THE ISSUE: Research on Materials and Their Role in Classroom Discourse and SLA

PerspectivesELAINE TARONE, ASSOCIATE EDITORUniversity of Minnesota

THE ISSUE

Research on Materials and Their Role in Classroom Discourse and SLA

WHAT CAN RESEARCH TELL US ABOUTthe role of language teaching materials inclassroom discourse and SLA? One only has toattend a national professional conference forlanguage teachers and language teacher educa-tors—hosted by professional organizations suchas AAAL, TESOL, ACTFL, or MLA—and visit theExhibit Hall that is often the physical centerpieceof such conferences to learn what an enormouspresence the publishing industry has in our field.For many decades, the language teaching profes-sion has been supported by, and contributedto, the commercial publication of languageteaching materials, and particularly of printtextbooks to facilitate students’ learning of awide range of world languages, from English asa second or foreign language, to the morecommonly taught (in the United States) lan-guages of Spanish, French, German, and, morerecently, Chinese. Increasingly, languagematerials have also become available in digitalform online, either sold directly to languagestudents or to language teachers for use in theclassroom, or available for students and teachersat no cost on the Internet as Open EducationalResources.

Whether in print or digital form, as textbooks,audio or video resources, or sets of printhandouts, it seems that language teaching mate-rials are considered to be essential to theenterprise of language teaching. Indeed, thosewho teach the less commonly taught languages,such as Turkish, Persian (Farsi), or Ojibwe,

consider themselves at a huge disadvantage innot having such materials to support theirinstruction in the classroom. Many successfulcareers have been built, not just upon the creationof such materials, but also on the development ofprinciples to govern their continued creation.

However, in spite of this enormous presenceand influence, we lack research to document theeffect(s) of language teaching materials onlanguage learning. We do not know whether, orhow, the use of these materials in languageclassrooms (or out of them) influences studentlearning over time. Decades of research onsecond language acquisition in classroom inter-action have explored many factors that influencelanguage learning in the classroom, yet the role ofteaching materials in the process of secondlanguage acquisition has almost never beeninvestigated. Specifically, how do language teach-ers actually use print or digital materials inclassroom interactions to support student learn-ing? Does this use of language materials actuallyresult in acquisition of language over time? Thereis very little empirical evidence; we do not know.As Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013) put it:

Teachers everywhere rely, often heavily, on textbooks,workbooks, reference materials, and other kinds ofmaterials as sources of linguistic input, explanationsof language, and opportunities for students topractice new or previously learned language. Beyondthis, materials perform numerous other functions,from organizers of learning to conveyers of ideology.Given the centrality of materials in a very wide rangeof language teaching situations, it is somewhatsurprising that there has not been more empiricalclassroom-based research on the role(s) that materi-als play in the totality of processes of languageteaching and learning that comprises classroominteraction. (p. 779)

The Modern Language Journal, 98, 2, (2014)DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2014.12093.x0026-7902/14/652–653 $1.50/0© 2014 The Modern Language Journal

Just a year ago, in this journal, Guerrettaz andJohnston published what may be the first empiri-cal study on this topic, documenting the use ofAzar’s (2002) grammar book in an advanced ESLgrammar class at an American university, andshowing how this book became the de factocurriculum of the course, providing the structurefor most of the classroom interaction. Rejectingthe transmission idea that information goesdirectly from the textbook into the mind of thelearner, the authors ask how materials influenceacquisition in the classroom. Using the frame-work of ecology with its elements of affordanceand emergence (van Lier, 2004), the authorsexplore the relationship between the text materi-als and language learning in this classroom anddocument the way teachers and students conceiveof this relationship. They find relationshipsbetween the materials and the curriculum andbetween the materials and the classroom dis-course, which they claim offer affordances, oropportunities, for language learning that are bothintended and unintended. Whether such oppor-tunities are in fact taken up and result indemonstrable change in learner language overtime, they conclude, is a matter for future study.

It is the purpose of this column to focus theattention of scholars and researchers from a rangeof different perspectives on this groundbreakingstudy, and to explore a variety of possible ways toexpand on this initial work. The contributors tothis column take a variety of perspectives, aslanguage materials developers, language teachereducators, second language acquisition research-ers, and experts in language teaching technologyand open educational resources. They considerquestions such as these:

(a) What, if anything, does classroom researchtell us about the role of textbooks andother materials in the ecology of theforeign language classroom?

(b) How do such materials influence andinteract with the course curriculum orthe discourse of the classroom?

(c) Do classroom materials provide opportu-nities for language learning in that class-room, and, if so, how? Is there research onthis?

(d) Do the answers to these questions varyaccording to whether those materials arecommercially published textbooks, orOpen Educational Resources (online), orteacher-developed materials?

(e) Do the answers to these questions varyaccording to whether the language teacher

has less or more experience in communi-cative language teaching, content-basedinstruction, or use of backward design as inIntegrated Performance Assessment?

The contributions were submitted over aperiod of time; earlier-submitted contributionswere available to later contributors as thepublication deadline permitted and stimulatedadditional comment. The language professionalsoffering commentaries bring to this column arange of academic viewpoints along with aninternational perspective. Sue Garton, AstonUniversity, United Kingdom (UK), and KathleenGraves, University of Michigan, are widely knownas experts on best practices on principledlanguage materials design. Dale Brown is anarticulate language teacher educator in theGraduate School of Language and Culture, OsakaUniversity, Japan. Carl Blyth, The University ofTexas at Austin, is director of a national Title VILanguage Resource Center, COERLL, and aleading proponent of Open Educational Re-source (OER) language teaching materials asalternatives to the print textbook industry. DianeLarsen–Freeman, University of Michigan, andVisiting Professor, TheUniversity of Pennsylvania,is both a leading second language acquisitionresearcher and theorist, and an author of severalpopular textbooks for both students and languageteachers. Brian Morgan and Ian Martin, YorkUniversity, are internationally known for theirresearch on language teacher learning in theclassroom. After all these contributors hadsubmitted their perspective pieces, the authorsof the original MLJ research publication, AnneMarie Guerrettaz and Bill Johnston, both ofIndiana University, were invited to read thesecommentaries andwrite a response. The result is athought-provoking range of perspectives on nextsteps to be taken in establishing a complex andexciting new research agenda. We hope theircontributions will stimulate additional researchusing all of the perspectives laid out here.

REFERENCES

Azar, B. (2002). Understanding and using English grammar(3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: PearsonEducation.

Guerrettaz, A. M., & Johnston, B. (2013). Materials inthe classroom ecology. Modern Language Journal,97, 779–796.

van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of languagelearning: A sociocultural perspective. Norwell, MA:Kluwer Academic.

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