Materials adaptation: why leave it all to the teacher?

David F. Clarke

This article begins by discussing the background to the idea of learner involvement in syllabus design. It seems unlikely that full learner participation in decisions concerning content and methodology will be possible in most circumstances, but it is suggested here that learner creativity can be introduced in other ways, specifically in the area of materials adaptation. The article describes five principles which lie behind learner involvement in materials adaptation. These principles are then illustrated concretely by means of four extremely diverse opportunities for learner involvement in the adaptation process.

Background

to

learner involvement

Eleven years ago Allwright (1978) was discussing the issue of developing learners responsibility for elements of their language programmes. He suggested that greater learner participation was necessary both on the grounds that the teacher cannot in practice handle all the necessary classroom management tasks alone, and also that learners will benefit from a greater degree of involvement in classroom activity: We thus have two sets of arguments for responsibility-sharing: a practical one based on a diagnosis of teacher over-load, and an equally practical one based on a diagnosis of learner-underinvolvement. (Allwright 1978: 117). By learner-underinvolvement, Allwright is referring to the essentially passive role which learners have traditionally played in the languageacquisition process, in terms of both syllabus and materials design and actual classroom methodology. The necessity for and means of achieving greater learner involvement have been extensively analysed and described over the last fifteen years or so within four major areas of applied linguistics. These areas are needs such as analysis for ESP (especially Munby 1978), h umanistic methodologies, Silent Way and Counseling-Learning (for example, Curran 1972 and Stevick 1976), and the growing awareness of the possibilities of learner individualization and autonomy (for example, Altman 1972, Disick 1975, and the research at CRAPEL during the same period). Connected to these linked and overlapping areas, and particularly close to the third, can be added the increasing interest in establishing a detailed description of the good language leaner (Rubin 1975, Naiman et al., 1978) and how the strategies of such a learner might be determined and exploited. (For a recent account of this topic see Wenden and Rubin 1987). All these research areas share the common principle that the learners cognitive, emotional, and pragmatic needs should be taken into account in the design of language-learning
ELT Journal Volume 43/2 April 1989 Oxford University Press 1989

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programmes, on the grounds that attention to certain affective factors which had hitherto been ignored would simply, better motivated learners and thus better results.

utilitarian produce,

and quite

The external syllabus under fire

For a while this escalating awareness of the importance of the learner in the process of achieving competence in the language seemed to find satisfaction in the creation of custom-built syllabuses, with specific or even special purposes in mind. Certainly, the most fundamental principle behind the creation of communicative syllabuses of all kinds is that the learner must be engaged in meaningful activities which relate to some ultimate real world goal. Such goals inevitably involved using the language communicatively by means of tasks which simulated as far as possible real-world tasks and which involved real-world language skills. However, no sooner were classrooms all over the world beginning to resound to the noise of learners communicating with one another than questions were being asked about the validity of a syllabus which, despite being constructed on needs-analysis principles, was nevertheless externally imposed upon learners, rather than being generated by them. Allwright, pursuing the investigation of learner involvement in classroom strategy and activity, began to ask, What do we want teaching materials for? (1981) and Why dont learners learn what teachers teach? (1984). The answer to both these questions involves a re-examination of the contributory role which learners can play, and a consideration of how an awareness of learner strategy might affect the construction of a programme. Other factors, such as the teacher and the learning environment, are also likely to have a direct effect upon the externally imposed syllabus, so that, under these several influences, the original plan could well be modified to a considerable extent, if not entirely subverted.

Reservations

about

the negotiated syllabus

Learner influence upon the language-teaching process is potentially significant, both at the macro level of syllabus design and at the micro level of what is done within each lesson. Breen (1984, 1987) in particular has focused strongly on the idea of what he calls a Process syllabus but which I would rather call a Negotiated syllabus, both the content and the operational features of which are open to discussion with the learners from the start of the programme. A negotiated syllabus is thus an internally generated rather than an externally imposed syllabus. I have written elsewhere about the difficulties arising from a pure Negotiated model (Clarke, forthcoming) and my scepticism concerning its widespread application leads me to the practical issues (the micro level) of this article. My concern in particular is with teachers who may be vaguely aware of the changing ideas in syllabus design but who are very cautious about the implications of a Negotiated syllabus either in terms of class management or because they have little or no choice over the materials to be used within the existing external syllabus. It seems fairly unlikely, in fact, that even fully-developed external communicative syllabuses will find wide adoption for some time, let alone Negotiated internal models. However, this is not to suggest that some of the insights gained from more radical proposals cannot in part be adopted in a more traditional environment.
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Learner contribution within an external syllabus

