Principles and Strategic
Components of Materials
Development
As we stated before, materials development
entails the blending of reasoning and artistic
processes, which are guided by some tenets and
essential ingredients that help both language
learners assimilate and provide teachers with
the groundwork to embark on the materials
development route. Although in the field literature
some theorists have devoted valuable time to
providing principles and strategic components of
materials development, such as Tomlinson (1998),
Harmer (2007), Arnone (2003) and Small (1997),
we will stick to Tomlinson’s principles of second
language acquisition (SLA) that apply to materials
development. In the following list we present the
tenets that materials development must hold:
1. Achieve impact through novelty, variety, attractive
presentation, and appealing content.
2. Help learners feel at ease. SLA research has revealed
that students seem to learn more and in
a shorter time when relaxed and comfortably
engaged in learning activities (Dulay, Burt &
Krashen, 1982).