities

Culture of origin or “international” culture

a) Culture as aesthetics: information about art, literature, theatre, music, architecture etc. in English-speaking countries

b) Culture as social customs: information about the family, home life, customs, leisure activities, interpersonal relations

c) Culture as culturally-laden words and concepts: bank holiday, middle-class, gay, high-tea, afternoon-tea

d) Culture as appropriate forms of interaction: greetings and leave taking, norms of politeness, strategies for complaints and apologies

Examples of publisher’s brief

A. Topics and Photos to Include

1. In general, a person’s ethnicity or minority status should be incidental to any information conveyed.

2. Young people succeeding academically or in extracurricular pursuits. Young people setting good examples for others.

Examples of publisher’s brief

A. Topics and Photos to Include

3. Young people following standard safety precautions in anything they do. They should, for example, always wear seat belts in cars or life preservers when in boats or near water. When appropriate, young people should be supervised by adults. Young people should not be involved in dangerous activities.

4. People leading healthy lifestyles – eating well-balanced meals, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, etc.

Examples of publisher’s brief

B. Topics and Photos to Watch Out for Sensitive topics in some markets

1. Boyfriends and girlfriends

2. Dancing

3. Partying

4. Lotteries

5. Celebrities

Examples of publisher’s brief

C. Topics and Photos to Avoid

1. Pigs

2. Animals in the house

3. Pets as family members

4. Overly affectionate touching

5. Violence

6. Ghosts and supernatural elements

7. Evolution

8. Ethnic and gender stereotyping

9. Gambling

Examples of publisher’s brief

C. Topics and Photos to Avoid

10.Men with earrings, long hair, and beards

11.Women with cleavage, midriff, bare shoulders, legs and back. No nudity.

12.Tattoos

13.Religious figures

14.Use of brand names that could be taken as an endorsement of specific products

15.Taiwan cannot be mentioned as a country separate from China.

• English as functional tool, resource, decoration, globalization, modernism, western ideology, materialism

• How values and ideologies may be communicated

• How meanings are associated with language

• What lifestyles are presented and how these are represented

• How the learners are identified and positioned throughout the book

• Choice of art

• Choice of characters – fictional or non-fictional

• Choice of accents

• Roles of characters

• Gender representations

• Choice of texts

• Choice of topics

• Exercise types

• Settings depicted (e.g. UK, US or elsewhere)

Some accent distribution in Streamline (sample)

Television presenter, company

boss, airline pilot, lawyer, tour

guide, waiter, shop captain

hairdresser, nurse, salesman,

sales assistant

Army sergeant, chef, waitress, mechanic, football player, fisherman, newspaper editor, traffic warded, policeman, teacher

Ship’s captain, newsreader,

Olympic athlete, UN secretary

general, waiter, astronaut,

businessman, pilot, security

guard, bank manager, tour

guide, headmaster, estate agent,

bus driver, newspaper editor,

taxi driver

Waitress, shop assistant,

typist, secretary, check-in-

staff, game show contestant,

offie worker, doctor, nurse,

traffic warden, singer,

journalist, store detective

Fictional characters in Streamline (sample)

• Versioned editions

• Local course books

• Teacher-made materials

• John Gray 2010. The Construction of English: Culture, Consumerism and Promotion in the ELT Global Coursebook. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

• Jack C. Richards 2001. Curriculum Development in Language Teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press

• Jack C. Richards 1995. Easier said than done: an insider’s account of a textbook project. In A. Hidalgo, D. Hall and G. Jacobs (eds). Getting Started: Materials Writers on Materials Writing. Singapore: RELC 95-135

• Philip Seargeant 2009. The Idea of English in Japan: Ideology and the Evolution of a Global Language. Bristol: multilingual Matters

• Jack C. Richards 2006. Materials development and research-making the connection. RELC Journal (37) 1, 5-26

• Jack C. Richards 2007 Materials development and research: towards a form-focussed perspective. In Sandra Fotos and Hossein Nassaji (eds). Form Focussed Instruction and Teacher Education: Studies in Honor of Rod Ellis. Oxford: Oxford University Press 147-160

Jack C Richards University of Sydney, Australia

Regional Language Centre, Singapore

www.professorjackrichards.com