Context matters: a sociocultural framework for materials development

Abstract English language education is commonly seen by practitioners and researchers as an activity that should take into account the teachers and learners’ sociocultural realities. Reflecting this, in this article I argue for the use of Activity Theory as a sociocultural framework to promote the development of practitioners’ contextually relevant learning materials. Illustrating from my own EAP practice, I show how I used Activity Theory to overcome the limitations of the materials that were provided at a British university to teach multimodality to a group of international foundation students. Whilst making the case that materials development should reflect the sociocultural nature of teaching and learning, the article also argues that materials development knowledge and skills should be part of teachers’ core pedagogical repertoire.