CHAPTER V

ADAPTING CLASSROOM MATERIAL

A. Reason for Adaptation
McDonough and Shaw’s list some reason for adaptation with clearly reflects a
concern that communicative language teaching implies an unsystematic approach to grammar
presentation and a belief that a systematic approach to grammar presentation is necessary.
1. Not enough grammar coverage in general
2. Not enough practice of grammar points of particular difficulty to these learners
3. The communicative focus means that grammar is presented unsystematically
4. Reading passages contain too much unknown vocabulary
5. Comprehension questions are too easy, because the answer can be lifted directly from
the text with no real understanding
6. Listening passages are inauthentic, because they sound too much like written material
being read out
7. Not enough guidance on pronunciation
8. Subject matter inappropriate for learners of this age and intellectual level
9. Photographs and other illustrative material not culturally acceptable
10. Amount of material to great/too little to cover in the time allocated to lessons
11. No guidance for teachers on handing group work and role play activities with a large
class
12. Dialogues too formal, and not really representative of everyday speech
13. Audio material difficult to use because of problems to do with room size and technical
equipment
14. Too much or little variety in the activities
15. Vocabulary list and a key to the exercise would be helpful
16. Accompanying tests needed
Cunningsworth in his book “Choosing Your Coursebook (1995)” also provides a list
of possible reasons for adapting materials.
1. The dynamics of the classroom
2. The personalities involved
3. The constraints imposed by syllabuses
4. The availability of resources
5. The expectations and motivations of the learners
 Adapting is also appropriate when materials are not ideal, as presented in the
following:
1. Methods
2. Language content
3. Subject matter
4. Balance of skills
5. Progression and grading
6. Cultural content
Candlin and Breen (1980) focus on adaptation issues that relate to materials
specifically designed for communicative language learning.
1. Communicative materials do not provide enough opportunities for negotiation (personal
or psychological) between the learner and the text.
2. Communicative materials do not provide enough opportunities for interpersonal or
social negotiation between all participants in the learning process, between the learners
and teachers, and learners and learners.
3. Activities and tasks do not promote enough communicative performance
4. Activities and tasks do not promote metacommunicating opportunities
5. Activities and tasks do not promote co-participation
6. Teacher and learners are not involved as co-participants in the teaching and learning
process.
B. Objectives and Technique for Adaptation
McDonough and Shaw start a list of objectives that a teacher may hope to achieve
by adapting classroom materials. In order to get attain greater appropriacy from materials,
you can adapt to:
1. Personalize
2. Individualize
3. Localize
4. Modernize
Islam and Mares, would expand this list to include:
1. Add Real Choice
2. Cater for All Sensory Learning Styles
3. Provide for more learner autonomy
4. Encourage Higher-level Cognitive Skills
5. Make the language input more engaging
C. Techniques for Adaptation
According to McDonough and Shaw (1993) and Cunningsworth (1995) said that there are
five techniques in adapting material to fit a specific class.
1. Adding
In adding the material there are two aspects that must be followed; extending and
expanding. Extending is an activity where the teacher supplies more of the same type of
material and making a quantitative exchange. For example in grammar subject especially
in present perfect, the course book provides 5 question about missing verb. The teacher
can add 5 more questions about present perfect from another course book with same
material. Expanding is adding something different to the material and making qualitative
exchange. For example the teacher needs to be aware in pronouncing regular verbs when
the teacher taught about simple past tense. The course book not addressed this phonetic
issue, so the teacher needs to add the material about phonetic issue to make the reading
or listening more comprehensible.
2. Deleting; subtracting and abridging
Material can be deleted both quantitatively (subtracting) or qualitatively (abridging). For
example in subtracting the teacher can decide to do five questions practicing present
perfect tense. And another example in abridging the teacher may decide that focusing on
attention on pronunciation may inhibit the learner’s fluency and decide not to do any of
the pronunciation exercises in a course book.
