Brian Tomlinson is a British applied linguist and the founder of MATSDA, the international Materials Development Association. He has taught in Indonesia, Japan, Nigeria, Oman, Singapore, Vanuatu, Vietnam, and Zambia, and has held university posts at Leeds Metropolitan, Leeds Beckett, and Anaheim University. His work has done more than almost anyone's to turn materials development from a technical side-activity into a recognized area of applied linguistics.
Tomlinson's central argument is that most global coursebooks underexploit what we know about SLA: they over-present and under-process, drill discrete items, and give learners very little rich, engaging, affectively charged input. His edited collections, especially Materials Development in Language Teaching, assemble the evidence base and principles that allow teachers and publishers to do better.