ELT MATERIALS SELECTION AND ADAPTATION

BY : LAILA HAIRANI BT. ABDULLAH SANGGURA

You can either choose to adopt or to adapt your materials.

If you choose to adapt, here are 12 procedures which you can use to suit your needs.

1. Expansion

Add one or more sentences/paragraphs to the beginning and end of the text.

Turn a prose narrative into a screenplay

Add specific items/ sentences within the text (e.g. adjectives).

Add comment within the text.

Text must be lengthened in some way.

Example- Expansion

Thanks for your letter. I was sorry to hear that a gang of thieves broke into your house and stole some of your mother’s jewellery. I hope the police catch them quickly. It’s tragic to experience theft. It happened to us two years ago. They stole a lot of electrical appliances and some of my mother’s jewellery too. We gave the police lots of information about the stolen articles and they managed to find most of the appliances but some of my mother’s beautiful sets of jewellery were lost forever. Such loss was a great blow to all of us.

Adapted from Jagjeet Singh & Adrian Holden (2003) New Remedial English Grammar

Task - Expansion1. Why do you need to expand a text?

The blaze crackled furiously as the fire licked up the wooden walls and roof of the house at the edge of the forest. The fire continued to rage fiercely and showed no mercy to anyone.

2. How would you expand the following text? The blaze crackled. Fire licked up the walls and roof of the house. The fire continued to rage. It showed no mercy to anyone.

2. Reduction

Remove clauses/specified items

(e.g. adjectives)/sentences. Combines sentences. Rewrite in a different format.

Text must be shortened in some way.

SAMPLE

Task - Reduction

2. How would you shorten the following text?

It takes about four hours from Kuala Lumpur, and you get the chance to see little towns like Bidor, Manjung and Setiawan that are sprinkled along the journey.

It takes about four hours from Kuala Lumpur, and you pass little towns along the journey.

1. Why do you need to shorten a text?

3. Media Transfer

Transfer into a visual form (e.g. pictures, graphs, maps, tables)

Turn prose into a poem (vise versa) Turn a letter into a newspaper article

(vise versa) Turn headline into proverb (vise versa) Turn poem into an advertising slogan

(vise versa)

Text must be transferred into a diff. medium or format.

SAMPLE

4. Matching

Match text with a visual representation. Match text with a title/another text.

Match text with a voice/music.

A connection must be found between the text and something else.

MATCHING

5. Selection/ranking

Choose the best text for a given purpose. Choose the most/least (difficult, personal,

complex,etc.) text. Choose words from a text to act as an

appropriate title.

Text must be chosen according to some given criterion/placed in order of suitability for a given criterion.

ADAPTED RECIPEPackage

6. Comparison/contrast

Identify words/expressions common to both texts. Identify words/phrases in one text which are

paraphrased in the other. Identify ideas which are common to both texts. Identify facts present in one text and not in the

other. Compare grammatical/lexical complexity

Points of similarity/difference must be identified between two or more texts.

7. Reconstruction

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.

Coherence/completeness must be restored to an incomplete/defective text.

8. Reformulation

Retell a story from memory/notes. Use key words to rewrite a text. Rewrite in a different format (e.g. prose

as poem) Rewrite in a different mood or style.

Text must be expressed in a form different from the original without loss of essential meanings

9. Interpretation

What does this remind you? What image does this produce? What associations does it have? What questions do you wish to ask the

author? What does the text not say that it might

have said? Formulate WH-questions on the text.

Personal knowledge/experience must be used to clarify and extend the meaning(s) of the text.

10. Creating text

Write a parallel text on a different theme.

Use the same story outline/model to write a new text.

Use the same title but write a new text. Combine these texts to create a new

text.

Text is to be used as a springboard for the creation of the new text.

11. Analysis

Work out the ratio of one-word and two-word verbs.

How many different tenses are used? Which are most/least frequent?

How many content (or function) words does the text contain?

List the different ways in which the word X is referred to in the text (Anaphoric reference).

List all the words to do with(the sea, movement, ecology, etc.) in this text.

Text is to be submitted to some form of language-focused scrutiny.

12. Project

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.

Text is used as a springboard for some related practical work with a concrete outcome.

This is about the problem of X. Design a questionnaire on this problem for other groups to complete. Tabulate the result 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.

Reading mats

Task: Group work 1. Using at least one or a combination of techniques given, select and adapt any material(s) of your choice for a reading lesson. Your lesson must show an integration of skills.

2. Prepare questions/tasks for any two of the stages: Pre and While reading or While and Post reading.

3. Present your work to the class.

References:

Cunningsworth, A.(1995). Choosing Your Coursebook.

Oxford: MacMillan Education

Leela Mohd Ali & Thurgood, G. (1991). Materials Production & Adaptation. An Integrated Approach.

Kuala Lumpur: Federal Publications.

Ministry of Education Malaysia. (1991). Teaching Compendium Vol. 3. Kuala Lumpur:

Tomlinson,B. (2002). Materials Development in

Language Teaching. UK: Cambridge University Press.