3. Simplifying
In simplifying the teacher could be paraphrase the instruction or text to make the
materials more accessible to the learners.
4. Reordering
In reordering the teacher has decided to makes more pedagogic sense of the materials to
sequence activities differently.
5. Replacing material
In replacing material the teacher need to decide whether more appropriate audio or text
material, the teacher should be pay attention to the culture and time for activity and the
teacher can replace the materials depend on the goal of a lesson.
D. Three Example of Materials Adaptation
1. Scenario one
In Japan there is junior high school that consists of 34 students. The students are12 to 13
years old, there are 17 girls and 17 boys. The students have taught English in their
 elementary school but they feel difficult to understand the simple oral communication
and they spend five hours a week in English class. The course book they used is New
Horizon 1 (Tokyo, Shouseki, 2002).
Rationale for adaptation
In this book page 50 presents everyday verb in the simple present. The verbs only
focused on single context and only in writing. The activities lack of kinaesthetic and
auditory sensory input. The materials could be expand by adding a TPR phase at the
beginning to provide kinaesthetic and auditory input to make the students can interpret
the meaning before analysing the input to understand it form. The teacher can extend the
activities on page 50 by adding more information about Becki’s routine. For example,
extend the exercise by adding sentences about Becky, then students write sentences that
they remember about Becky’s routine, students underline the verbs in the sentence about
Becky, and students can put verbs in two columns about regular and irregular verbs.
In expansion activity the teacher can provide the students with a choice about how they
would like to continue the input analytically and globally and also provide a choice
between visual, auditory, kinaesthetic processing. For example, teacher gives students
written version of script. Students change the script into themselves.
2. Scenario two
There is a private class in Spain that consists of sixteen students. The students range
from 18 to 46 years old. Ten are woman and six are man. The majority of the students
are professional business people but five are undergraduates at local university. They
attend at the private for three hours a week in the middle and they are in the middle of
their third year of study at the school. They have been classified at lower-intermediate
level of proficiency and have difficulty in communicating more than simple personal
information. This group of students need more opportunities to use English and activities
which engage their interest. The course book used for this class is New Headway Pre-
Intermediate (OUP,2001).
Rationale for adaptation
The topic is “rooms” and has potential vocabulary for development but it will be more
effective with an initial personalized context in order better to engage students, activate
topic, schema, create as well as activate linguistic schema and create a need for the target
vocabulary. The vocabulary activity like “Daily Life” as a starting activity by pair of
work questions before matching the verbs and nouns activity. On the book replace
 question 3 in “Daily Life” become “Describe your dreaming room and explain it to your
friends!”
3. Scenario three
In University of EFL programme USA there is a multilingual oral communication class
consist of twelve full-time language students. The students range 18 to 24 and there are
seven woman and five men. Their nationalities are Saudi Arabian, Japanese, Korean,
Costa Rican, Pakistani, Russian and Venezuelan. They are trying to matriculate as
undergraduate students in different academic departments of the university. They are
classified as upper-intermediate and advance level proficiency. This group needs
interesting and thought-provoking content that naturally encourages the use of high-level
cognitive skills. The course book they use is Interchange 3 (CUP,1991).
Rationale for Adaptation
The topic “dreams”, for the conversation activity is interesting but has no schema-raising
to help the students got engage the topic. Some questions is needed about dream would
prepare the students for listening session and for speaking interaction. In listening
activity could be expanded by adding a discussion activity about “dream”. In activity 3
can add an activity like sharing your dreams that you remember and tell to other students
it was amazing dream, scare or funny. In this listening activity could be replace with
reading activity to encourage high-order cognitive skills or a choice could be offered
between the listening activity or the reading activity. Begin with question “do you think
dreams have any special meaning?.” Give the students text about dreams and ask them if
they have dream like the text and what the meaning of the dream. Ask the students to
talked about their dream and the meaning of their dream. Ask some students to retell
their dream to the class.