Adapting and supplementing
Every institution tries to choose the best suitable course book but yet, it won’t work without adapting or supplementing, even if it was designed locally or by the institution itself for its own use, as many schools tend to do nowadays, simple because there are no identical learners, needs or teachers.
Every teacher adapts materials to suit his/her learners’ needs by using a number of techniques: modernizing, simplifying, personalizing, localizing, editing or expanding, Elis,M(1986:47).
Sometimes we have to adapt materials simply because they are out of date or they aren’t culturally or politically sensitive, lacking on authenticity, to make sure that they met learners’ and teachers’ needs.
There are various forms of adaptation: extemporisation,extension,exploitation.
Extemporisation, usually oral and spontaneous. It quite often takes place, when you have to cover the class you are unfamiliar with ,or there are a lot of new students and their abilities or needs don’t match to what you have or prepared to teach.
Extension, providing additional material. e.g. an extra grammar exercise from another source. Personally, I can’t imagine a lesson without extension as there are never enough of activities or tasks for learners to understand and learn the new piece of material unless it’s personally designed for a particular learner group.
Exploitation. Creative way of presenting materials.
Deleting or omitting materials
Rewriting, making it more personal, communicative.
Reordering. There are some course books that don’t follow the rules of second language acquisition: e.g. present simple is given before present continuous and etc.
Adapting is incredibly important in teaching or any other industries as we all try to make our work more relevant to our learners, customers, and etc.
It’s always easier and more effective to follow some patterns, rules or frameworks when selecting a coursebook, designing, adapting or supplementing materials . I found the following framework from McDonough, Jo(2013:77) handy and easy to follow:
1. Adding
2. Deleting or omitting
3. Modifying
4. Simplifying
5. Re-ordering

Why supplementing?
Teaching is a creative process and it’s impossible to get away with only adapting materials.
Learners and teachers themselves always need something new, effective, fun, vibrant, tailored, catering their needs, demand and popularity for blended learning. Supplementing is crucial as it helps to fill in the gaps in a course book or syllabus , make learning more fun, boost motivation, especially at exam preparation, when the activities can be pretty daunting. Why not throw some worksheets, videos or even computerized worksheets to bring in some fresh air for students or teachers themselves when lacking in motivation and feeling tired with doing the activities, which are dull or not working for learners.
Supplementing by using published materials is quick and easy but not necessarily as effective as designing own material, which can be time-consuming but worthwhile. It’s vital to follow principles for developing materials when trying to design own worksheet for supplementing or using ready materials to ensure that it does do the job, not just irrelatively feeling the gap. It’s hard to find a ready material to tick off all the boxes, such as meeting your learners’ needs, their aptitude, level age and so on. Being very busy it’s unrealistic to have always your own worksheets but it’s necessary to adapt, supplement, omit or changed published material to make it suitable for your learners.
This summer I have mainly worked with young learners aged between 14-18 years old from Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe. Each group came for two to three weeks . I discussed and analyzed learners needs with each group, and the students wish was: to brush up grammar(we agreed on what they would like to be covered), have fun dynamic lessons, plenty of speaking, videos, games and no books. I wasn’t put off by my learners rejecting the use of the coursebook we were giving as I like being eclectic and try to choose the topics which are interesting for the learners in order to make it engaging and fun.
As I have mentioned earlier the learners I worked with had a strong knowledge of grammar and they wanted simply revise it to make sure there are aren’t any gaps or they use it correctly and do it in a communicative way.
Here is the example of supplementing and adapting to the second condition for English file pre-intermediate group of students. I decided to go simple, considering the level of the group and chose the theme for the grammar point: ‘ What would you do if……?’ Also, as I have mentioned earlier the students weren’t very eager on using the book, so I decided to use only p.66 from Unit 6 and supplement it with various activities.
1. In a group of four or five students had to imagine that they are on the boat in the open sea and they had time to take only five things with them before their boat sank.
2. Students had to decide on the items in their groups and then had to justify their chose before the class and the rest of the class had to comment on their decision.

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3. After that, each group had to choose the cutout situations and see if they would survive on the island with the items they chose. It was very fun activity and sparked a lot of discussions, debate and practice of grammar point as the students tried to come up with the ideas how they would survive on the island full of snakes or zombies.
4. At the next stage, the students had to speculate about the images, guess where this place is and what things, animals, insects they have to be aware of when visiting those places.

