CHAPTER 9
MATERIALS EVALUATION

        After completed our need analysis and course design, the next step that should be done by the teacher is deciding what they will do. Teacher may turn the course design into actual teaching materials. There are three possible ways of turning the course design into actual teaching materials:
1.     Select from existing materials: materials evaluation
2.     Write our own materials: material development.
3.     Modify existing materials: materials adaptation.
In this chapter, the writer concerns to discuss the first point “Material Evaluation”. The techniques and a lot in terms of ideas of evaluating the existing materials can be found in this chapter.
1.     Why Evaluate Materials?
According to Hutchinson &Waters (1987) stated that evaluation is a matter of judging the fitness of something for a particular purpose. Evaluation concerns on the relative merit. There is no absolute good or bad, only degrees of fitness for the required purpose. It means that, when the teacher does materials evaluation, the evaluation is based on the required purpose or goal that would be reached by the students.
 In another word, according to Hutchinson &Waters (1987) stated that in any kind of evaluation, the decision finally made is likely to be the better for being based on a systematic check of all the important variables. In doing the evaluation materials, the writer probably get a negative and positive impact. The negative side of evaluation materials is the teacher probably spent a lot of expense, time, and probably getting frustrated. On the other hand, the positive side ofevaluation materials is; it can also help in justifying request of the sponsors or other members of an ESP team for money to buy materials or time to write them.

2.     How do you evaluate materials?
Hutchinson &Waters (1987) stated that“evaluation is basically a matching process: matching needs to available solutions”. In order to match the needs and solutions, the matching should be done as objective as possible. It means that teachers have to look the needs of students and the solution separately. In the final analysis, any choice will be made on subjective grounds. However, if subjectivity influence your judgement, it may blind you to possible alternatives. For example: teacher might reject a particular textbook, because the teacher does not like the picture on the cover or dislike functional syllabuses but it does not mean that the book does not suit the needs of parties. Thus, teachers should not let subjectivity too much influence their judgement in the early stages of analysis when evaluating materials to be taught. Process of evaluation can be divided into four major steps(see figure 26) :
1)  Defining criteria
2)  Subjective analysis
3)  Objective analysis
4)  Matching
        The fist two stages will be done in course dsign stage. While the other two stage is done as the continuation of the subjective analysis where teacher have to evaluate or develop their material thrrough objectve analysis. From these process, teacher will be easier to know how far the material match the needs.

           Below is also presented  checklist of criteria for objective and subjective analysis.

                      Adopted : According to Hutchinson &Waters (1987:98)




There are some practical steps that we should do in material evaluation, as follows ;

1.     Answer the A question
In this step, answer the A question to identify the requirements that can be used as a basis for writing the material or as an input to the next stage of material evaluation.

2.     Answer the B question
In this step, answer the B question to analyze the materials that have selected.

3.     Compare the A and B findings
This step can be done by awarding the points :
0 = does not match the desired features
1 = partly matches the desired features
2 = closely matches the desired features
Based on the awarding points, you have to look for the widest spread of desired features and concentrations in the areas you consider most important.

4.     Make your choice and use your findings to prepare any documentation needed for defending your decision. You can make a decision upon the analysis, whether everything is good, or some part need to be modified/replaced

Conclusion 

There are some conclusion that we can conclude from the materials about materials evaluation :

  1. We observed the materials evaluation as one way of exploiting a course design.
  2. The evaluation process should be systematic
  3. The evaluation process is best seen as a matching exercise: matching your analyzed needs with available solutions
  4. It can save a lot of duplication of effort by possibly revealing materials that can provide all or part of your materials needs.