MATERIALS SHOULD HELP LEARNERS TO FEEL AT EASE
While it is known that pressure can stimulate some types of language learners, I think most
researchers agree that most language learners benefit from feeling comfortable and that they
miss opportunities to learn a language when they feel anxious, uncomfortable, or tense (see,
for example , Oxford 1999). Some material developers argue that it is the teacher's
responsibility to help students feel comfortable and that the material itself is of little help. I do
not agree.
Materials can help learners to feel at ease in a number of ways. For example, I think that most
learners:
feel more comfortable with written materials with lots of white space than they do with
materials in which lots of different activities are crammed together on the same page;
are more at ease with texts and illustrations that they can relate to their own culture than
they are with those which appear to them to be culturally alien;
are more relaxed with materials which are obviously trying to help them to learn than
they are with materials which are always testing them.
Feeling at ease can also be achieved through a ‘voice’ which is relaxed and supportive, through
content and activities which encourage the personal participation of the learners, through
materials which relate the world of the book to the world of the learner and through the absence
of activities which could threaten self-esteem and cause humiliation. To me the most important
(and possibly least researched) factor is that of the ‘voice’ of the materials. Conventionally,
language-learning materials are de-voiced and anonymous. They are usually written in a semi-
formal style and reveal very little about the personality, interests and experiences of the writer.
What I'd like to see content writers do is casually chat with students in the same way a good
teacher would and try to achieve personal contact with them by expressing their own
preferences, interests, and opinions. I would also like to see them try to achieve a personal
voice (Beck, McKeown and Worthy 1995) by making sure that what they say to students
contains verbal traits such as:
informal discourse features (e.g. contracted forms, informal lexis);
the active rather than the passive voice;
concreteness (e.g. examples, anecdotes);
inclusiveness (e.g. not signalling intellectual, linguistic or cultural superiority over
learners).
While it is known that pressure can stimulate some types of language learners, I think most
researchers agree that most language learners benefit from feeling comfortable and that they
miss opportunities to learn a language when they feel anxious, uncomfortable, or tense (see,
for example , Oxford 1999). Some material developers argue that it is the teacher's
responsibility to help students feel comfortable and that the material itself is of little help. I do
not agree.
Materials can help learners to feel at ease in a number of ways. For example, I think that most
learners:
feel more comfortable with written materials with lots of white space than they do with
materials in which lots of different activities are crammed together on the same page;
are more at ease with texts and illustrations that they can relate to their own culture than
they are with those which appear to them to be culturally alien;
are more relaxed with materials which are obviously trying to help them to learn than
they are with materials which are always testing them.
Feeling at ease can also be achieved through a ‘voice’ which is relaxed and supportive, through
content and activities which encourage the personal participation of the learners, through
materials which relate the world of the book to the world of the learner and through the absence
of activities which could threaten self-esteem and cause humiliation. To me the most important
(and possibly least researched) factor is that of the ‘voice’ of the materials. Conventionally,
language-learning materials are de-voiced and anonymous. They are usually written in a semi-
formal style and reveal very little about the personality, interests and experiences of the writer.
What I'd like to see content writers do is casually chat with students in the same way a good
teacher would and try to achieve personal contact with them by expressing their own
preferences, interests, and opinions. I would also like to see them try to achieve a personal
voice (Beck, McKeown and Worthy 1995) by making sure that what they say to students
contains verbal traits such as:
informal discourse features (e.g. contracted forms, informal lexis);
the active rather than the passive voice;
concreteness (e.g. examples, anecdotes);
inclusiveness (e.g. not signalling intellectual, linguistic or cultural superiority over
learners).
