Which Principles of Material Design are most important for you? Why?

Which Principles of Material Design are most important for you? Why?

This week’s discussion question poses an interesting dilemma about ranking the important principles of language acquisition in developing ELT materials. I feel that in any learning situation the most important principles may change given the group of students or the learning environment or the topic of instruction. For me, creating comprehensible input that engages and stimulates student learning is always important. The teacher must engage each student in the learning process. That means as professional educators we have to stay in touch with the world that our students exist with and choose those avenues that will engage them both in the instruction process and in the activities with which students are engaged. Therefore, I frequently use short YouTube videos when I teach English Grammar because the video format what engages students most frequently in their worlds. I also often have the students create video projects to show how well they have grasped Grammar constructions like phrasal verbs.

Next, I think that authentic input is a crucial component of language acquisition for the language learner. Tomlinson phrases it this way in his article, Principles and Procedures of Materials development for Language Learning,” the learners are exposed to a rich, meaningful and comprehensible input of language in use” (p. # 1 ). The students must be able to connect with the new information by correctly placing it within their existing knowledge. To be successful, the instructor must carefully scaffold the new knowledge through learning connections to the students’ existing knowledge.