CHAPTER

5
Adapting Classroom Materials
Carlos Islam and Chris Mares

Introduction
In many cases, the teacher using published materials in any given classroom is not
involved with creating the materials and may have little to do with adopting the
materials for her institution. However, even when the classroom teacher selects
the book, knows every student in the class well and is using materials designed
specifically for the context they are in, she will still have to adapt the materials
either consciously or subconsciously.
Materials adaptation can span a range of procedures from adding carefully
contextualized role plays with the objective of providing more opportunities to
communicate to not finishing a pronunciation drill because of time constraints.
Whether pre-planned or spontaneous, materials adaptation is an integral part of
the success of any class. An awareness of the various reasons for adapting mater-
ials (as well as of current approaches and procedures) can be beneficial when
considering how best to use the materials adopted for the classroom.
One reason for adaptation is that published materials are necessarily con-
strained by the syllabus, unit template and other space concerns. Not all material,
therefore, is fully developed. A good teacher’s guide will supplement materials
with useful alternatives and adaptations, but where this does not happen or a
teacher does not have the teacher’s guide, adaptation will become part of the
creative dialogue between teachers and published materials.
After reviewing the current state of the field, this chapter will make suggestions
for and give examples of innovative and principled approaches to materials
adaptation. Example adaptations of current commercial coursebooks will include
materials for beginner and intermediate learners studying in their home country,
as well as high-intermediate to advanced learners studying in a country where the
target language is predominant.

Reasons for Adaptation

There are always sound practical reasons for adapting materials in order to make
them as accessible and useful to learners as possible. However, reasons for
adaptation have varied and changed as the field has developed and views on
language acquisition and teaching practice have become better informed by
research and experience.
 5. Adapting Classroom Materials 87

Within this historical context, it is easy to understand why some teachers will wish
to adapt materials. For example, before the advent of the communicative
approach, many coursebooks focused largely on structure and were heavily influ-
enced by the legacy of grammar translation methods of teaching. Language was
viewed primarily in structural terms and was not treated as a tool for commu-
nication, while learning was seen in terms of forming correct behavioural patterns.
Despite an increased awareness and sensitivity to language as communication and
learning as a developmental process, many teachers were finding themselves faced
with materials that did not reflect these teaching and learning principles.
In their book Materials and Methods in ELT (1993), McDonough and Shaw
devote a chapter to the issue of adapting materials. They quote Madsen and
Bowen (1978) to set a context for materials adaptation: ‘Effective adaptation is a
matter of achieving ‘‘congruence’’ . . . The good teacher is . . . constantly striving
for congruence among several related variables: teaching materials, methodology,
students, course objectives, the target language and its context, and the teacher’s
own personality and teaching style.’
McDonough and Shaw’s list of reasons for adaptation clearly reflects a concern
that communicative language teaching implies an unsystematic approach to
grammar presentation and a belief that a systematic approach to grammar pre-
sentation is necessary.

Not enough grammar coverage in general

Not enough practice of grammar points of particular difficulty to these
learners
The communicative focus means that grammar is presented unsystematically
Reading passages contain too much unknown vocabulary
Comprehension questions are too easy, because the answers can be lifted
directly from the text with no real understanding
Listening passages are inauthentic, because they sound too much like written
material being read out
Not enough guidance on pronunciation
Subject matter inappropriate for learners of this age and intellectual level
Photographs and other illustrative material not culturally acceptable
Amount of material too great/too little to cover in the time allocated to lessons
No guidance for teachers on handling group work and role-play activities with
a large class
Dialogues too formal, and not really representative of everyday speech
Audio material difficult to use because of problems to do with room size and
technical equipment
Too much or too little variety in the activities
Vocabulary list and a key to the exercises would be helpful
Accompanying tests needed

In Choosing Your Coursebook (1995), Cunningsworth also includes a chapter that

deals with the challenge of materials adaptation and provides a list of possible
88 Carlos Islam and Chris Mares

reasons for adapting materials. There is quite a bit of overlap between the two
lists, but Cunningsworth draws on a knowledge of learner styles and the learner as
a whole, considerations which are absent from McDonough and Shaw’s list.
According to Cunningsworth, adaptation depends on factors such as:

The dynamics of the classroom

The personalities involved
The constraints imposed by syllabuses
The availability of resources
The expectations and motivations of the learners

Adaptation is also appropriate when materials are not ideal, as presented in the
following:

Methods (e.g., an exercise may be too mechanical, lacking in meaning, too

complicated).
Language content (e.g., there may be too much emphasis on grammar your
students learn quickly or not enough emphasis on what they find difficult).
Subject matter (e.g., topics may not be interesting to students or they may be
outdated or not authentic enough).
Balance of skills (e.g., there may be too much emphasis on skills in the written
language or skills in the spoken language, or there may not be enough on
integrating skills).
Progression and grading (order of language items may need to be changed to
fit an outside syllabus or the staging may need to be made steeper or more
shallow).
Cultural content (cultural references may need to be omitted or changed).
Image (a coursebook may project an unfriendly image through poor layout,
low quality visuals, etc.).

