UNIT 2: MATERIALS ADAPTATION

WHAT IS MATERIALS ADAPTATION?

Materials adaptation involves changing existing materials so that they become
more suitable for specific learners, teachers, or situations. In preparation for a
particular lesson, teachers may, for example: 
 decide to use only part of a unit
 add or delete texts or activities
 replace or supplement texts or activities with
 ones from other sources
When they teach this lesson, they may make further on-the-spot changes in
response to the learners' reactions. They may, for instance:
 shorten or lengthen an activity
 skip an activity and go on to the next one
 change the order of activities.
What teachers are doing here is in fact materials adaptation. Interestingly, materials
adaptation seems to be something teachers do a lot but which is rarely researched
or included on training courses. Consequently, teachers may not have any help but
their own personal beliefs, experience, and intuition in adapting materials. This
chapter aims to help teachers reflect upon their own practice and identify principles
and systematic procedures for materials adaptation.
Task 2.1
Reflecting Upon Your Own Adaptation Process
1. Select a unit of materials.
2. Adapt the unit for a lesson.
3. Note down the procedures you used in adapters of the materials.
4. Teach your adapted unit.
5. Revise, if necessary, your adapted materials
REASONS FOR ADAPTING MATERIALS
Why do teachers adapt materials? It all starts with the teacher intuitively feeling,
‘Mmm. Something is not quite right.' Teachers may feel uncomfortable because of
a mismatch with:
 their teaching environment (national, regional, institutional, cultural, etc),
e.g., the materials have not been designed for the cultural and ethnic
diversity of your class
  their learners (age, language level, prior learning experience, learning styles,
etc) e.g., the materials favor analytical learning styles
 their own preferences (personality; teaching styles; beliefs about language
learning and teaching), e.g., the materials offer a lot of communicative
activities but a teacher fears she will lose control of the class by doing them.
 the course objectives (syllabus, institutional targets, etc), e.g., the materials
focus on teaching grammar but the course objectives focus on helping
learners to develop communication strategies.
 materials (texts, tasks, activities), e.g., the text is interesting but the activities
are boring and do not seem to fully exploit the text.
MATERIALS EVALUATION AND ADAPTATION
 In Chapter 1 we emphasized the importance of articulating a set of principles
before doing an evaluation in order to make it more systematic, principled
and rigorous. The principles included the teachers' own theories as well as
learning theories based on research findings. Trying to write evaluation
criteria helps teachers to articulate their sub-conscious beliefs. 
 When teachers feel the need for materials adaptation, they are sensing the
mismatch between the materials and their theories. Including the evaluation
stage in materials development helps teachers to identify what may be
causing the mismatch. 
 The evaluation process does not always have to be a thorough one for
adaptation. What teachers need to do is to identify reasons why they think
materials adaptation is necessary. Then they can list the most relevant and
important evaluation criteria and evaluate the materials before they start the
process of adaptation.
Task 2.2
A Systematic Approach to Materials Adaptation
1. Select another unit of materials.
2. List reasons for adapting the unit.
3. Based on your reasons, list three universal evaluation criteria
and three local evaluation criteria.
4. Do an evaluation of the chosen unit.
5. From the evaluation results, list three objectives for
your adaptation.
6. Adapt the unit in the way you want to use it with your class.
7. Teach your class with the adapted unit.
8. Do a whilst- and post-evaluation, if you can, to see if your three
adaptation objectives in the 5 above have been achieved.
PRINCIPLES OF MATERIAL ADAPTATION
It is important that the processes of materials evaluation, adaptation, and
development are principled in that they derive from a critical examination of
theories of language, language learning, and language teaching.
Unlike materials evaluation, materials adaptation involves sequencing activities. In
other words, teachers need to consider how principles are realized in their teaching
procedures. For example, one learning principle may say, 'Deep processing of
language is required for effective and durable learning. This means that the focus of
the learner should normally be on meaning.' On the other hand, another principle
recommends, 'The learners' attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the
input.' Both principles seem valid and important and do not contradict each other in
the evaluation process.
In adapting and writing materials, however, the two principles cannot be realized in
one activity.
The two seemingly contradictory principles can be sequenced as, *Focus first on
the meaning then on language'. This means arranging activities in which learners
listen to or read a text (e.g. story, joke, riddle) for the sake of understanding and
enjoying it in a meaning-focused and holistic way before their attention is drawn to
the linguistic features in an analytical and discrete manner. This sequence reflects
more closely how we process language in real-life communication.
We normally pay most attention to meaning and to communication outcomes and
only notice language when we need and want to. Giving priority to meaning in the
teaching procedures also satisfies many other principles that emphasize the
importance of affect, multi- dimensional processing, and mental connection in the
learning process. 
Other examples of sequencing principles may include:
• Reception before production 
Provide rich, varied, and frequent exposure to language in use through listening and
reading before inviting learners to speak or write.
• Start and end with the learners
In order to achieve self-involvement, start with what learners know (e.g. a local
story) and connect their lives to the new content (e.g. a story from another culture).
Then end the unit with the learners (e.g. the learners re-write the new story in their
own culture).
• Listening before reading
Meaning construction during reading is sound-based. At lower levels, provide
listening activities (e.g. listen to the teacher read a story, listen and mime, listen and
draw) before inviting learners to read a text.
Task 2.3
Principled Materials Adaptation
1. Write a list of the changes you made in your adapted unit in Task 2.2
2. Write down the principles behind each change.
3. Put together all the learning principles you listed in Chapter 1 and those you
have found useful in Chapter 2.
[Answers in Appendix]

