Teaching materials: adopting and adapting

Why a material need to be adapted 
and some suggested adaptation
Teachers may have a different reason 
to adapt the materials. However, these 
reasons have a common background. 
Misirli’s research findings (2010) reveals 
why some materials need to be adapted 
and suggestions of how to adapt it are 
also presented. 
Not Enough Grammatical Input: Some 
course books may lack the grammar 
coverage to meet specific curriculum goals 
and students who need to prepare for 
national examinations. Teachers may add 
some more language exercises with 
different focus points.
Not Communicative Enough: The 
course book may lack communicative 
input to increase communicative perfor-
mance which may root a huge gap 
between the overall aim language 
teaching and the lesson material. Teachers 
may reduce grammatical explanations, 
sentence translations and word study 
exercises. Teachers should create more 
student interactions in various forms in 
dealing with the exercises. Group 
discussions, drama or role-plays can be 
organized to get the students actively
involved.
Not Appropriate Level: The level of 
the text in some lessons may not suitable 
for the learners’ level. Though the course 
book was specifically developed and used 
in certain class, the groups of students 
who come in each school year may 
process different language proficiency 
level. Therefore, it may lower or higher 
than the aimed challenging level. Teacher 
can alternate the reading text and adjust 
exercises to suit students' linguistic and 
intellectual needs. For instance, teachers 
can adapt the difficulty level of a reading 
text by using Readability formulas 
(readabilityformulas.com). The popular 
and easy to use formulas are Flesch 
Reading Ease, The Fog Scale, and SMOG 
Readability Calculator. Teachers can The 
selected text or the excerpt can be 
modified by changing and adding up more 
vocabulary into the passage. Questions 
suited each level should also be created 
to evaluate students’ ability to 
comprehend the text based on different 
levels. The topic is still the same but the 
readability level is adjusted to what you 
require.