Comments SLA posts (Klaus and Sarah)

Hi everyone,
I've read with great interest the posts by Sarah and Klaus. I won't attempt a summary nor an extended critique, mainly because both posts seem to make a lot of sense and read very well. Two things caught my attention:

The two websites I spent quite some time looking at both do not fulfil all the given criteria. I do not believe that makes them bad websites with bad materials, but it may illustrate that to actually design web material that addresses a large number of needs and demanding quality criteria, is an extremely difficult thing to achieve that probably needs some serious funding if only to pay the programmer! ...What does that tell me? Materials are not perfect and they need constant development. Whether the criteria Chapelle uses are really realistic, I will ponder another time.
Klaus

In terms of how applicable it is to the websites I'm less sure. I think this maybe partly because I'm not sure that the central aim of many of the sites is language learning/acquiring language per se. Many of the websites seem to be much more aimed at helping students with academic skills: organising, structuring, stylistic features, study skills etc. All of these are very much central to our role as EAP teachers: much of what we do is about choice of and organisation of language rather than acquiring new language. Maybe what's up for debate here is the role of an EAP teacher (I don't think we've focused on this much in this module)?
Sarah

Klaus highlights the cost of producing interactive e-materials and he's certainly correct. Not many EAP centres and tutors have access to vast funds or resources to produce materials. Many don't have the time, others the skills, and some can't see the point. Much of what you can find on the web is produced by dedicated enthusiasts or is the fruit of one-off financing for a specific set of materials with little thought/time given to developing the materials. Quality control, editing and evaluation of materials are not always part of the process of producing materials. And, a specific rationale or SLA theory is often implicit rather than a feature of the design of materials.

This means that the tutor has an important role, as we've said before, in mediating and evaluating existing materials (never mind the production of materials) in order to assess how useful these materials might be for a given group of students. I also note that Sarah or Klaus (sorry can't remember) mentioned that they doubted that their students would be willing to undertake some of the more time-consuming or complex tasks. I certainly often share that idea when I see materials but at the same time I know that this is more based on intuition than any data as such. In other words, I make assumptions about what students will or won't do with e-materials rather than find out what they actually do. I think more hard evidence would be useful and more opinions and experiences from students would also help us to understand why they use or don't use various technologies and websites. We do have a mediating role, including helping students organise their learning, I just think we need to involve the students more actively in this than we often do.

Evaluating materials according to SLA criteria is complex and has led both Sarah and Klaus to doubt whether SLA can provide a solid enough framework for this to be effective. I agree mostly. I think it forms part of a complex set of criteria to evaluate and create e-materials. I have been trying to guide you through some of these - autonomy, history and SLA - and guide you through some others later in the module.

Sarah asks about the focus in this module of the EAP tutor. And, again, she's right. Implicit (although I will make it more explicit later in the module) in what I have been trying to express is that the tutor must understand an array of issues in order to make effective use of technology. This includes roles, autonomy, understanding of where we are in the current teaching and technology 'fashions', the changing nature of academic literacy partly due to technology, and also where we might find hard and soft evidence to support our teaching endeavours with technology.

I thinks that's enough for now. Time to dig up the potatoes ...
Alex