PROCEDURES OF MATERIALS ADAPTATION

What are the procedures of Materials Adaptation? The sequence of materials
adaptation may be described
1. Profiling of teaching context
2. Identifying reasons for adaptation
3. Evaluating -
4. Listing objectives
5. Adapting
6. Teaching
7. Revising

Teachers should not feel that materials adaptation is time-consuming or demanding.

This is an idealistic model suitable for self-development or for development
sessions with colleagues. In reality, the adaptation process may not have all the
elements or may not happen in the same sequence. The whole process is likely to
be much more organic, intuitive and spontaneous. It would be useful for you,
however, to make the effort to go through the systematic process of materials
adaptation now and then. The more systematic training you do, the more skillful
you are likely to become in conducting automatic and theoretically sound materials
adaptations. You could also benefit from team adaptation in which a group of
colleagues get together and go through the process together.
Who does materials adaptation?
People who adapt materials include:
1. Teachers
2. Materials writers
3. Publishers
4. Learners
An interesting area to explore is the involvement of learners in materials
adaptation. Learner-centred teaching has been widely advocated, so it seems to
make sense to involve learners in the process of materials adaptation too. Saraceni
(2003) discusses such leaner
centred materials adaptation.
What are the techniques for materials adaptation?
The various techniques can be divided into three main categories in terms of
quantity: Plus (+), Minus (-) or Zero (O) i.e. modification without changing
quantity.

CONDUCTING MATERIALS ADAPTATIONS

From experience we have found the most effective way of conducting a materials
adaptation is to:
• have a bank of evaluation criteria that you can select from
• have a large bank of categorized materials that you can readily retrieve for
adaptation (e.g. poems, stories, drawings, cartoons, newspaper clippings, jokes,
games, riddles, magazine articles). Your categories can be based on topics, activity
types, teaching objectives, etc.
• have colleagues with whom you can share resources and who are willing to go
through the adaptation process together
• have colleagues who are happy to give you feedback on your adapted materials
• be in an environment in which materials evaluation, adaptation and development
are encouraged and teachers' time and efforts are acknowledged
• revisit adapted materials and improve them.
Task 2.4
Re-adapting your adapted materials
Use the systematic and principled process suggested above to re-adapt your
adapted unit of materials in Task 2.1.

CONCLUSION
Materials adaptation skills may be needed most by teachers who feel they are
unable to produce their own materials (e.g. because of lack of time, of expertise, or
of encouragement from the institutions they work for). No published coursebooks
can possibly cater for every teacher, learner or learning situation. Thus, each
teacher has to take on the responsibility of materials adaptation in order to ensure
an optimal match between the materials and the particular teaching context. 
The systematic, rigorous, and principled approach to materials adaptation suggested
above can help you fulfil such a responsibility. Adapting materials can not only
help you to critically appreciate existing materials but also help you to learn a lot
about materials, about learning and teaching, and about yourself.
Most important of all is that adapting materials can help you produce materials that
you want to teach because you enjoy teaching them. If whilst-use and post-use
evaluation can be included in the process, you can feel confident that your students
are enjoying your adapted materials and that they are learning the target language
successfully. Furthermore, you may eventually realize that it is possibly, much
easier and more enjoyable to develop your own materials rather than being
restricted by existing materials. The materials adaptation process is a great
preparation for writing materials of your own.
Task 2.5
What Do You Think?
How do you think you can apply what you have learned from this chapter to
your own teaching situation?