TEACHING MATERIALS: ADOPTING AND ADAPTING
Phuangphet Tonawanik
1
Nawapun Donavanik
2
Abstract
Teaching materials are important parts
to help teachers achieve better teaching
and students’ desired learning outcomes.
Carefully selecting materials, language
teachers can present new knowledge and
language items to be taught clearly,
purposefully and systematically. As a
result, students
learn better because
appropriate tools
enhance their interest
and understanding, practice and
internalization. This paper aims to provide
some suggestions for novice English
teachers in selecting teaching materials.
Practically,
there are two processes to
prepare teaching materials:
Adopting and
adapting. For adopting materials, any
course-books or commercial textbooks
can be used. However, using a textbook
needs evaluation in order to select the
most suitable materials for the course’
goals
and objectives, students’ language
proficiency
and
learning
styles.
Alternatively or additionally, teachers can
use
authentic materials that involve the
real language use such as news, flyers,
newsletters, etc. For adapting materials,
the adaptation should reflect the concern
of the course’s objectives as well as
learning
atmosphere and the student
learning achievement. During the material
preparation, teachers should evaluate the
selected materials. Once the possible
problem areas are recognized, teachers
must consider the type of format
adaptation and
determine what activities
to be adapted and how to adapt it to get
the best of the material used.
Keywords: Teaching materials, adopting
materials, authentic materials, adapting
materials
Introduction
Teaching materials are important parts
to help teachers achieve better teaching
and students’ desired learning outcomes.
Carefully selecting materials, English
teachers can present new knowledge and
the language items to be taught clearly,
1,2
Suvarnabhumi Institute of Technology.
วารสารวิชาการ สถาบันเทคโนโลยีแห่งสุวรรณภูมิ
636
purposefully and systematically. As a
result, students learn better because
appropriate tools enhance their interest
and understanding, practice and
internalization. For experienced English
teacher, preparing teaching materials may
be easy. However, for newly graduated
teachers
or novice teachers, particularly
those who haven’t taken a course on
material constructions, may have
difficulties
in preparing or selecting
teaching materials. Some suggestions can
be valuable to them. This article,
therefore, presents some suggestions for
novice English teachers on how to select
teaching materials such as textbooks and
authentic materials. It also suggests how
to adapt the contents and activities of the
selected materials to get the best of
students’ learning outcomes.