Designing Language Teaching Materials as Professional Competence: The Case of Teacher Made Worksheets

This paper examines teacher made instructional materials as a core dimension of professional competence in foreign language teaching, with particular emphasis on worksheets as a foundational and widely used format. Departing from the view of materials creation as a supplementary or compensatory practice, the paper conceptualises materials design as an integral aspect of pedagogical agency, instructional decision making, and reflective teaching. Drawing on established frameworks in materials development and teacher education, it situates teacher-generated materials within broader discussions of contextualisation, differentiation, flexibility, and learner responsiveness, while also engaging with their role as mediators of situated educational meaning. The analysis foregrounds the realities of classroom practice, arguing that commercially produced materials frequently fail to accommodate local, cultural, and learner specific needs, thereby prompting teachers to adapt, supplement, or create their own resources. Special attention is paid to the professional challenges faced by novice teachers and student teachers, whose limited experience and underdeveloped design repertoires often render materials creation cognitively demanding and timeintensive. At the same time, the paper highlights the iterative and developmental character of teacher made materials, which are refined through repeated cycles of classroom use, feedback, and revision. The paper further addresses constraints related to time, workload, design literacy, and curricular alignment, while also considering the growing role of digital and AI assisted tools in supporting materials development. In conclusion, it argues for the systematic integration of materials design into teacher education programmes, positioning this competence not only as a practical necessity, but as a professionally and epistemically significant dimension of sustainable, context sensitive, and pedagogically grounded language teaching.