Authoring tools and teacher training for call

It has been suggested by some that authoring languages are a way of teaching language teachers how to make their own software. Others have felt that these packages take too long to learn and when they have been learned they are not really powerful enough to do anything worthwhile. This paper reports the success of using authoring languages on Masters degree courses at Manchester University. It talks about the tools themselves, taking three different packages with differing powers and facilities and describes their strengths and weaknesses as tools for language learning materials development. The role of such packages in the teacher training is then presented, showing that the use of such tools enables teachers to become more critically aware of available software. Finally, some examples of the materials and how they were used is given. This is offered along with student comments on the software itself and how well it performed.