Candlin and Breen (1980) focus on adaptation issues that relate to materials
specifically designed for communicative language learning. Their list implies that
published materials are limited in that they do not provide many opportunities
for real communication; instead they simply provide oral practice of linguistic
structures:

Communicative materials do not provide enough opportunities for negoti-

ation (personal or psychological) between the learner and the text.
Communicative materials do not provide enough opportunities for inter-
personal or social negotiation between all participants in the learning process,
between learners and teachers, and learners and learners.
Activities and tasks do not promote enough communicative performance.
Activities and tasks do not promote enough metacommunicating opportunities.
Activities and tasks do not promote co-participation. Teachers and learners are
not involved as co-participants in the teaching–learning process.
 5. Adapting Classroom Materials 89

A brief look at these lists quickly demonstrates the numerous classroom situations
when materials adaptation is advisable. Recognizing that your classroom materials
need some kind of adaptation may be an intuitive feeling or an articulated
thought. The challenge is finding ways to make the materials work for your class.

Objectives and Techniques for Adaptation

Having clear objectives is a necessary starting point for adopting any materials.
Clear adaptation objective(s) for the materials or knowing what ‘works’ for your
class will help guide your choice of adaptation technique(s) as well as help decide
the appropriate content or language choice.
McDonough and Shaw start a list of objectives that a teacher may hope to
achieve by adapting classroom materials. They state that, in order to attain greater
appropriacy from materials, you can adapt to:

Personalize
Individualize
Localize
Modernize

We, Islam and Mares, would expand this list to include:

Add real choice

Cater for all sensory learner styles
Provide for more learner autonomy
Encourage higher-level cognitive skills
Make the language input more accessible
Make the language input more engaging

Add Real Choice

In recent years, many language teaching professionals have supported the prin-
ciple of giving language learners choice in their learning decision-making. This
often means that learners get the option to study Unit 3 before Unit 2, or learners
get to choose the passage they read.
In choosing the term ‘real choice’ we are referring to learners deciding how
they want to learn rather than what they want to learn. That is to say, learners can
decide whether they would like to follow a route that caters to their preferred
cognitive learning style (style matching) or to try a cognitive style that is less
comfortable (style stretching). Learners could choose between the styles of field
dependent or independent, global or analytical, impulsive or reflective, intuitive-
random or concrete-sequential, perceiving or judging, and feeling or thinking,
among others (for definitions of these learning styles, see Reid, 1995).
90 Carlos Islam and Chris Mares

Cater for All Sensory Learning Styles

In her survey of 1388 students, aimed at identifying preferred sensory learning

styles, Reid (1987) found that all ESL learners have strong kinaesthetic learning
style preferences. However, an analysis of any major coursebook series will show
that although the auditory and visual sides of learners are catered for, there is
rarely any opportunity for learners to receive kinaesthetic input.

Provide for More Learner Autonomy

Adapting material to provide for learner autonomy may mean including learner
training with the objective of helping learners acquire language outside the
classroom or without the guidance of the teacher. An example may be setting
time in class for reading and listening for pleasure and discussing material that
students liked or did not like, rather than using the material to exemplify discrete
language points or as text for comprehension questions. Activities that encourage
learners to discover independently rules and conventions about the target lan-
guage could also have the potential to create autonomous learners.

Encourage Higher-level Cognitive Skills

Encouraging higher-level cognitive skills means adapting materials in such a way

as to require students to hypothesize, predict, infer, make connections and
associations and visualize. This type of higher-level cognitive activity engages and
motivates students as well as assists in transferring language skills already devel-
oped in their first language to the target language.

Make the Language Input More Engaging

There are different ways to make input more engaging. One way is to rewrite or
re-record text, to give it more authenticity or interest. Another way is to change
the form of input. For example, a reading text as input might be presented as a
game or interactive activity, rather than simply as a reading passage. Another way
to make input more engaging is to change the nature of the tasks. For example,
rather than have a reading task which focuses on comprehension, switch the task
to prediction, or allow students to finish creatively a story with their own ending.
By participating in this type of activity, learners still demonstrate comprehension
or a lack of comprehension but without direct testing and the risk of failure.

