To recapitulate:
- Specification begins outside the area of languageteaching, and relates to it facts from other areas: culture, law, work, requirements of the sending organization.
- Given a particular set of external conditions, specification is relatively inflexible; that is, it does not depend on the preferences of the materials developer or of the prospective users.
- Specification takes the form of a set of lists.
- Linguistic scientists, anthropologists, poultry raisers, and other specialists from outside the area of language teaching are particularly useful in preparing these lists.
Coarse-grained presentation. Here, the data which the writing team elicited from the public, and which were cast by the specialists into the form of detailed lists, must finally be put onto paper and/or film and/or tape. Control has passed into the hands of the language teaching specialist, and he must choose among a wide array of formats, methods and approaches. It is at this point of choice that the present proposal differs from the practice of almost all materials developers. Most writers take it for granted that they are called on to layout for the student some path which he is to follow, and which will lead to the desired goal. The path may consist of conventional lessons or a self-instructional program or a combination of live and canned instruction, and a self-instructional program may be linear, branching, or cyclical. Any fixed set of materials, however, carries within it the seeds of its own rejection: irrelevant content, inappro priate length, or uncongenial format. Furthermore, it fails to
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