1. The material needed to be relevant to the specific treatment (‘General’, ‘TOEIC’ or ‘Business’ English).
2. The material had to be targeted at the appropriate ability level for the students in that particular course. In general, less challenging material was required for the non-major groups.
3. There had to be a sufficient volume of material for the number of class hours and expected hours of homework assignments.
4. For the listening component, we required a text that was accompanied by tapes that the students could listen to at home. (A special license was arranged with each publisher to duplicate their tapes for a modest fee.)
For most of the treatments, the cost of the required materials was greater than students would normally be willing to pay for a university course bearing only 2 credits. Students were thus required to pay a maximum of 2500yen per course, the rest of the expense being subsidized by grant funds from TOEIC.