Sand dune landscape, Sossusvlei, Namib-Naukluft National Park, Namibia, World Heritage Site

5. Next, the learners were given a ‘survival test’ from New English file page 66(I have noticed that any quiz or test always works really well with all learners, especially teenagers, and they find it very engaging. Students had to do the test in their groups and then compare their answers with other groups, trying to work out the right answer. After that, the learners were given the correct answers and we revised the form.

pre-int-p-66

6. In order to make sure that the learners got the form and used it correctly and ‘fluently, naturally’, I came up with the next activity using a video: ‘ The Blackhole’, which I came across on Facebook.

7. First, I elicited what they know about the black holes and what they are.
8. Next students watched the video  and had to guess what a man from the video would do with the black hole.
9. After the learners finished watching the video, they were given an image of the black hole >>IMAGE and had to discuss in their groups what they would to with it if they had one. It was a great opportunity to practice the form, the students were carried away by their imagination that it didn’t feel like practicing the grammar point. They came up with various ideas, such as they would use it to through in all the rubbish when tidying up the room, a disposal for annoying boy/girlfriends, traveling, even using for lessons.

Sum up:

Did this supplementation work? I think yes. I did it to:
a) Provide additional material to practice the form
b) It was fun, more personal, student-centered(not only increasing the learners speaking time but also meeting their interests and needs, came up with the activities they like and enjoy).
c) Made it more communicative allowing plenty of opportunities to practice the form.

Bibliography:

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

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

McGrath, I. (2013) Teaching Materials and the Roles of EFL/ESL Teachers: Practice and Theory. London: Bloomsbury.

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

Material Design: Principles and Frameworks

At our seminar on Material designing and Framework we were asked to come up with some principles we think teachers and material writers should follow when designing materials. It was an interesting and challenging task as all of us create materials for our learners by simply following our intuition and making sure that learners find the materials we make interesting and engaging, which is one of the first and common answer the experienced writers give when asked what principles and framework they follow when writing a course book. Saying that, after have produced and used the materials you start to understand what worked, what didn’t and try to work out why. Unconsciously we evaluate our materials by going through the principles: was it engaging, age appropriate, did it have pedagogical realization, was it politically and culturally sensitive, did it meet students’ needs and expectations and etc. Principles and framework are crucial for material designing and there is plenty of written information on them can be found in (Hadfield 2014; Tomlinson 2013; Tomlinson 2013). Principles contain the aim for writing materials and framework is a guideline on how to do so.
During the task, we came up with a lot of principles and then had to narrow them down to the ones we were given by Paul. It was very hard to agree on, which ones to keep. Personally, I believe that selecting the principles when writing materials have also be done by taken on board who you write this material for. Is it a global coursebook, are you writing it for a particular purpose, institution or a country, as learners are different and have their own learning styles in different countries. Here are some important principles which we came up with for a global coursebook , after trying to narrow it down.
1. Materials should be learner-centered or materials should address the need for student centeredness (Tomlinson, 2011).
Through my practice, I have learned that student centeredness promotes students’ engagement , learning and has better learning outcomes. Everyone in our group has agreed on student centeredness being one of the most important principles when designing materials, but what is student centeredness . At the beginning of my teaching practice I understood and treated it as using tasks allowing and increasing students’ speaking time by ‘invisibly’ correcting and monitoring them. However ,with the time I have understood that student-centredness is not only providing learners with the materials allowing them speaking to each other using the target language but taking on board students’ age, interests, cultural background, needs, task design, instructions, and context. Materials should be personalized and engaging , giving a ground for real and meaningful participation.

