Materials Adaptation | the reasons I adapted the coursebook

“Clearly, what actually happens in classrooms using published materials is that there is a complex trade-off between the three major elements in the equation: the materials, the teacher and the learners.” (Maley, 2011: 379)

In this post, I would like to share with you the reasons I adapted the coursebook in Japan.

Like Maley (2011) said, even though the published materials writers are aware that all learners, teachers and classroom situations are different and unpredictable, they need to predetermine all these aspects. Furthermore, between the three major elements: the materials, the teacher and the learners, there may be a close fit, but there will never be a perfect fit. There is also occasionally a distance between the materials and learners needs at a particular moment. Therefore, “the materials can be conceived of as constituting a constraint upon the individual teacher’s sense of what may be appropriate at a given pedagogical moment” (Maley, 2011: 380).

The materials can be adapted to focus on learners’ needs and teachers can play the role of mediators between them. In my context (a Japanese junior secondary school), all materials, particularly coursebooks, are made by Japanese private coursebooks publishers. After the coursebooks are approved by the Japanese government: Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), they are supplied to Japanese students. In terms of content of the coursebooks, basically English conversations between Japanese students and students or people from overseas are described as a sequence of short story in each chapter. Since the government has emphasised on developing communicative competence in students, the coursebook I have used was made to facilitate pair-work activities. Students can be each character in the story and practise the conversation in a pair.

However, students need to prepare for the senior secondary school and university entrance examinations that exclude a speaking section. Hence, I needed to teach English to prepare them for the exams and to develop their speaking skills for the objectives by the government at the same time. Even though I personally believed that students needed to develop their peaking skills as a real needs in communication, I had to focus on reading and listening comprehension most of the time. Thus, in order to manage to develop those skills in students, I adapted the coursebook with a way of reducing and omitting tasks, adding activities and supplementing teacher-made handouts.

In the seminar (week4), we discussed how, when and why we adapted the coursebook and supplemented the teacher-made handouts as in a group. People in our group have experienced in the different contexts. Thus, it was interesting that each opinion varies differently. Particularly, we focused on ‘why’ we adapted the coursebook.

WHY?

1. To make it fun
2. To make it simpler
3. To increase communication
4. To include tasks which are missing
5. To prepare for entrance examination
6. To save time
7. To make it work in a large classroom

In our group, we all agreed 1: to make the coursebook fun. Making its contents game-like can be beneficial for attracting learners to learning English.

Last three were the reasons I adapted the coursebook. Since I needed to take the exams preparation and the government’s objectives into account, I supplemented the coursebook with the teacher-made handouts. The framework of handout was given by my experienced colleague teacher, and I put the English story of content on the left side and its Japanese translation on the right side. The English transcription is for a gap-fill activity with a listening exercise. Below both transcriptions, there are five questions based on the story for reading comprehension. On back of the handout, students can practise writing English transcription and try one question from previous entrance exams.

Instead of taking time for English-Japanese translation in a classroom, I saved the time by giving Japanese translation to students. This is because they wanted and depended on Japanese translation, I gave it to them so that I could focus on other speaking activities in-class and they could study and review reading comprehension out-of-class by themselves with Japanese translation. Furthermore, since the number of students was 40 in a class and the classroom was a quite small space, it was difficult to make students leave their seats and do activity in a group every class. Hence, I occasionally put them in pairs with their next peer and they helped each other at the gap-fill activity and practised English conversation. (Please click the image to view)

There might be various reasons that English teachers adapt materials according to their students’ needs. For me, I adapted the coursebook by the reasons I mentioned above and also by my experience when I was a secondary student. All my English teachers adapted the coursebooks at that time and it seemed a nature act as teachers adapting the coursebooks. However, when I became one of them and adapted the coursebook in my context, I was often confronted with a dilemma between students’ short-term needs, long-term needs and my beliefs. This could be challenging but thinking how I could deal with the circumstances in the process of adaptation is essential for development myself as a teacher.

Manami

References

Jolly, D., & Bolitho, R. (2011). A framework for materials writing. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching (2nd ed., pp. 107– 134). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Maley, A. (2011). Squaring the circle – reconciling materials as constraint with materials as empowerment. In B. Tomlinson (Ed.), Materials development in language teaching (2nd ed., pp. 379–402). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McGrath, I. (2002). Materials evaluation and design for language teaching. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Mishan, F., & Timmis, I. (2015). Materials development for TESOL. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Tomlinson, B. (2011). Materials development in language teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tomlinson, B. (2012). Materials development for language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 45(2), 143–179.