HANOI NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

FACULTY OF ENGLISH

APPLIED LINGUISTICS
MID-TERM ASSIGNMENT

Student’s name: Đỗ Thuý Hồng

DOB: 12/07/1997
Cohort: 31, English Language Teaching Methodology
Lecturer: Lưu Thị Kim Nhung, Ph.D.

Hanoi, May 2022

A new role for course book

When evaluating a coursebook we look for its strengths and weaknesses and for how well
it matches our requirements. We can also explore how far it lends itself to adaption and if
it offers possibilities of further development. Many coursebooks contain a lot of good ideas
for teaching, but the actual examples contain in the book may not be quite right for a
particular class. That’s why the coursebook then take on a new role, as an “ideas bank”, it
means the source for practical examples of ideas for teaching and inspiration stimulating
teachers’s creative potential. The following examples are intended to illustrate how
materials can be adapted, but are not held up as definitive models. They are included in the
hope that they will spark the enthusiasm of readers to use their own creative talents id
adapting their coursebooks when they feel it to be necessary.

Some examples of adapting materials

The first technique for adapting materials is personalizing drills to make them more
relevant. This example comes from the Superkid 6 Book (Krause & Cossu, Pearson
Longman Asia ELT, 2005), a coursebook for young learners.

This is aim to focus on the structure “Have you ever ____?” and to answer it. The drill is
straightforward and gives adequate practice in the mechanics of using “Have you ever
_____?”. Nevertheless, the picture of answer here are set and limited. They are not
identified, so there is no possibility of anything communicative taking place as the drill is
rehearsed in class. It is clearly a mechanical, pre-communicative, and, so long as we realize
this, it provides useful material. Taking the drill as a starting point, we can develop the idea
behind it and make the interaction more real and communicative by personalizing the
content, whilst keeping the focus on the structure. This is one way of doing it:

• Ask the Class to make a list of activities that they have and haven’t done.
• Give some examples using “Have you ever ____?” and answer “Yes” or “No”
• Students then work in pairs or small groups asking and answering questions.
• Introduce sentence “I have never _____” and give examples.
• Students extend their responses to include this: “No, I haven’t. I have never gone
canoeing”.

The significant points are that students are talking about their own experiences in real life,
and are communicating with on another through English, whilst at the same time focusing
on using a particular structure.

Secondly, coursebook can be adapted by using authentic contents. Authentic content means
using real facts and information instead of made-up content. The language used for this
authentic content may itself be authentic, semi-authentic (simplified) or specially written,
depending on the level. The attractively presented reading passage reproduced on pp 142-
3 comes from Fast Forward 2 (Black et al 1987) and gives information about a mythical
island in the Indian Ocean.
The activities involved in the reading passage on pp 142-3 include simple map-reading, a
modified jigsaw reading and interpreting statistics, discussion and simulation. They form
a very well-designed package of activities, with plenty of skills work and student
interaction within and between groups. The subject of all this useful language work,
however, is a non-existent country which, as such, is unlikely to be of interest to anyone,
although students with good geographical knowledge of the area may recognize it as the
Seychelles under a thin disguise! The ideas and the activities are very good, so why not use
them with some authentic content which will be interesting to the students and provide the
opportunity to learn something about the world through English? In this way students'
motivation is increased, the artificial barriers between subject areas are reduced and the
value of English is enhanced through showing how it can give access to information and
knowledge. Using the framework of the coursebook activity, one way of adapting the
material is this:

• Collect information about a country

 • Produce a simple map of the country
• Select short pieces of text on about five different aspects of the country and give
each a heading.
• Simplify text if necessary
• Prepare introduction for setting the scene, using visuals if possible.
• Set questions on map for students to work on in groups
• Collect statistics and set questions on the statistics.
• Design discussion and simulation

Later, making dialogue communicative is also a crucial way to adapt coursebook. Dialogue
work is a necessary part of language learning and helps to develop a degree of fluency,
particularly in the semi-automatic aspects of language
use such as routine exchanges. However, because
they are preordained, coursebook dialogues lack the
unpredictability which is inherent in practically every
authentic interaction. Even 'open dialogues' like the
example in Tieng Anh 11 (Hoang et al, 2014) are
essentially fixed dialogues, which have been gapped.

The participants in the dialogue are told what to say,

and more or less how to say it, giving them little
freedom for self-expression. Equally importantly, at
certain points it is necessary to look at the answer
before formulating the question — exactly the reverse
of what happens in reality. Students need the sort of
practice provided by fixed dialogues, but they also need to progress to less predictable
models of interaction if they are to function in English independently. One stage in
achieving this independence is to use cue cards, which can be easily made, based on course
book dialogues. They are not wholly communicative, but rather a halfway stage between
fixed and completely free dialogues.
 • Turning this dialogue into a pair of cue cards is very simple:
• Get pieces of plain card approximately 12 cm x 8 cm.
• Change each turn in the dialogue into an instruction written in English at a level that
students can understand.
• Write the instructions for Student A on one card in the correct order, numbering
them.
• Do the same for Student B.
• Color code the cards (for example A card has a brown line across the top and B card
a yellow line, C card has an orange line).
• Make sure that students have practiced the same kind of dialogue in a more fixed
form and that they understand how to use the cue cards.

A pair of cards developed from the open dialogue above would look like this:

Adapting outdated coursebook

Teachers and students around the world often find themselves having to use coursebooks
which are old and outdated in content. But some of these coursebooks contain sound ideas
for teaching which are hidden beneath dull presentation or out-of-date topics. Many of
these ideas can be exploited if the presentation is improved and the content is brought up
to date. Here is an exercise taken from Guided Composition Exercises (Spencer 1967),
which, although old and out of print, is a veritable gold/nine of good ideas for teaching
writing skills at sentence and paragraph level. The aim of this exercise is to-select a number
of verbs from a range of alternatives, partly on the basis of style (eg climbed not ascended
the wall), partly according to what are acceptable collocations (eg picked but not plucked
the apples) and partly by recognizing what is normal or logical in behaviour (eg he ran
home, he didn't march or limp). The exercise teaches (and tests) the learner's ability to use
appropriate vocabulary items, selected according to different criteria.

This is the way to exploit the context:

• Select a topical newspaper or magazine article.

• Choose vocabulary items that you want to
explore further.
• Delete these words, creating a gapped text.
• Give the original and alternative vocabulary
items.
• Divide the class into groups.
• Present the activity along these lines: 'Imagine
that you are a group of sub-editors in a
newspaper office and that an article has just been sent in by a junior reporter who is
very indecisive. Sometimes he just can't make up his mind which words to use.
Discuss the alternatives offered and agree on the best word to use in each case. Give
your reasons?
• Compare and discuss choices.
 REFERENCE
1. Cunningsworth, A. (1995), Choosing your coursebook.