Instructional material is the "general term for audio-visual aids or printed texts which assist teaching and learning. Also termed didactic material" (Terry Page & Thomas, 1977, p. 178).
Solomon (1979) remarked that, since Plato had criticized "stories which he feared might cultivate undesirable ideas in youngsters", media contents have been the focus of attention of teachers and publishers (p. 53). Comprehension of structure (such as plots), attribution of credibility (such as history as taught at school), acceptance of stereotypes (such as the superiority of the white race... or of the black race), learning sex roles (such as women as homebodies)--have all been studied, particularly by textbook publishers. The instruments and modes of message presentation, however, have received but scant attention--in spite of McLuhan's "the medium is the message".
If the medium is indeed the message (or at least a significant part of it), then its nature and potential effects on ESL/EFL classroom learning must be studied as much as its contents. The teacher and the didactic material designer cannot indiscriminately force content onto medium, as, regretfully, is quite commonly done through ignorance of media's idiosyncratic attributes or through commercial greed and political "correctness".
Youngsters today are likely to have a better command of image syntax than of script syntax, because they are subject to much greater exposure to television and comic books than to literature--our major traditional, enduring, and comprehensive cultural and historical medium. "Television is a representational system", noted Dorr (1977); it is apprehended more directly than is a symbolic system such as the written word. To translate symbolism into reality usually requires experience and cognitivo-affective abilities.
Form and content are often confounded. Huston-Stein and Wright (1977) observed that violence on the screen is normally enhanced through ra...