Adapting Materials - sebastian mendoza

Adapting Materials - sebastian mendoza

1. The context of adaptation

   • Adaptation is a process subsequent to, and dependent on, adoption
     • Adoption is concerned with whole course books
     • Adaption concerns parts that make up that whole
     • The adaptation is essentially a process of matching
   • Process of adaptation
     • External factors comprise both the overt claims made about materials and, the characteristics of a particular situations
     • Internal factors are corncerned with content, organization and consistency
   • To consider
     • Before you read on, consider the materials you use most frequently
     • If possible, share your comments with other teachers. You could also discuss the scope you have for adapting materials
     • It will also be useful to think about adaptation from the point of view od the source of the material

2. Reasons for adapting

   • 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 systematically
   • Reading passages contain too much unknown vocabulary
   • Comprehension questions are to easy, because the answer can be lifted directly from the text with no real understanding
   • Listening passages are inahutenthic, because they sound too much like written material being read out
   • Not enough guidance on pronunciation
   • Subject matter innapropiate for learners of this age and intellectual level
   • Photographs and other illustrative material not culturally acceptable
   • Amount of material too much or too little to cover in the time allocated to lessons
   • No guidanvce for teachers on handling group work and role play activities with a large class
   • Dialogues too formal and not 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 test needed

3. Principles and procedures

   • adding
     • extending
       • The materials contain practice in the pronunciation of minimal pairs
       • A second reading passage parallel to the one provided is helpful in reinforcing the key linguistic features
       • Our students find the explanation of a new grammar point rather difficult, so further exercises are added before they begin the practice material
     • including
       • materials are supplemented by putting more into them
     • Expanding
       • They go further than this by bringing about a qualitative as well as a quantitative change
   • Deleting or omtting
     • Substracting
       • Our pronunciation exercises on minimal pairs contain too much general material. Since our students all have the same mother tongue and do not make certain errors, many exercises are inappropriate
       • Although a communicative coursebook has been selected as relevant in our situation, some of the language functions presented are unlikely to be required by learners who will probably not use their English in the target language environment
     • Abridging
       • The materials contain a discussion section at the end of each unit
       • Students on a short course are working with communicative materials because of their instrumental reasons for choosing to learn English.
   • Modifying
     • Rewriting
       • Currently the most frequently stated requirement for a change in focus is for materials to be made 'more communicative'. This feeling is voiced in many teaching situations where textbooks are considered to lag behind an understanding of the nature of language and of students' linguistic and learning needs
     • Restructuring
       • For many teachers who are required to follow a coursebook, changes in the structuring of the class are sometimes the only kind of adaptation possible
   • Simpliflying
     • Sentence structure
       • Sentence length is reduced, or a complex sentence is rewritten as number of simpler ones, for example by the replacement of relative pronouns by nouns and pronouns followed by a main verb
     • Lexical Content
       • So that the number of new vocabulary items is controlled by reference to what students have already learned
     • Grammatical structures
       • For instance, passives are converted to activities; simple past tense to simple presents. etc
   • Reordering
     • For many learners, certainly at intermediate level and above, it is helpful to show the relationship between time reference and grammatical tense in more accurate way
     • The length of the teaching program may be too short for the coursebook to be worked through from beginning to end
     • 'reordering' can include separating items of content from each other as well as regrouping and putting them together

4. A framework for adaptation

   • Choose some materials with which you are familiar, or any other you would like to work with it
   • Decide on any features of the material you would like to change because it is not entirely suitable for your own teaching situation
   • Referring as much as possible to the techniques we have been discussing, draw up some suggestions for how to adapt the material to achieve greater 'congruence'
   • If possible discuss with other colleagues the reason for you decision