2.3 Adapting Coursebooks & Supplementary Materials
Key Takeaways
- Coursebooks must be adapted to fit students' actual language levels, interests, and developmental stages.
- Adding visual support (flashcards, realia) and word banks helps scaffold language for weaker learners.
- Simplifying teacher and written language reduces cognitive load and keeps materials accessible.
- Personalizing task content (connecting it to family, hobbies, pets) significantly raises learner motivation and retention.
Coursebooks designed for young learners are valuable resources, but they are rarely a perfect fit for every classroom. A single class can contain children with varying language levels, different cognitive maturities, and diverse cultural backgrounds. To ensure that every child is neither frustrated by tasks that are too difficult nor bored by tasks that are too easy, teachers must learn how to adapt coursebook materials.
Adapting materials involves modifying the content, layout, or tasks to provide either support (scaffolding for weaker learners) or challenge (extension for stronger learners).
Core Techniques for Material Adaptation
TKT: YL identifies several key techniques that teachers can use to adapt coursebook activities to better suit their students:
1. Adding Visual Support
Young learners are concrete thinkers (matching Piaget's concrete operational stage). They struggle with abstract text. Adding visual support helps make meaning clear without resorting to translation (L1).
- Application: Teachers can add flashcards, realia, drawings, or diagrams to a reading text. For example, if a text describes different types of weather, the teacher can stick weather symbols on the board to help students decode the written words.
2. Providing Word Banks
A word bank is a list of key vocabulary words provided alongside a reading or writing task.
- Application: For a writing task where students have to describe an animal, a teacher can provide a word bank containing adjectives (e.g., big, small, long, fluffy) and body parts (e.g., tail, ears, legs, wings). This reduces the cognitive load of retrieving words, allowing students to focus on sentence structure.
3. Simplifying Language
Teachers often need to simplify both the language they use in class (teacher talk) and the written language in coursebooks.
- Application: If a coursebook reading passage contains long, complex sentences, the teacher can rewrite the text into shorter sentences using high-frequency vocabulary. For instructions, instead of saying "I want you to look at page 24 and complete the crossword puzzle by matching the clues to the pictures," the teacher can say: "Open books to page 24. Look at picture 1. Write the word."
4. Personalizing Content
Personalization involves connecting coursebook activities to the students' own lives, experiences, and interests. This significantly increases motivation and makes the language more memorable.
- Application: If a coursebook task asks students to write about a fictional boy named Tom and his dog, the teacher can adapt the task so that students write about their own pets, family members, or favorite toys.
5. Omitting Details or Tasks
Sometimes, a coursebook page is too cluttered or contains tasks that are irrelevant or overly complex for the class.
- Application: The teacher can choose to omit a difficult grammar box, skip a boring reading passage, or delete a confusing activity to keep the lesson focused and achievable.
6. Changing the Layout
The visual layout of a page can overwhelm young learners, particularly those who are still developing literacy skills in their first language.
- Application: Teachers can copy a coursebook task onto a separate worksheet, enlarging the font, increasing the white space, and using clear borders or arrows to show the flow of the activity. This prevents cognitive overload and helps children track their progress visually.
Coursebook Task Adaptation: Before and After
To understand how these adaptation techniques work in practice, examine the following examples of coursebook tasks before and after they have been modified to provide support or challenge.
| Original Coursebook Task | Adapted Task | Target Group & Adaptation Strategy | Pedagogical Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reading & Writing: A dense 150-word text about a child's daily routine, followed by five open-ended comprehension questions. | The text is split into three paragraphs, each accompanied by an illustrative icon. The open-ended questions are changed to a matching activity (match sentences to pictures). | Weaker Learners (Support): Changing layout, adding visual support, simplifying task demands. | Reduces cognitive load and supports children who are still developing reading comprehension and L1/L2 literacy. |
| Vocabulary: A list of ten vocabulary words (types of sports) to be memorized and matched to dictionary definitions. | The sports vocabulary is matched to images of students' favorite athletes. A word bank is provided, and students write sentences about which sports they play. | All Learners (Personalization): Personalizing content, adding visual support. | Increases motivation and engagement by connecting language to personal experiences and famous role models. |
| Grammar Practice: A simple gap-fill activity where students write has got or have got in six sentences. | Students work in pairs to design a "crazy monster" and write a description of it using has got / have got to present to the class. | Stronger Learners (Challenge): Changing task type from controlled to freer, collaborative production. | Provides cognitive challenge and creative outlet for students who have already mastered the target structure. |
A teacher is using a coursebook reading text about healthy food. Before the reading task, the teacher displays real apples, bananas, and a loaf of bread, and prints a list of key adjectives on a handout. Which adaptation techniques is the teacher using?
Which of the following adaptations would be most appropriate for providing challenge to a fast-finishing student during a controlled writing activity?