This sort of themed collection invariably leaves me with the same impression as professional development conferences. Namely: 40% people who had something to say, but didn't know how to say it; 40% the opposite; and 20% people who both had something to offer and knew how to present it. Given the theme of the collection, one can't help but wonder if the chapters included here couldn't have benefited from a bit of the critical analysis of "materials" in general that it purported to offer.
But just as I often do at PD conferences, I walked away from this book with a few useful things for immediate application (some applications for corpus-based materials, open-ended narratives, and authentic source material), several potentially fruitful lines of future inquiry (meta-cognition in listening materials, use of "moves" in rhetorical analysis), and some grounding in current pedagogical viewpoints and terminology that can be used to shore up and refine my existing approaches (distinctions between "task" and "activity", and "principles of language acquisition" and "principles of language teaching"). So even though I had to suffer through a few "sessions" that left me resentful for my wasted time and engagement, it was still worth going to this little conference.
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