5.4 Selecting, Adapting & Creating Materials for In-Person and Online Lessons
Key Takeaways
Evaluate materials against learner needs, the lesson aim, level, cultural fit, representation, and practicality before using them.
McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara describe five coursebook adaptation techniques: adding, deleting, modifying, simplifying, and reordering.
With authentic texts, adjust the task before rewriting the text, and check copyright or open licenses before sharing materials online.
Puentedura's SAMR model (substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition) shows whether technology changes the task or only the delivery.
Online lessons need on-screen modeling, written instructions in the chat, ICQs, and longer wait time because cues are harder to read on camera.
5.4 Selecting, Adapting & Creating Materials for In-Person and Online Lessons
Note
Materials are anything that helps learners learn a language: a coursebook unit, a bus timetable, a song, a slide, or a set of picture cards. A certificate course does not ask you to find "perfect" materials. It asks you to judge what to keep, change, or add for a particular group and lesson aim, which is part of TESOL's Preparing Lessons module.
Evaluating Materials Before You Use Them
Start with the learners and the aim, not with the page. Useful evaluation questions:
- Fit to learners: Are the age, interests, level, and cultural references right for this group? Adults resent childish visuals; young learners need images and movement.
- Fit to the aim: Does the material give enough exposure to, and practice of, the target language or skill?
- Language quality: Is the language natural, with examples people would actually say or write?
- Representation: Do texts and images show a range of people, places, and Englishes, including speakers from the Outer and Expanding Circles (Section 1.1)?
- Practicality: Can you run it within your time, room, copying, and technology limits?
Materials writer Brian Tomlinson's widely cited principles add that good materials should achieve impact, help learners feel at ease and develop confidence, feel relevant and useful, expose learners to language in authentic use, draw attention to features of the input, and give chances to use the language for real communication.
Adapting a Coursebook
Most teachers adapt rather than write from scratch. McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara describe a set of adaptation techniques:
| Technique | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Adding (extending or expanding) | Supplying more of the same, or something new | Adding a personalized speaking task after a reading |
| Deleting (subtracting or abridging) | Cutting exercises or shortening them | Skipping a third gap-fill on a structure the class already controls |
| Modifying (rewriting or restructuring) | Changing the content or the way the class is organized | Replacing a ski-holiday dialogue with a bus commute for adult workers; turning an individual task into pair work |
| Simplifying | Making a text or task easier to handle | Splitting long instructions into steps; glossing key words |
| Reordering | Changing the sequence of activities | Doing the speaking task before the reading to activate schema |
Every adaptation should serve a stated reason, such as "these learners need workplace contexts," "this group is weaker in listening," or "this class is online."
Authentic and Teacher-Made Materials
Authentic materials such as menus, forms, podcasts, and signs show real layout and language, which is why the adult and young learner chapters both recommend them. When an authentic text is too hard, first simplify the task, not the text: beginners can scan a timetable for one departure time while advanced learners compare fares and conditions. Teacher-made materials are best when nothing suitable exists, for example picture cards for a TPR lesson, a role-card set for an information gap, or a short dialogue written to recycle the week's vocabulary.
Respect copyright. Check your host institution's rules before copying published pages, prefer openly licensed resources (such as Creative Commons materials) when you share work online, and credit your sources. Do not post copyrighted textbook pages or images of learners publicly.
Choosing Technology: The SAMR Model
Ruben Puentedura's SAMR model asks how much a technology changes the learning task:
| Level | What the technology does | ELT example |
|---|---|---|
| Substitution | Replaces a paper tool with no functional change | Typing answers into a digital copy of a worksheet |
| Augmentation | Replaces a tool with some functional improvement | An online quiz that gives instant feedback |
| Modification | Allows significant redesign of the task | Pairs co-write and comment on a shared document in real time |
| Redefinition | Makes a previously impossible task possible | Exchanging recorded video messages with a partner class abroad |
Higher is not automatically better. Choose the level that serves the lesson aim, and always plan a low-tech backup.
Teaching in Virtual Classrooms
The TCCP allows observation and practice teaching to take place virtually, so plan for the ways online teaching differs:
- Instructions: Model the task on screen with a volunteer, paste the steps into the chat, and ask ICQs before opening breakout rooms.
- Interaction: Use breakout rooms for pair and group work, the chat box for quick whole-class responses, and polls or screen annotation for checking understanding.
- Wait time: Allow extra time for audio delay and unmuting, nominate gently, and name the next speaker in advance.
- Teacher talk: Online teacher talk tends to creep up because silence feels awkward, so plan pair tasks early in the lesson.
- Visuals: Use large fonts, high contrast, and one idea per slide, and turn on captions when the platform offers them.
- Reliability: Test audio and screen sharing beforehand, and keep a no-slides version of the lesson ready.
Preparing Your Practicum Videos
TESOL requires two 15-minute videos in Part 3 but does not publish detailed recording criteria on its program page, so follow your course instructions. In practice, choose segments that show learners interacting rather than you talking alone, confirm that learners (or their guardians) have consented to recording under the host's policy, frame the camera to capture both you and the learners, and test the audio, because unclear sound makes even a strong lesson hard to review.
A coursebook unit uses a dialogue about booking a ski holiday. For a class of adult factory workers, the teacher rewrites it as a conversation about swapping a shift with a coworker, keeping the same target language. Which adaptation technique is this?
Deleting: removing a section the learners do not need
Modifying: rewriting the content to fit the learners' context
Reordering: changing the sequence of the unit's activities
Augmentation: improving the dialogue with a digital tool
In an online lesson, a teacher wants pairs to complete an information-gap task in breakout rooms. Which sequence is most likely to prevent confusion?
Explain the rules in detail for ten minutes so that nobody needs to ask questions once rooms open
Email the worksheet the night before and assume that learners will read it before class begins
Model the task on screen with a volunteer, paste the steps in the chat, ask ICQs, then open the rooms
Open the rooms immediately and send the instructions by chat once every pair has joined a room
Using Puentedura's SAMR model, which activity is the clearest example of redefinition?
Learners exchange recorded video messages with a partner class in another country
Learners read the coursebook text on a tablet instead of a printed page
Learners type their answers into a digital copy of the usual paper worksheet
Learners take an online vocabulary quiz that marks their answers instantly
Sections you finish are checked off in the contents.