CHAPTER

2
Selection of Materials
Rani Rubdy

Introduction
The coursebook has become an almost universal element of ELT, playing as it
does a vital and positive part in the everyday job of teaching and learning of
English (Hutchinson and Torres, 1994). The plethora of material that continues
to be produced unabated bears ample testimony to its perceived importance not
simply as one of the main tools of the trade in the language classroom but as
the visible heart of any ELT programme (Sheldon, 1988: 237). As Cunnings-
worth has noted, the wealth of published material that is available on the market
today makes the selection of the right coursebook a challenging task, requiring
teachers to make informed and appropriate choices when selecting coursebooks
and supporting materials (Cunningsworth, 1995: 1).
What makes it vital to develop even more accurate and revealing ways of evalu-
ating and selecting coursebooks is that materials themselves have evolved into
more complex objects. While in the early days ELT coursebooks contained mainly
reading texts accompanied by a set of comprehension questions and a few
grammar and vocabulary exercises, materials today frequently offer packages for
language teaching and learning which include workbooks, teachers guides,
audio and video support and even CALL programmes with precise indications of
the work that teachers and learners are to do together in a way that effectively
structures classroom lessons (Littlejohn, 1998: 190). Indeed, materials have more
and more come to be viewed as an embodiment of the aims, values and methods
of the particular teaching learning situation (Hutchinson, 1987: 37) to the
extent that, as Hutchinson observes, the selection of materials probably repre-
sents the single most important decision that the language teacher has to make.
The selection of materials involves matching the given materials against the
context in which they are going to be used and the needs and interests of the
teachers and learners who work within it, to find the best possible fit between
them. This calls for major strategic decisions based on informed judgement and
professional experience, forcing teachers to identify their priorities: As Littlejohn
rightly observes, We need to be able to examine the implications that use of a set
of materials may have for classroom work and thus come to grounded opinions
about whether or not the methodology and content of the materials is appro-
priate for a particular language teaching context (Littlejohn, 1998: 1901).