Techniques for Adaptation

After recognizing a gap (mismatch or non-congruence) between published

teaching materials and the needs and objectives of the classroom, the teacher has
to address the practicalities of adapting the material to meet her class objectives
more closely. McDonough and Shaw (1993) and Cunningsworth (1995) offer lists
 5. Adapting Classroom Materials 91

of techniques that may be used when adapting materials better to ‘fit’ a specific
class.
These techniques are:

Adding; extending and expanding

Deleting; subtracting and abridging
Simplifying
Reordering
Replacing material

Adding

When adding to published materials the teacher is supplementing the existing

materials and providing more material. The teacher can do this by either
extending or expanding.

Extending
When extending an activity the teacher supplies more of the same type of
material, thus making a quantitative change in the material. For example, an
activity may practise a particular grammar point by asking the learner to complete
a sentence with the missing verb in the correct form, such as the simple past. The
coursebook may have provided ten sentences for this treatment, but the teacher
may value this type of activity for her particular class and adapt the coursebook by
adding five more sentences with missing verbs.

Expanding
Expanding classroom material is different from extending in that it adds some-
thing different to the materials; the change is qualitative. For instance, the tea-
cher may feel her students need to be made aware of the different sounds of verb
endings when used in the simple past but the coursebook does not address this
phonetic issue. Consequently, she may add an activity or series of activities that
deal with the phonetics of the past simple. The teacher may want to draw stu-
dents’ attention to the fact that, when pronouncing the verbs visited, played and
worked, the endings (-ed) are pronounced /id/, /id/ and /t/ respectively. Other
expansions could involve including a discussion to contextualize and personalize
the topic of a particular unit of study, or including a TPR phase to make difficult
language items in a reading or listening text more comprehensible.
It is important to note that additions to materials can come at the beginning, at
the end or in the middle of the materials being adapted.

Deleting; Subtracting and Abridging

As with the technique of adding, material can be deleted both quantitatively

(subtracting) or qualitatively (abridging). When subtracting, for example, a tea-
cher can decide to do five of the questions practising the simple past tense instead
92 Carlos Islam and Chris Mares

of the ten in the coursebook. When abridging, however, the teacher may decide
that focusing attention on pronunciation may inhibit the learner’s fluency and
decide not to do any of the pronunciation exercises in a coursebook.

Simplifying

When simplifying, the teacher could be rewording instructions or text in order to

make them more accessible to learners, or simplifying a complete activity to make
it more manageable for learners and teachers. It is worth pointing out here that
there is a distinct danger of distorting language when attempting to simplify a text
and thus making the text inauthentic.

Reordering

When reordering, the teacher has decided that it makes more pedagogic sense to
sequence activities differently. An example is beginning with a general discussion
before looking at a reading passage rather than using the reading as a basis for
discussion.

Replacing Material

When replacing material a teacher may decide that a more appropriate visual or
text might serve an activity better than the ones presented in the published
material. This is often the case with culturally specific or time-specific activities. A
teacher may decide to replace an illustration for one that students could identify
with more closely or use information concerning a popular figure with whom the
students are familiar rather than the one presented in the published materials.
Teachers may also decide to replace a whole activity depending on the goals of
a particular class or lesson. For example, a reading activity might be replaced with
a listening activity.

Three Examples of Materials Adaptation

In order to exemplify some of the adaptation principles and techniques men-

tioned in this chapter, we will describe three real teaching scenarios and select
published coursebooks that could be realistically used in each of the scenarios.
We will then suggest specific adaptations for each coursebook in order to tailor
the materials better to each teaching scenario.

Scenario One

A class of 34 junior high school students in a Japanese public (not private) school.
The students are 12 to 13 years old, and there are 17 boys and 17 girls in the class.
The students have all had between one and two years of English instruction at
 5. Adapting Classroom Materials 93

elementary school but have difficulty in understanding simple oral communica-

tion. The students currently spend five hours a week in English class.
This group of students needs more exposure to a wide and rich range of
language input in a variety of contexts. The coursebook used for this class is New
Horizon 1 (Tokyo Shoseki, 2002).

Rationale for Adaptation

Page 50 of New Horizon 1 (see Figure 5.1) presents everyday verbs in the present
simple. Four verbs are presented in a single context and only in writing. The
activity lacks kinaesthetic and auditory sensory input. The input is also limited
and impoverished. Students are not given a choice about how they learn nor are
they given an opportunity to personalize the input.
The materials could be expanded by adding a TPR phase at the beginning of
this unit of study to provide kinaesthetic and auditory input as well as richer, more
contextualized text. Learners also have an opportunity to attend to the input
globally and interpret meaning before analysing the input to understand its form.