2. Materials should encourage intellectual, aesthetic and emotional involvement (Tomlinson, 2011).
This principle is introduced by Tomlinson (2010). Language is the mechanism we use for communication and what we want to communicate has a wide spectrum of topics. This principle is one of the most important to me as learning a language is not only about input and output, lexis and syntax : it is about being able to think and communicate in a target language , being able to express our thoughts and needs, get on with the daily routine without getting upset or being put off by the failure to do so. Materials should contain more engaging exercises and use more interesting content as well as provide more access for students through the use of technology and give them an opportunity to practice, explore and expand their knowledge.
3.Materials should encourage learners to apply their developing skills to the world beyond the classroom (Nunan, 1988).
.Everybody in our group has agreed that this is one of the key principles. As teachers we can only provide learners with the small amount of knowledge, give them the base, guide them but the main process of acquiring the language is to bring the knowledge out of the classroom into the real world practice and experiment with them. I have noticed that better learners are the ones who are more independent , confident , have a strong factor of external or internal motivation and have a degree of autonomy when learning the language.
In my online teaching practice , I mainly work with adults and have to admit the ones who have no other choice as just to through themselves into the target language environment because of studies, kids, work have much quicker and significant progress, they notice the language, pick up new lexis, learn how to work out the meaning from the context without being able to understand every single word. Therefore, the classroom is only the ‘base’ in their overall learning and the real learning has to take place in outside world by the learners themselves.
4.Materials should provide personal rather than mechanical practice (Bell & Gower, 1998)
From my own personal experience of learning a language, I know that mechanical practice never worked well for me, but it helped me to remember some cliché or phrases which I later on used in practice trying to blend it in the context. That is why I understand some students who enjoy it and use it as a safety blanket, relying on it when practicing outside the classroom. However, I strongly believe that one of our strongest memory is an emotional memory and it is easier to remember new lexis when we make associations and connections with things on a personal level. Therefore, to facilitate the learners’ development we should promote the use of experiential learning and the ability to personalize content in order to engage.
5.Materials should be relevant to students’ needs and contexts (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987).
Every time when I take on a new student or a group I try to find out as much as possible about learners, their needs, interest. At online school I work for we have always asked our students to write about their needs, learning experience(what worked, didn’t work for them in the past), their expectations, interests, some information about themselves(family, hobby and ect.), how long they have been learning the language and what they would like to focus on the lessons. This information is sent to the teacher prior the lessons, allowing better planning and meeting students needs and expectations . It is hard to do by using only global course books but we always can adapt, supplement or create our own materials.
Every single process requires an order, algorithm, procedure to follow so the same should be done with the material writing and designing. There is a big choice of principles and frameworks offered by ELT researchers ,but being a teacher not a professional material writer ,personally I prefer the principles offered by Jolly and Bolitho( in Tomlinson 2011:113) and find it easy to apply them to my material writing:
 Identification of needs for materials
 Exploration of materials
 Contextual realization of materials
 Pedagogical realization of materials
 Production of materials
 Student use of materials
 Evaluation of materials against agreed objectives
However, it’s suggested that the final part of an evaluation of materials is not necessarily to be evaluated by students, which contradicts to one of the principles of ‘analysing students’ needs. From my experience material have to be evaluated both, by learners and teachers, to see if it caters to their needs and if it works. At our workshops, we did mention earlier the example of presenting Simple Present before Simple Continues which has been corrected in recent publications and there have been done many other changes, presumably based on the teachers’ evaluation who in their turn get the feedback from their learners.

Bibliography:

Hutchinson, T. & Waters, A. (1987) English for Specific Purposes: A Learning‐centred Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tomlinson, B. (2012) “Materials Development for Language Learning and Teaching”, Language Teaching, 45 (02) pp. 143-179.

Johnson, K. (2003) Designing Language Teaching Tasks, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bell,J & Gowe,R(1998) Writing course materials for the world: a great compromise. In Tomlinson,B. Material Development in Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press (107-8; 116-129).

Tomlinson, B. (2011) Materials Development in Language Teaching, 2nd Ed, Cambridge Language Teaching Library, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pre-Use Evaluation of ‘ English Unlimited’ B1, Unit 4
Materials evaluation is as important as writing materials and should be based on the same principles, bearing in mind people using them. It also important to have a clear distinction between analysis and evaluation.

Analysis is more objective and analysis questions usually have “yes” and “no” answers, whereas evaluation is subjective and often can be answered using “very likely” , “very unlikely” and etc. (Tomlinson, 2013).
There are different types of evaluations and they vary depending on the purpose, timing and etc. :
Pre-Use evaluation, consists of two stages:
Stage 1. It is a flicking through stage. Checking topic choices, attractiveness, visuals, and etc. It is impressionistic.
Stage 2. It is an evaluation of a small number of materials and involves a checklist which makes the evaluation criteria explicit, the checklist has to be up to date, “local”: there are many published checklist but they are general and contradict the evaluation aim.
Whilst-use evaluation
Post –use evaluation
There are many published checklist, however Tomlinson(2013) suggest that most of the lists are subjective and proposes a way of developing criteria for material evaluation:
1. Brainstorming a set of universal criteria
Based on principles of SLA and the results of classroom observation.
2. Subdividing some criteria.
3. Monitoring and revising the list of universal question.
4. Categorizing the list.
5. Developing media-specific criteria: if the voices are easily distinguished and etc.
6. Developing content-specific criteria
7. Developing age-specific criteria
8. Developing local criteria. ”Different criteria will apply in different circumstances “(Cunningham 1995)
9. Developing other criteria: culture-specific
10. Trial criteria
11. Conducting the evaluation.