The possibility that the learner can make an effective contribution to what happens in the classroom, even within the scope of more traditional syllabus types, is certainly worth pursuing. In what follows I shall attempt to establish some general principles concerning the possibility of learner involvement in the process of materials adaptation in situations where the basic teaching materials are not in any sense negotiated and are indeed imposed upon teachers and learners alike. The adaptation process itself allows classroom activity to become focused upon meaningful tasks, the solving of certain problems, even when the materials to hand might be mainly concerned with language form (for recent description and justification of task-based learning see Candlin and Murphy (eds.) 1987 and Prabhu 1987). Following the statement of the underlying principles of adaptation, I will offer some specific examples of how adaptation procedures can generate some useful and (I hope) stimulating classroom work.

Five basic principles

which now follow I should o b serve that the principles extent and have at least a partially causal relationship.

overlap

to some

1 Learner commitment: External or imposed materials can be made internal to the learners by creative involvement in the adaptation process. By engaging the learners interest in the nature of the teaching materials through working on them in some way, a greater degree of commitment and sense of purposeful activity will be generated.
2 Learner as materials writer and collaborator: Learners can be productively engaged in adaptation tasks which result in the creation of actual teaching materials which can be used in the same or another class. Once again, for learners to undertake tasks which other members of their class have devised is likely to result in a higher degree of commitment. Working on a cooperative basis with other group members and with the teacher develops the role of collaborator rather than language receiver. 3 Learner as problem solver: The activity of adapting materials in order to create tasks is a fruitful task in itselfand sets learners a meaningful problem to solve. Even when language form might be the content of the task, the learners principal focus will be on materials creation. 4 Learner as knower: By working on the construction of classroom tasks, based on existing materials, learners can change their role yet further, becoming knowers rather than assimilators. By researching certain areas of language in order to produce a piece of material, they become expert in those areas and are then able to transmit their knowledge to others. 5 Learner as evaluator and assessor: Through the process of adapting materials and producing tasks for further language work, learners will be better able to assess the relevance and interest of what they are doing and thus take some control over materials content. They will also be better able to assess their own level of achievement, having played a direct part in the creation of certain types of task or activity. Learner-adapted materials

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Adaptation

tasks

Let us now consider some specific examples of the ways in which learners might be productively engaged in the adaptation and construction of materials, for use in their own classes or other, parallel, classes. It is understood that in all cases learners will engage the help of the teacher in constructing their materials, in addition to involving other group members and various printed reference sources. Clearly, a period of learner-training in how to use resources will be necessary, and initially the teacher will have to provide blueprint examples of whatever task is to be undertaken.1 Substitution tables do not have much of a reputation at the present time, although in fact many teachers feel the necessity for the kind of drill and practice such tables can involve. Even within a communicative syllabus, they might value the opportunity to reinforce certain key structures as preparation, say, for work on a role-play activity. And provided that substitution tables do not begin to dominate the kind of work which takes place in the classroom, no one would claim that a certain amount of time spent with them is necessarily wasted. In fact, substitution tables offer considerable opportunity for learner creativity of a kind which is authentic in itself, quite beyond considerations of the communicative value of the device itself. Mosback (1984) described certain basic operations in the use of substitution tables, whereby a greater degree of communicative value can be extracted from them. Among these adaptive processes is the strategy of withholding the contents of one of the segments in the table. Thus learners might be presented with a table of the following kind:
Table I What time should I we they meet drop see him her them this evening tomorrow today

Substitution

tables

[at the cinema

etc.]

One of the segments can be left empty for learners themselves to provide the contents, and indeed the contents of each segment can be removed in turn, until only a blank table remains. The learners will then construct appropriate sentences from memory, along the lines of the original table. Rather than leaving one utterance in isolation, a second table can be added in order to supply the reply to the first:
Table 2 We They I at at before

should be there

8 oclock 12 oclock exactly 10 oclock

However, a more creative dimension can be added to the whole process by involving learners in the construction of their own tables. For this task to be undertaken effectively, a linguistic context must be clearly established, and learners should have at their disposal a grammar source of some kind (a grammar book and/or the teacher) and a topic dictionary or a thesaurus of some kind. They can then focus on a particular structure, perhaps suggested by the teacher in the first place, and work it into an utterance involving variable features of their own choice. Clearly, this has the potential of generating a considerable amount of vocabulary, for example in the 136
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semantic field of where people are usually met, to take the example in Table 1 above. Alternatively, a table such as the following has enormous potential for generating verbs, nouns, and prepositions, and of course the focus can vary as required.
Table 3 YOU he she lose buy leave the ticket the book the coat at in under the railway town? the seat? station?

Did

Learners work in pairs or groups to generate the contents of their own table, and the teacher can monitor progress and offer a certain amount of guidance. When the activity has become familiar, learners are likely to develop an interest in researching certain lexical and grammatical areas in order to produce more interesting and perhaps unusual contents for their tables. Rather than using the tables which are thus produced for unashamed and unconcealed drilling, the same effect will be achieved by asking learners to read out examples from their own tables in order to compare with those produced by other groups. It will be the responsibility of each group to explain any lexical or structural item which is unfamiliar to others in the class. In this way, learners will begin to generate language interesting to themselves, and will also be put in the position of knowing more than others about certain linguistic items. This will put them for a while into the role of the teacher or the expert in a particular area, which, as I have already suggested, is a change of classroom mode which is worth pursuing at every opportunity. Obviously there is considerable potential for both invention and humour when the comparison of results is the understood objective, while almost incidentally the process will result in a good deal of drilling. Even more invention and interest can be generated by encouraging more experienced learners to produce tables which contain the potential for error:
Table 4 He They was were digging writing in the office in the garden when when the telephone the message rang arrived

Clearly the semantic dimension of such utterances can be fully exploited when one group passes its table to another. Nonsensical utterances can produce considerable humour, and effort is likely to go into discovering items for the table which will produce humorous effects if read out wrongly. In order to avoid working extensively with utterances out of context, short narratives can be built up by the learners themselves, with only one thread producing a sensible sequence of events.
Questions on a text

Consider now the typical situation of working with an input text of some kind which, in published materials, is frequently followed by some form of question-answering activity. The so-called comprehension exercise might take the form of multiple-choice, true/false or open-ended questions. On the other hand there might be some kind of transcoding exercise, involving filling tables or labelling diagrams from information provided in the text, As an initial adaptation of such material, a well-established technique would be for the teacher to contextualize the material about to be read,
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through various kinds of pre-teaching, perhaps involving discussion of theme, lexis, and even structure. Similarly, some of the questions provided in the textbook might well be given to the learners before approaching the text itself, in order to focus the reading. In many such ways the material can be contextualized to create a greater degree of learner involvement and to adjust the difficulty level of the input to suit the ability of different groups. However, despite such procedures, the material itself remains essentially external to the learner, having been chosen by someone else for a purpose which may be more or less obscure. The proposition here is that a greater degree of involvement with the text, whatever its kind, can be achieved by engaging the learners in the task of constructing their own ways of exploiting it. The observation that many so-called comprehension questions do not address the principal issues of a text, since they often focus on peripheral but easily quantifiable detail while ignoring larger and more important themes and implications, is now a very familiar one. When reading has no specific purpose, which is usually the case in typical classroom situations where learners have no a priori volition towards reading and comprehension, it seems reasonable to attempt to establish what a given text does in fact communicate to those learners. Ignoring, then, the textbooks question focus, which anyway might be entirely inadequate, learners can be involved in establishing what the given text communicates to them by constructing questions about it in pairs or groups. Obviously, a greater degree of involvement with the text, together with a concomitant degree of comprehension, will be produced if learners are asked to operate on the material in this way. True to the principles of task-based learning, the focus of such an activity shifts away from the language of the text to the successful creation of a number of questions which seem to address the important issues within a text. The task is thoroughly integrated, in that it will involve all four skills in varying proportions for its successful completion. In order to produce questions about the text, learners will first need to decode it with the help of the peer group, the teacher, and any other resources available. Clearly learners unfamiliar with such an approach will need to be gradually introduced to the task, beginning with easier texts and being asked to provide only two or three questions. If the class has been divided into several groups for the activity, then a diversity of questions will have been produced, thus providing fruitful possibilities for comparison. There is then the intermediate possibility of each group taking turns to ask the others the questions they have produced, which provides further attention to the content of the text, and which also provides an initial stage in the evaluation of the questions themselves. Once again, the role of learner as knower has been established. Questions can be written on the board, and group correction of structure can take place before actual evaluation of the questions themselves. This evaluation will involve an attempt to establish a hierarchy for the questions in terms of how the learners see their importance. This is reminiscent of traditional main point activities, with the important difference that the learners have generated the potential main points themselves. There is a further stage in evaluation which can involve comparison of what the learners wished to ask each other about the text, and what the textbook itself wished to ask. This in turn can develop a healthy ability to assess the value of what they are being asked to do by their textbook. A more complex activity, and therefore suitable to a more advanced level, can operate with the idea of the procedures already mentioned. With
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suitable models of how information can be gathered from a text and rendered into a new form, whether table, graph, diagram or illustration, learners can be involved in the analysis of a text with a view to devising a suitable transcoding activity for it. Materials with high information content will obviously lend themselves to the construction of some kind of classification diagram, while narrative-style texts would be better approached by means of a table in which the main events can be listed. In either case the resulting activity will provide a summary of certain important features of the input material and it will be a later class activity for groups to work on the task prepared by others. Once again an evaluation stage would establish the extent to which the transcoding activities created by the different groups effectively covered the most important features of the text.
Adapting computer materials