1. Teacher mimes Becky’s daily routine. Asks students to guess what Becky does
each day.
2. Teacher acts out Becky’s daily routine while reading the script.
3. Students act Becky’s routine while teacher reads the script.

Becky’s Daily Routine (script)

Every day Becky wakes up at 6:30 in the morning.

She stretches her arms and rubs her eyes and she yawns.
Then she brushes her teeth and takes a shower.
Sometimes she likes to sing in the shower.
She puts on her clothes and eats her breakfast, usually toast and coffee.
After breakfast, she speaks to her dog.
At 7:30 she leaves her apartment and takes the subway to school.

On Saturday and Sunday she usually wakes up at 9:30 in the morning.

She stretches her arms and rubs her eyes and she yawns.
Then she brushes her teeth and takes a shower.

On Saturday she usually plays tennis or runs in the park.

The activity on page 50 provides limited opportunities for analysing the input.
By extending the activity through adding more information about Becky’s routine
the opportunities for analysing linguistic forms are increased.
For example, the procedure below could be followed:

Extend the exercise on page 50 by adding sentences about Becky.

Students write sentences that they remember about Becky’s routine.
94 Carlos Islam and Chris Mares

Figure 5.1 Scenario 1, New Horizon 1, p. 50

 5. Adapting Classroom Materials 95

Students underline the verbs in the sentences about Becky.

Students put verbs in two columns, regular and irregular verbs.

She plays tennis well.

She goes to the gym.
She works hard.
She likes to sing.

Regular Irregular
plays goes
works
likes

The following expansion activity provides students with a choice about how
they would like to continue processing the input analytically or globally. It also
provides a choice between visual, auditory or kinaesthetic processing as well as an
opportunity to personalize the input.

Teacher gives students written version of script. Students change script to make
it true for themselves. For example, ‘Every day I wake up at 7:20 in the
morning.’
Or
Student tells a partner his/her daily routine.
Or
In small groups, students mime their daily routine. The other students guess
what’s happening.

Scenario Two

A class of sixteen private language school students in Spain. The students range
from 18 to 46 years old. Ten of the students are women and six are men. The
majority of the students are professional business people but five are under-
graduates at the local university. The students attend the private language school
for three hours a week in the evening and they are in the middle of their third
year of study at the school. They have been classified at a lower-intermediate level
of proficiency and have difficulty in communicating more than simple personal
information.
This group of students needs more opportunities to use English and activities
which engage their interest. The coursebook used for this class is New Headway
Pre-Intermediate (OUP, 2001).

Rationale for Adaptation

The topic, ‘rooms’, has the potential for vocabulary development but would be
more effective with an initial personalized context in order better to engage
96 Carlos Islam and Chris Mares

Figure 5.2 Scenario 2, from New Headway Pre-Intermediate

 5. Adapting Classroom Materials 97

students, activate topic schema, create as well as activate linguistic schema and
create a need for the target vocabulary.
The vocabulary activities, Daily Life, could be expanded by starting with the
following pair of work questions before matching the verbs and nouns in activity 1.

1. Ask a partner:
How many rooms do you have in your house or apartment?
Which room do you use most?
Which room do you use least?
Which is your favourite room?

Replace question 3 in Daily Life with the following:

2. Draw a floor plan of your favourite room and label the furniture and other
features, including wall colours, windows, etc. Describe the room to your
partner, then tell him/her what you do in that room.

Example:
My favourite room is my bedroom. The bed is next to the window. The window
looks out onto the backyard. My computer is on a desk next to my bed . . . The
walls are blue and the curtains are . . . I study in my room, listen to music and
. . . I spend a lot of time in my bedroom.

Scenario Three

A multilingual oral communication class of twelve full-time language students at a

university ESL programme in the USA. The students range in age from 18 to 24.
There are seven women and five men in the class and their nationalities are Saudi
Arabian, Japanese, Korean, Costa Rican, Pakistani, Russian and Venezuelan. They
are all trying to matriculate as undergraduate students in different academic
departments of the university. They are currently attending 20 hours of ESL
classes a week. They are classified as having upper-intermediate and advanced
level proficiency.
This group of students needs interesting and thought-provoking content that
naturally encourages the use of higher-level cognitive skills. The coursebook they
are using is Interchange 3 (CUP, 1991).

