This seminar began with the metaphors teachers and learners have for the use of course books, one of which caught my eye as it reflects the social-cultural beliefs embedded in education in China. I would like to talk about the implications of this metaphor and discuss the adaptation and supplementation of course books within my context. Finally, my own understanding will be provided.

“There is value in verbalizing attitudes and metaphoric language is particularly revealing of the subconscious beliefs and attitudes that underlie consciously held opinions.”

McGrath, 2006: 173

In China, the value of education can be best informed by this saying “golden mansions and Yan Ru-yu (a legendary beauty) are both to be found in books” or rather “as long as one studies hard and achieves success in education, then wealth, high-paying jobs and beautiful women will all come his way”. Obviously, this metaphor indicates education is regarded as a jumping board to achieve social mobility. The mentality originates from the feudal imperial examination system in dynastic China, a method to recruit learned talents into the government in a society where the government service was considered the most honourable and worthwhile occupation of all.  The openness and social mobility it facilitated attracted talents from all walks of life and focused the nation’s intellectual resources toward examination and bureaucratic activity. This system existed for around 1300 years and has generated long-term persistence in the development process through the cultural elements embedded. Therefore, despite the change in educational institutions from one deeply embedded in Confucian classics to Western-style education, such belief that the academic success through the intense competition in national examinations makes one’s promising future life is still firmly held by Chinese people.

Maotanchang: China’s Biggest ‘Exam Factory’ for ‘Gaokao’

Thousands of people see off middle school graduates to take Gaokao college entrance exams, in Maotanchang township, Anhui Province. [youth.cn]

Adapting and supplementing in my context

1.Why and what?

Majority of teachers agree that adapting and supplementing materials is necessary but they have different reasons for doing these. Two most frequently cited purposes are “to maximize the appropriacy in the context by changing some of the internal characteristics” (McDonough and Shaw, 1993; 85) and to compensate for the intrinsic deficiencies in the materials such as out-of-datedness (Madsen & Bowen, 1978). In my first post, I addressed the needs in the exam-driven context especially when the public examinations are incompatible with syllabus and course books. In this case, which syllabus to follow can be mainly determined by the teacher’s beliefs which constitute “the information, attitudes, values, expectations, theories, and assumptions about teaching and learning that teachers build up over time and bring them to the classroom (Richards 1998; 66). What’s more, the teacher’s beliefs are also shaped in a social constructive environment where some teachers’ individual characteristics, as well as contextual requirements, may constrain certain types of behaviour or habituate those allowed forms of behaviour (Richards & Pennington 2016).

Considering the social-cultural value in education mentioned above, it is not surprising that majority of teachers follow the exam syllabus by only teaching the linguistics knowledge such as vocabulary and grammar required by the exam syllabus and replace the communicative activities in the coursebook with standardized examination exercise format (see the picture below). Worth mentioning here is that 3 types of course books produced by different national publishing houses are imposed on regional schools in my province but the identical examination paper is nationally applied, which inevitably raises the question among teachers which coursebook helps achieve higher marks and therefore could undermine the authority of course books.

reading material in our course book 

standard reading assessment in the examination paper

To compensate for the deficiency caused by out-of-datedness of the content in the course book because they have remained in use for more than 10 years, teachers tend to use extracts relevant to the topic from media as supplemental materials such as newspaper articles or videos. But the most frequently used supplement materials are worksheets in the form of standardized exam paper or past exam papers aiming to memorize the linguistic knowledge and develop exam skills.

2.How and when?

As the process of adaptation and supplementation inform the evaluation decisions in teachers’ using the course books, it makes sense to teachers that they adapt materials when planning a lesson by selecting, deleting, adding or changing some tasks or sequence of tasks, task input and expected output (McGrath 2013). Besides, research (Richards 1998b) indicates that experienced teachers can be more capable of adapting planned materials, particularly tasks spontaneously in class for the sake of time management or as a result of responding to learners’ needs. In a word, the process of adaptation and supplementation can be proactive and reactive depending on practitioners’ understanding of the learning objectives, learners’ needs together with the perceptions of themselves and self-efficacy (McGrath 2013).

3. My reflection

This seminar was thought-provoking as I realized the ideas of adaptation and supplementation are too narrow in my context either due to much focus on exams or for lack of clear objectives. I have noticed some teachers almost totally abandon the course books. They develop the linguistic competence by only teaching the vocabulary and grammar in the course book, which McGrath (2002) considers as a high-risk strategy because large-scale cutting of course books may make learners feel at a loss. Regarding the 4 skills, they tend to rely on massive drill and practice with past exam papers to improve marks on reading, writing and listening assessment. Systematic and comprehensive training of enhancing skills and developing strategies seem to be neglected. The kind of adaptation and supplementation could possibly cause boredom and demotivation among teenagers.

Such beliefs as developing learners’ values and attitudes are imposed on language teaching and highlighted by the educational administration. Most supplement materials, which have little to do with language learning, are used to achieve this goal. For example, there may be no communicative or linguistic-related task accompanying the video played in class but simply to arouse learners’ emotional responses to patriotism. Hopefully, more training about the material use will be given in my context to fulfil such goals as personalization, individualization and motivation.

Reference list:

Madsen, H. S. & Bowen, J. D. (1978) Adaptation in Language Teaching. Rowley, MA.: Newbury House.

McDonough, J. & Shaw, C. (1993) Materials and Methods in ELT: A Teacher’s Guide. Oxford: Blackwell.

McDonough, J., et al. (2013) Materials and Methods in ELT: A Teacher’s Guide. (3nd edn) Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

McGrath, I. (2002) Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

McGrath, I. (2006) Teachers’ and learners’ images for coursebooks. ELT Journal60 pp.171-180.

Pennington, M.C. & Richards, J.C. 2016; 2015;, “Teacher Identity in Language Teaching: Integrating Personal, Contextual, and Professional Factors”, RELC Journal, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 5-23.

Richard, J. C. (ed.), 1998. Beyond Training. Cambridge University Press.