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256 PAULINE REA-DICKINS AND KEVIN GERMAINE4 MaterialsBefore anal) sing the extent to \\ hic h gi~en tcaching and lcarning matcrials arc suitable,there arc preliminary questions to address rhc matcrials selected tor cla5sroom ure can hcdefincd in a numbcr of c\ a! 5What do materials meanforyou?1 110 you refer cxclusivelj to textbooks, or do you includc teachers’ guides, teachingmanuals, supplcmcntarv units, rvatlcrs, audio and visual materials, etc?2 L)o you make a distinction hctwccn materials dcsigncd spccilically for first and secondlanguage teaching, and also I)ct\vccn those targeted specifically for use in school andmaterials that arc non-pedagogic but authcntic?3 Do you include materials produced by thc teachers and the learners?The role of materials within your teaching and learning context12What rolc(s) arc the) cxpcctcd to play?What goal(s) arc they expcctcd to achie\e?How are the materials to be used?12Are the) to be uwtl as thc sole 5ourcc and rcwurcc for teaching?Arc the\ one of scvci-al a\ ailablc resources?There has hccn a tendency for overreliance on classroom teaching materials, withunrealistic expectations made of thcm. However, the cff‘ectivcncss of teaching and learningis not cxplained solcly in terms of how good or bad the learning materials are. As Allwright(1 98 1 ) suggcsts, materials are only purr of thr. co-operative management of languagelearning. It is also crucial not to ovcrrniphasizc the importance of learning materials.Evaluation of classroom learning materialsThe first xvay in Lvhich materials inay I)c cvaluatcd is in terms of’ how wcll they reflect theprinciples by M hich they havc Ixxn writtcn. In the case of class textbooks, the evaluationcriteria will be those used lvhcn tlcciding \vhich hook is best for your teaching context.When it comcs to teacher-made materials a specification, i.c. a list of criteria against whichto evaluate the materials, is indicated at thc outset ~ or accumulated during the proccss ofmaterials writing and is thus ‘known’ to the tcachtxr. In both cases, \ve arc rcfcrring to thetheoretical worth of the materials.Examining the materials as they stand, that is Lvithout rcfcrence to their actual use inthe classroom, gives us no information about how these materials actually work with a class.This distinction between the theoretical (i.c. construct validity) and empirical value ofmaterials has becn explored by Rrccn (1989), who distinguishes three phases in theevaluation of materials: materials~as~\I.orkplan, matc,rials-in-proccss, and outcomes frommaterials.We can generalize from the notion of ‘tasks’ to the notion of teaching and learningmaterials in the following manncr. ‘Materials-as-workplan’ refers to the theoretical valueofmatcrials, taking up the range of points covered in comprehensive checklist. Rut, as Breen(1989: 189) statcs: