Adapting Classroom Materials

Adapting Classroom Materials

1. Reasons for adaptation

   • To make them as accessible and useful to learners as posible. Materials and methods in ELT
     • (1993) quote that ‘Effective adaptation is a matter of achieving ‘‘congruence’’.
       • teaching materials, methodology, Also, the Good teacher is based on students, course objectives, the target language and its context, and the teacher’s own personality and teaching style.’
     • Adaptations materials
       • - The dynamics of the classroom, The personalities involved, The constraints imposed by syllabuses, The availability of resources, The expectations and motivations of the learners,
         • Also, adaptations is effectively when the material has methods, language content, examples, cultural content, balance of skills

2. Techniques

   • Extending
     • the teacher supplies more of the same type of material, thus making a quantitative change in the material.
   • Expanding
     • classroom material is different from extending in that it adds something different to the materials; the change is qualitative.
   • Deleting
     • Subtracting and Abridging As with the technique of adding, material can be deleted both quantitatively (subtracting) or qualitatively (abridging).
   • 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.
   • reordering
     • When reordering, the teacher has decided that it makes more pedagogic sense to sequence activities differentl
   • 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.

3. Objectives and Techniques for Adaptation

   • There is a list of objectives that a teacher may hope to achieve by adapting classroom materials.
     • - Personalize - Individualize - Localize - Modernize
       • To do that yoiu must to follow some step or know some concepts in which you able to understand better the material adaptation
         • Add real choice
           • learners deciding how they want to learn rather than what they want to learn
             • 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
         • Cater for all sensory learner styles
           • aimed at identifying preferred sensory learning styles
             • learners have strong kinaesthetic learning style preferences
         • 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
             • Activities that encourage learners to discover independently rules and conventions about the target language
         • Encourage higher-level cognitive skills
           • adapting materials in such a way as to require students to hypothesize, predict, infer, make connections and associations and visualize
         • Make the language input more accessible / Make the language input more engaging
           • to change the form of input
           • to change the nature of the tasks
           • learners still demonstrate comprehension or a lack of comprehension but without direct testing and the risk of failure

4. Adavantages

   • The materials are accesible and useful to the students
   • The materials will be according with the students contaxt and way to learn
   • Differents tecniques to develop and share the material with the students
   • Make the classes more dynamic and didactic way
   • Syllabuses

5. Disadvatanges

   • Socio-culturar aspects and enviorements
   • Not all the learners will have the same response with the materials
   • Look an appropiate way to share the material