As a complete contrast to the text-based examples given above, a further illustration of learner contribution to materials adaptation might be provided by describing a CALL vocabulary exercise recently developed at the University of East Anglia. The program is called Wordsort and was designed to provide vocabulary extension practice in an area which would relate to an existing text or topic already being explored by a group of learners. Wordsort presents a set of words within one semantic field on the computer screen. The words appear one by one, and learners sort them into boxes labelled with superordinate terms. Thus the general field might be Food, and the individual boxes labelled Sea food, Cereals, Dairy produce, and Meats: items such as beef, butter, haddock and corn have to be correctly allocated. At the end of the exercise, feedback is offered, showing which boxes have wrong items placed in them. Learners review the text from which the words have been taken, or consult a dictionary if the words do not derive from a specific text, and attempt to re-sort the words correctly. Such a program can easily be authored by the teacher to include items and categories which relate to a text or topic currently being examined, thereby allowing the possibility of extending learners awareness of a particular semantic field. However, Wordsort has perhaps been used most effectively when small groups of learners have been set the task of entering a new set of data into it for other groups of learners to work with. The teacher might guide learners to choose a semantic field already introduced in the class and, by discussion and with the help of a dictionary, they can extend the word list and decide upon their own superordinate categories. Exploration of a semantic field for the purpose of creating an activity for others to undertake becomes a painless way of extending vocabulary. The learners who created a particular exercise will later be able to advise concerning any difficulties of placing encountered by other groups. As we have seen, one of the results of a greater awareness of the role which the learner might play in syllabus design and methodological decisionmaking is an increasing focus on the way the learner actually operates in the classroom. One area where learner strategy can become particularly apparent is that of test design. Externally imposed tests can be resented to some extent by learners, even if they are only diagnostic or progress tests, and it is precisely in this area of formative testing that the learners can be creatively involved. It is a notable fact that, in a great many instances, current courseware does not have any inbuilt procedure for assessment of progress. However, it is essential to a learner-centred approach that progress is
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The learner

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monitored on a regular basis in order to determine which parts of the content offered are being assimilated, and also to determine which areas need less attention and which areas need more. If a coursebook lacks any form of assessment procedure, then an extremely useful adaptation and extension exercise can be for learners to devise their own testing activities. Such a task is valuable for a number of reasons, not least because it provides an opportunity for learners actively to review the material they have been engaged with and to give an account of what they think they have been learning. It can be expected that opinions in this area will differ, both between learners and teacher and among learners themselves. Setting up the task of test-creation is in fact one way of exploring these differing perceptions, which, in turn, sheds light on the differing strategies of learning being brought into play. Learners can thus focus on areas of language form or function, on certain situations or topics, and create an appropriate testing device which can be offered to other learners in the same group, or indeed used by the teacher with other groups. The selection of items for testing should reveal those areas which learners find more prominent and valuable and, if encouragement is given in this direction, can provide the opportunity for exploring areas of uncertainty. Obviously, for a task of this kind it will be necessary for the teacher to provide model test types for learners to imitate, although production should be encouraged to go beyond the models provided. The discussion and creation of the models will, in themselves, provide excellent opportunities for meaningful interaction. Initially, the choice of what to test can be a matter for negotiation between teacher and learners before a pair or group mode of working is adopted. To negotiate an inventory of what learners consider to be significant and therefore worthy of testing is an excellent means of raising consciousness about coursebook content in general, and the differential importance of the various content areas.
Conclusion