If to put it in a nutshell: evaluation criteria consists of three key notions: Psychological validity(learners’ needs, goals and etc); pedagogical validity(teacher’s skills, abilities, beliefs, theories); process validity(materials’ writer presentation of the content and approach to teaching and learning),Rubdy(2003).

Why has an evaluation to be principled and systematic?

1. Materials play an important role in language learning process, F. Mishan and I. Timmis(2015) .
2. Materials represent professional, financial and political investment Sheldon,(1988). E.g. providing course books for the state school system.
3. Academic reason: it can serve as a powerful professional development activity, Sheldon(1998).

We have based our pre-evaluation process on comparing the principles and analysis found in reading B.Tomlinson(2013), I. McGrath(2013) and F.Mishan and Timmis) to our principles, beliefs, and expectations and used the following stages of evaluation:
1. Analysis.
-Is the course book attractive
-age category
-if the course book has CDs, Teacher’s book, and etc

2. Content-related criteria.
-If the topics are engaging and politically and culturally sensitive, have an element of authenticity and etc.

3. Language related criteria.
-grammar rules and presentation, vocabulary.

4. Student related criteria.
-if the materials meet students’ needs, learning styles, if the interactions are easy to follow.

5. Teacher-related criteria.
-If the materials easy to adapt, supplement and follow.
6. Format.
Conducting this evaluation we followed the principles we had selected at the beginning of the evaluation process and we came up with a total score of 68%. It was interesting that other groups, which used different evaluation checklist, come up with approximately the same figure.
LINK FOR A PRESENTATION:  https://prezi.com/jizdkkih56k3/pre-use-evaluation-of-coursebook/

Here is an example How I used our evaluation on the material I have designed for my online student studying Hotel Management and Hospitality. For this evaluation, I applied the evaluation criteria from our presentation.

The aim was to create a suitable material involving visual example and having an education purpose; we had to learn the correct procedure of checking-in into the hotel following the worldwide standards. It wasn’t an easy task to come up with a suitable authentic video matching the student’s level and needs. After a long search, I was lucky to come across an authentic video, taken by American girls practicing the check-in pricedure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcRqBBAiC4o

The original video was too long and had a lot of extra unnecessary information. I’ve edited the video and managed to shorten it to 1min 30sec.

check-1mxtvgu

If to follow our criteria, I have ticked off the most of the points:

1. the topic is authentic
2. it’s culturally and politically sensitive
3. it’s relevant to the student
4. the task  meets the real purpose
5. and it’s engaging
6. if it promotes cultural awareness; I think yes, it shows the rules of hospitality in English spoken countries: smile, be friendly, ask some impersonal questions.

hotel-worksheet

hotel-worksheet-2

hotel-worksheet-3

1. the vocabulary and grammar match the student’s level
2. it balances all  four skills
3. it promotes and encourages speaking( we practiced the check-in procedure, the right, and the wrong way, tried to spot the mistaken in check-in procedure)
4. corrected the pronunciation when needed

1. easy and clear instructions
2. the materials are students centered
3. a variety of activities helping to achieve the aim of the lesson( drill the check-in procedure, the worksheet three allows free practice using different situations).

1. The materials are easy to adapt. They can be easily used for other learners
2. they are easy to supplement
3. allows for recycling the language and grammar(question forms, polite forms)

These worksheets and video were used not only for acquiring the language but also meeting the purpose of student’s academic study. This material allowed us to activate schemata, we spoke about her experience of staying in the hotels, how she sees herself in this role, what are her expectations and vision of luxury hotels, we brushed up the essential vocabulary(hotel facilities), and she was very pleased with the video as it served as a clear example of what she should do and allowed plenty of room for practicing.

References:

Tomlinson, B. (2013) Materials evaluation. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Developing Materials for Language Teaching.  London: Bloomsbury.

Mishan, F. & Timmis, I. (2015) Materials Development for TESOL. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. chapter 4: Materials evaluation and adaptation.

McGrath, I. (2013) Teaching Materials and the Roles of EFL/ESL Teachers: Practice and Theory. London: Bloomsbury. (chapter 3 The professional literature and chapter 5 How teachers evaluate coursebooks.)

Johnson, K., et al. (2008) A step forward: investigating expertise in materials evaluation. ELT Journal 62 (2).