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EFL Materials Adaptation and Design

The inadequacy of the existing teaching materials and shortage of authentic resources create a serious problem for the teaching of EFL in Ukraine. The solution is seen in combining the following three strategies:

· utilizing the existing text-books whenever sensible and possible;

· adapting available authentic materials (coursebooks, off-air radio and video recordings, media publications, internet resources, etc.);

· creating new teaching materials appropriate to the current needs of those involved in EFLT in Ukraine.

The existing coursebooks are not entirely appropriate to the objectives of the new curriculum. They do not contain any activities aimed at developing the students’ listening skills; creative writing is not part of the books; whilst from a socio-cultural perspective these books presuppose only limited factual knowledge and irrelevant for advancing the students’ practical and inter-cultural skills. Furthermore, they do not always correspond to the students’ level of language proficiency, their interests or the contemporary language situation.

Therefore, while teaching you may want to adapt the set text books that you and the class has to work with. Of course you need to be able to do it quickly, effectively and easily.

The features of the text book that can easily be adapted are maximizing potential communication, changing the skill to be used in a particular exercise, exercises that are boring or inappropriate for your class and adapting language production exercises to the easier language recognition exercises.

It stands to reason that the adaptation of teaching materials is in any case a decision only the teacher can properly make. For example, you may use generalisable procedures for your text book adaptation. Although most of the procedures can be applied to most of the texts, they need not all be used – there is no point in wringing the text dry just for the sake of completeness. As for classroom procedures they may be in the form of individual work, pairwork (or work in threes), groupwork and classwork.

So, twelve generalisable procedures will be described and examples of possible activities will then be given.

1. Expansion

Key criterion – the text must be lengthened in some way.

Examples:

• add one or more sentences or paragraphs to the beginning and end of the text
• add specified items within the text (e.g. adjectives)
• add sentences, subordinate clauses within the text
• add comments within the text.

2. Reduction

Key criterion – the text must be shortened in some way.

Examples:

• remove specified items, clauses, sentences
• turn it into telegraphese
• combine sentences
• rewrite it in a different format.

3. Media transfer

Key criterion – the text must be transferred into a different medium or format.

Examples:

• transfer it into visual form (pictures, graphs, maps, tables, etc)
• turn prose into poem or vice versa, a letter into a newspaper article or vice versa, a headline into a proverb or vice versa, a poem into an advertising slogan or vice versa and a prose narrative into a screenplay.

4. Matching

Key criterion – a correspondence must be found between the text and something else.

Examples:

• match text with a visual representation/ a title/ another text/ a voice/ music.

5. Selection/ ranking

Key criterion – the text must be chosen according to some given criterion. In the case of ranking, several texts must be placed in order of suitability for the given criterion.

Examples:

• choose the best text for the given purpose (e.g. inclusion in a teenage magazine)
• choose the most/ least (difficult, formal, personal, complex, etc) text
• choose words from a text to act as an appropriate title.

6. Comparison/ contrast

Key criterion – points of similarity/ difference must be identified between two or more texts.

Examples:

• identify words/ expressions common to both texts
• identify words/ phrases in one text which are paraphrased in the other
• identify ideas common to both texts
• identify facts present in one text and not in the other
• compare grammatical/ lexical complexity.

7. Reconstruction

Key criterion – coherence/ completeness must be restored to an incomplete or defective text.

Examples:

• insert appropriate words/ phrases into gapped texts
• reorder jumbled words, lines, sentences, paragraphs, etc
• reconstruct sentences/ texts from a word array
• reconstitute a written text from an oral presentation (various types of dictation)
• remove sentences/ lines which do not ‘belong’ in the text.

8. Reformulation

Key criterion – the text must be expressed in a form different from the original without loss of essential meanings.

Examples:

• retell a story from notes/ memory
• use key words to rewrite the text
• rewrite in a different format (e.g. prose as poem)
• rewrite in a different style or mood.

9. Interpretation

Key criterion – personal knowledge/ experience must be used to clarify and extend the meaning(s) of the text.

Examples:

• What does this recall from your personal experience?
• What does this remind you of?
• What images does this throw up?
• What associations does it have?
• What questions would you want to ask the author?
• Formulate wh-questions on the text beginning (what, who, where, when, why)
• What does the text not say that it might have said.

10. Creating text

Key criterion – the text is to be used as a springboard for the creation of new texts.

Examples:

• write a parallel text on a different theme
• use the same story outline/ model to write a new text
• quarry words from text A to create a new text B
• use the same title but write a new text
• add lines/ sentences to the text to reshape it
• combine these texts to create a new text.

11. Analysis

Key criterion – the text is to be submitted to some form of language-focused scrutiny.

Examples:

• work out the ratio of one-word verbs to two-word verbs
• list the different ways in which the word X is referred to in the text (anaphoric reference)
• How many different tenses are used? Which are most/ least frequent?
• How many content (or function) words does the text contain?

12. Project work

Key criterion – the text is used as a springboard for some related practical work with a concrete outcome.

Examples:

• Use the text as a centerpiece of an advertising campaign. First decide on the product. Then design the campaign posters, advertising jingles, etc. Finally, present the product as a TV commercial which must incorporate the text. If possible video it.
• This text is about the problem of X. Design a questionnaire on this problem for other groups to complete. Tabulate the results and present them to the rest of the class.
• This text presents a particular point of view. With a partner, prepare a brief magazine article which either supports or disagrees with this point of view. In both cases you will need to collect ideas and examples to support your own point of view. Display the articles on the class notice-board.

Adapting the teaching materials a teacher at the same time designs them for a specific purpose. It is up to the teacher to use them effectively and smartly.