I have made the present case for learner involvement in the adaptation of teaching materials with external, imposed syllabuses particularly in mind. The reason for this is that most learners in most places are engaged with syllabuses of this kind and teachers have little opportunity for developing initiatives towards negotiation. Despite the limitations of external syllabuses, especially those which use published courseware as their core, I believe there are still considerable and widely neglected possibilities of engaging learner opinion and creativity. Adaptation along the lines suggested can not only make the existing materials more relevant to the learners interests, but also more motivating through the generation of a greater degree of commitment. Furthermore, there is nothing like teaching (or testing) to improve knowledge and awareness, whatever the subject area. I would hope that the suggestions made in the present article will encourage teachers to utilize some of the valuable ideas engendered by the otherwise intimidating prospect of a Negotiated syllabus.
Received February 1988

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Nota

1 In an article in ELT Journal (1981), Allwright illustrates through a practical example how learners might be trained to take more responsibility for the management of the language acquisition process in general, including the specification of priorities, selection of materials, and identification of learning problems. In the present article, I imply by learnertraining simply the need both to accustom learners to the idea that they can be involved in materials production and then to show them how this goal might be achieved. Littlejohn (1983) gives a further practical account of how learners can be involved in decisions concerning, for example, the selection and ordering of grammar points which they wish to cover. They are then encouraged to create exercises and tasks based on these areas, using the teacher as resource when required.
References

Allwright, R. 1978. Abdication and responsibility in language teaching. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 2/1.

R. 1981. What do we want teaching for? ELT Journal 36/1:518. R. 1984. Why dont learners learn what teach?: The interaction hypothesis in D. and D. Little (eds.): Language Learning in Formal and Informal Contexts. Dublin: IRAAL. Altman, H. B. (ed.) 1972. Individualisation in the Foreign Language Classroom. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Breen, M. 1984. In C. Brumfit (ed.): General English Syllabus Design. ELT Documents 118. The British Council/Pergamon Press. Breen, M. 1987. Contemporary paradigms in syllabus design (Part 2). Language Teaching XX/3. Candlin, C. N. and D. F. Murphy. 1987.Language Learning Tasks. Lancaster Practical Papers In English Language Education, Vo1.7. London: Prentice Hall International.

Allwright, materials Allwright, teachers Singleton

Clarke, D. R. (forthcoming). The Negotiated Syllabus: What Is It And What Are The Limits To Learner Contribution? CRAPEL. Mlanges Pdagogiques. Universit de Nancy II. Curran, C. A. 1972. Counseling-Learning: A Whole-Person Model for Education. Grune and Stratton. Disick, R. 1975. Individualising Language Instruction: Strategies and Methods. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Littlejohn, A. P. 1983. Increasing learner involvement in course management TESOL Quarterly 17/4. Mosback, G. 1984. Making a structure-based course more communicative. ELT Journal 38/3:178-86. Munby, J. 1978. Communicative Syllabus Design. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Naiman, N., M. Frohlich, H. H. Stem and A. Todesco. 1978. The Good Language Learner. Toronto: OISE. Prabhu, N. 1987. Second Language Pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rubin, J. 1975. What the good language learner can teach us. TESOL Quarterly 9/1. Stevick, E. W. 1976. Memory, Meaning and Method. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Wenden, A. and J. Rubin. 1987. Learner Strategies in Language Learning. Prentice Hall International.
The author

David F. Clarke is at present a lecturer in TEFL at the University of East Anglia, where his work involves teacher training at the undergraduate level and teaching on the MA TEFL course. He has taught English in Sweden, Finland, and Canada and spent several years as a teacher and teacher trainer under the Colombo Plan in Thailand. He has published both course books and articles, and his main interests lie in the areas of syllabus and materials design, literature in EFL teaching, and computer-assisted language learning.

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