Rationale for Adaptation

The topic, ‘dreams’, for the conversation activity (Interchange 3, p. 25, activity 8;
See Figure 5.3) is interesting but has no schema-raising activity to help students
get engaged in the topic. A series of brief questions about dreams would prepare
students for the listening as well as offer further opportunity for spoken inter-
action. This type of schema-raising activity has the potential to activate language
as well as topic schemata with the potential of facilitating student’s comprehen-
sion of the listening text.
98 Carlos Islam and Chris Mares

Figure 5.3 Scenario 3, from Intercharge 3, p. 25, activity 8

The listening section of this unit could be expanded by adding a discussion

activity before the listening on page 25.

1. Ask a partner about his or her dreams:

Do you remember your dreams?
Do you have any recurring dreams (the same dream again and again)?
Have you ever had a nightmare (a bad, scary dream)?
Have you ever kept a dream journal (written down your dreams)?
Can you remember the dreams you had last night?

The post-listening group work (activity 3) does not become redundant, rather the
activity offers a further chance for students to review or develop their ideas.
However, as it stands the activity does not offer any language support and might
leave students unsure how to start or finish their explanations.
The following prompts could be added to activity 3, Group work, on page 25.

2. Start like this:

I remember a dream I had last night/yesterday/a week ago, etc.
 5. Adapting Classroom Materials 99

It was a great/scary/funny/strange dream.

Finish like this:

That’s it. It really was a great/scary/funny/strange dream.

The listening activity could be replaced with a reading activity that encourages
higher-order cognitive skills, or a choice could be offered between the listening
activity or the reading activity below.
Begin with the schema-raising questions in activity 1 above but add the fol-
lowing questions:

1. Do you think dreams have any special meaning?

After students have asked the schema-raising questions, poll the class to see if
anyone believes dreams have a special meaning. Elicit answers. If someone says
yes, try and write a model on the board, such as, ‘Dreams about falling prob-
ably mean you are worried about something.’

2. Read the following paragraph about dreams. Tell a partner if you have had
any dreams like these.

Dreams and their Meanings

We all have dreams and they all mean something, even though we may not
remember them. At least that is what many psychologists believe.
Here is a list of dream topics and the possible interpretations: dreams about
flying mean you want to escape from something; dreams about finding money
mean you need money; dreams about getting gifts also mean you want some-
thing; dreams about being in a strange place mean you are worried about
something; dreams about falling or being chased also mean you are worried
about something. Many of these dreams are anxiety dreams but, as you know,
we dream about different things and the meanings may not always be clear.

3. Can you think of any other dream topics and what they mean? Tell a
partner.

4. Read the dream below and decide what it means. Check your interpreta-
tion with a partner.

A Dream
When I was at high school, I often had the same dream. I was in class, sitting at
my desk listening to the teacher when suddenly I realized that I wasn’t wearing
any trousers! In my dream I felt very hot and uncomfortable and I didn’t know
what to do. At that moment I always woke up sweating and breathing hard.
100 Carlos Islam and Chris Mares

An Interpretation
I guess it means the person was . . . What do you think?

5. After students have talked about their dreams and their possible meaning,
ask some students to retell their dream to the class.

Provide further opportunities for using higher-order cognitive skills by

expanding this activity. Ask students to visit the following websites to read more
about dreams and their meanings.

http://www.dreammoods.com/
http://www.djmcadam.com/dreams.htm

Conclusion
Classroom materials need to be adapted in a principled manner to reflect needs
within particular teaching contexts, current understanding of second language
acquisition and good teaching practices. The three scenarios above exemplify a
wide range of possible teacher choices for adapting published materials and
demonstrate the flexibility and creativity of adaptation.

References
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ing materials’. Practical Papers in English Language Education. Vol. 2. Lancaster:
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Cunningsworth, A. (1995) Choosing Your Coursebook. Oxford: Heinemann.
Madsen, K. S. and Bowen, J. D. (1978) Adaptation in Language Teaching. Boston:
Newbury House.
McDonough, J. and Shaw, C. (1993) Materials and Methods in ELT: A Teacher’s
Guide. London: Blackwell.
Reid, J. (1987) ‘The learning style preferences of ESL students’. TESOL Quarterly,
21(1), 87–111.
Reid, J. (ed.) (1995) Learning Styles in the ESL/EFL Classroom. Massachusetts:
Heinle and Heinle.
Richards, R. with Hull, J. and Proctor, C. (1991) Interchange 3. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Soars, L. and Soars, J. (2001) Headway Pre-Intermediate. Oxford: Oxford University
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