normawoods

· 24 Jan 2023

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The analysis of language teaching materials: inside the Trojan Horse

The aim of the this professor essay writing is to summarize a chapter from Brian Tomlinson’s book Materials Development in Language Teaching. The chapter “The Analysis of Language Teaching Materials: Inside the Trojan Horse” by Andrew Littlejohn provides the reader with accessible means of evaluation of language teaching materials and demonstrates that a teacher can identify whether a certain book will fulfill all the demands of his course before he/she will start to work with it.



One of the chapters in Tomlinson’s book Materials Development in Language Teaching relates to the process of evaluation of the English language teaching materials. This chapter is “The Analysis of Language Teaching Materials: Inside the Trojan Horse” by Andrew Littlejohn.



Littlejohn begins the research with an episode sharing his personal experience as a novice teacher and compares it with the nowadays’ situation the English language teachers find themselves in. While the task to supply the language course with appropriate tools for learners was much harder when the author had just begun his career, the teaching materials available today are abundant in variety and offer many additional facilities. As Littlejohn states, the main task of the chapter is to provide the reader with the most essential information in order to analyze the materials. It is the thing of a big importance because course books with all the supplemental tools have a large impact on the studying algorithm. What is more, it is always better to verify than just to take the publishers’ word for the high quality of the materials. The author does not examine students’ response to the course books but makes a close look at the materials themselves. Littlejohn offers to use frameworks offered by the specialists in the area of course materials for evaluation. However, to the researcher’s point of view, these frameworks are mostly based on subjective opinions and do not provide a teacher with guidance of how to accomplish the evaluation. That is why he suggests creating the framework which will be as objective as possible and “allow materials to “speak for themselves”.



According to the author, the evaluation process must include three main steps. First of all, on the basis of Breen & Candlin and Richards & Rodgers models he creates the framework which includes all the main aspects of materials analysis. It is divided into the two parts one of which is publication that analyses physical properties of learning materials. The other part, design, examines what a course book offers to work with and in what way. Such framework allows a teacher to conduct the analysis of methodology and content of materials.



The second step of evaluation is to find the possible ways in which an analyst will be able to accomplish the materials examination. The author emphasizes that the framework described above do not offer the detailed description of how to perform the analysis of the materials. Littlejohn states that there are different levels of such analysis every of which requires special approaches. In his second framework the author represents three levels of materials evaluation process. The first level is an objective description of how a set of materials is organized and what the whole set consists of. As an additional help the author gives the guidance for accomplishing the task. He provides the example of two main aspects of the objective analysis. These are the course package description and the examination of extract from the course book. The next level is the deeper subjective analysis of the tasks in a course book. In order to be more precise, the author offers the definition of the term task according to which it is a student’s action aimed at learning the English language. He also mentions three main aspects of the task analysis which are how, with whom and with what content it should be done by a student. Moreover, the author provides the analysts with the guidance to the task examination process. Littlejohn uses the course book he co-authored with the purpose to illustrate the analysis with an example. The last level of materials’ investigation is the subjective determination which serves as a conclusion and answers the question whether a set of materials can fulfill teachers’ and students’ requirements. Farther the author provides the analysis of the course book based on the frameworks he offers.



The third step of evaluation process is the practical implication of the materials analysis framework. The author points out that the investigation can be useful for many professionals involved in the teaching process. Teachers, for instance, can use the framework for choosing course books for their lessons more reasonably. What is more, for the materials designers can use the evaluation to create more suitable materials for the learning purposes. Language teaching researchers also will be able to gain an advantage of the analysis applying it in classroom research.



To sum it up, Littlejohn states that in this work he managed to ruin the misconception that the properties of teaching materials can be revealed only in the process of teaching. With the frameworks offered in the chapter it became obvious that language teaching materials are not the Trojan Horse anymore.