STEVICK'S CRITERIA
Stevick's criteria for the choice of 'whole-learner' materials
(Stevick, E.W., 1980, Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways, Newbury House):
Stevick believes that the adult language learner has to be treated
as a complete person, not seen in exclusively cognitive terms.
He puts forward six essential criteria for materials choice or development
that allows the learning process to be personally meaningful to the learner:
1. The material should be expressed in language that has some currency outside the classroom, language that resembles that used by and among native speakers.
2. The material should
treat the world and reality as the learner knows them to be, not through some
sterilizing filter.
The material, for example, should take good advantage of the adult learner's
rich knowledge of the world.
3. The material should
contain something of intrinsic interest for the affective side of the learner.
Ideally, learners should be able to relate experientially to the material
in some way.
4. There should be a
basis for disagreement allowing the learner to make choices.
Most groups of adults talking would reveal differences of opinion.
Materials have to cultivate this factor, not avoid it or shut it down.
5. The material should
allow learners to engage in meaningful interaction with one another.
This means interaction where there is a communicative purpose, not mechanical
repetition or perfunctory talk attending to form and not meaning.
6. The design of the
material should contribute to the learner's sense of safety or security in
the learning context.
The learner has to know that the environment will allow for, even encourage,
error-making.
There can be no risk of humiliation in linguistic production or any other
area.
Part of this relates to human resource management, but it can also be a factor
promoted in the materials themselves.
(from Wajnryb, R., 1992, Classroom Observation Tasks, CUP)