2.4 Materials Selection and Adaptation

Why Materials Need Adapting for CLIL

Most CLIL teachers do not have access to purpose-built bilingual textbooks for every topic. Instead, they take mainstream subject materials -- often written for first-language readers at the intended age level -- and adapt them so learners can access the subject content without the language becoming the main obstacle. TKT: CLIL lists specific ways of using and adapting materials for CLIL: adding visuals and diagrams; omitting unnecessary detail; simplifying language; paraphrasing vocabulary; highlighting key subject vocabulary; inserting a word bank or glossary; reordering activities to progress from least to most demanding; using a variety of layout designs, font sizes and styles; personalising topics; and adding web links.

These techniques fall into a few natural groups. Some reduce the reading load without changing the content (omitting unnecessary detail, simplifying language, paraphrasing vocabulary). Some add support around the existing text rather than changing it (adding visuals and diagrams, highlighting key subject vocabulary, inserting a word bank or glossary). Some change the sequence or format rather than the content itself (reordering activities from least to most demanding, varying layout, font size and style). And some connect the material to the learners themselves or to further resources (personalising topics, adding web links).

A teacher adapting a textbook page rarely uses only one technique. A dense paragraph about photosynthesis for first-language readers might be shortened by omitting a tangential fact about plant history, have its key terms (chlorophyll, glucose, carbon dioxide) highlighted in bold, gain a small diagram of a leaf cross-section, and end with a short glossary box giving simple definitions of the three highlighted terms.

Quick Reference: The Four Groups of Adaptation Techniques

Worked Example: Adapting a Photosynthesis Passage

Imagine an original textbook paragraph written for first-language science readers: 'Photosynthesis is the biochemical process by which green plants and certain other organisms convert light energy, typically from the sun, into chemical energy stored in glucose, using carbon dioxide and water as raw materials and releasing oxygen as a by-product; this process, which occurs primarily in the chloroplasts of plant cells, is fundamental to almost all life on Earth because it forms the base of most food chains.'

For a CLIL class, a teacher might adapt the passage as follows. First, simplify language and omit unnecessary detail: 'Plants make their own food. This is called photosynthesis. Plants use light, water and carbon dioxide. They make glucose (food) and oxygen.' Next, highlight key subject vocabulary by bolding photosynthesis, glucose, carbon dioxide and oxygen, and insert a glossary giving a one-line definition of each term. Then add a diagram showing a leaf with arrows for light going in and oxygen coming out, so learners can match the visual to the text. Where the original text used the term by-product, the adapted text simply names oxygen as something the plant also makes -- paraphrasing vocabulary to keep the idea of a secondary result without introducing a term learners have not met. Finally, personalise the topic by asking learners to think of a plant they have at home or have seen recently before reading, giving them a reason to connect the science to something familiar.

The adapted version keeps every core content fact from the original -- plants make food using light, water and carbon dioxide, and release oxygen -- while removing the dense, subordinate-clause-heavy sentence structure that was a language barrier rather than a content requirement. This is the central adaptation principle: simplify and support the language, never remove or distort the subject content.

Sequencing, Layout and Extending the Material

Beyond simplifying a single passage, adaptation also covers how a set of activities is sequenced and presented. Reordering activities to progress from least to most demanding means a teacher does not simply keep the order printed in a textbook; a labelling task might come before a task requiring learners to write a full explanation, even if the book presents them in the opposite order, because labelling makes fewer language demands than free writing.

Using a variety of layout designs, font sizes and styles is a small but real adaptation: increasing white space, using a larger font for key instructions, or boxing off a glossary in a shaded panel so it is visually separate from the main text all reduce the effort needed to locate information on a busy page. A worksheet that mixes a large, bold font for the task instruction with a smaller font for optional extension text signals, without a single extra word of explanation, which parts of the page are essential and which are for learners who finish early. Adding web links extends a printed or simplified text with further resources -- a video that shows the same process in motion, or an interactive diagram -- giving stronger learners a way to go beyond the adapted text without changing the core lesson for everyone else.

These adaptation techniques connect directly to the differentiation and support strategies used in lesson planning: a teacher might give a heavily adapted, glossary-supported version of a text to one group and a lightly adapted version with an added web link to another, so that every learner works with material at a genuinely accessible level of language while studying the same subject content.