CHAPTER 5

Adapting Classroom Materials

Carlos Islam and Chris Mares
Chapter Notes
 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.

 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 course books focused largely on
structure and were heavily influenced by the legacy of grammar
translation methods of teaching.
 Reasons for Adaptation
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.’
(Madsen &Bowen,1978)
 Reasons for Adaptation
McDonough and Shaw’s reasons
They argue that communicative language teaching implies an unsystematic approach to
grammar presentation and a belief that a systematic approach to grammar presentation is
necessary
SO, adaptation is necessary when
 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
Reasons for Adaptation
McDonough and Shaw’s reasons
 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
Reasons for Adaptation
McDonough and Shaw’s reasons
 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
Cunningsworth (1995) draws on a knowledge of learner styles and the
learner as a whole, considerations which are absent from McDonough
and Shaw’s list.

 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:
1. Methods (e.g., an exercise may be too mechanical, lacking in meaning, too complicated).
2. 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).
3. Subject matter (e.g., topics may not be interesting to students or they may be outdated or not
authentic enough).
4. 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).
5. 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).
6. Cultural content (cultural references may need to be omitted or changed).
7. Image (a coursebook may project an unfriendly image through poor layout, low quality visuals, etc.).
Published materials are limited: not many opportunities for real
communication; instead oral practice of linguistic structures
(Candlin & Breen, 1980)
Communicative materials do not provide enough
 opportunities for negotiation (personal or psychological) between the learner and the
text.
 opportunities for interpersonal 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.
 metacommunicating opportunities.
 co-participation. Teachers and learners are not co-participants in the teaching–learning
process.
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.
In order to attain greater appropriacy from materials, you can adapt to:
 Personalize
 Individualize
 Localize
 Modernize (McDonough and Shaw)
Islam and Mares’s list:

 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

Learners decide how they want to learn rather than what they want to
learn.
 Preferred cognitive learning style (style matching) or to try a
cognitive style that is less comfortable (style stretching).
 Learners could choose between the styles (i.e., of field dependent or
independent, global or analytical, impulsive or reflective, etc)
Cater for All Sensory Learning Styles

Most learners have strong kinaesthetic learning style

preferences.
 However, course books cater for learners’ auditory and
visual sides, they rarely provide any opportunity for
learners to receive kinaesthetic input.
 Provide for More Learner Autonomy
Adapting materials to help learners acquire language outside the classroom
or without the guidance of the teacher (e.g., 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 for comprehension questions).
 Activities that encourage learners to discover independently rules and
conventions about the target language could also have the potential to
create autonomous learners.
Encourage Higher-level Cognitive Skills

Adapt materials in such a way that students predict, infer, make

connections and associations and visualize.
 Higher-level cognitive activities engage and motivate students
 They help them transfer language skills already developed in their
first language to the target language.
 Make the Language Input More Engaging

There are different ways to this:

 to rewrite or re-record text, to give it more authenticity or interest.
 to change the form of input (e.g., a reading text as input might be
presented as a game or interactive activity, rather than simply as a
reading passage.
 to make input more engaging (e.g., 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).
Techniques for Adaptation

 Adding; extending and expanding

 Deleting; subtracting and abridging
 Simplifying
 Reordering
 Replacing material
(See the slides of the previous lesson)
 Three Examples of Materials Adaptation
Your assignment for the next lesson:

 Read three real teaching scenarios in Chapter 5 (Islam &

Mares)
 Describe the context and reasons for adaptation
 What adaptations are suggested for each course book?
 What is your opinion on the effectiveness of adaptations?
 Did it make the materials better to each teaching scenario?.