لخّصلي

Adopting and Adapting an Existing Course Book After working through this chapter you should be able to choose and adapt a course book in a Systematic way, and justify your decisions.The biggest problems facing the teacher in a course drawing on source books are to provide systematic coverage of the important language and skills content of the course, and to make it seem like one unified course rather than a set of unrelated bits.160Adopting and Adapting an Existing Course Book

Table I I. I Areas and agents in assigning responsibility for parts of curriculum design  Area o(design

Content and sequencing

Format and presentation

I'Monitoring and assessing

Questions

What language contents What ideas content?This chapter aims to help teachers clarify the roles that they, the course book and the learners play in the curriculum design process, and aims to provide teachers with a rational approach to follow when deciding to adopt or adapt a course book.Curriculum design is concerned with the creation of language courses and course materials, but it is also concerned with the selection of texts and other materials for courses, and with adapting and adding to existing courses.The greatest areas of flexibility for a teacher when following a course book closely are in how the material is presented (format and presentation), and monitoring and assessment.Strong reliance on the course hook witii minimal adaptation Once a course book has been chosen, teachers may follow the course book very closely, making only small essential changes and additions.The techniques that are used to present the  Adopting and Adapting an Existing Course Book16 I

material can be varied to suit the interests and proficiency of the learners.With more adaptation this may involve the teacher adding a game-like challenge to some of the activities by using competing teams, or by creating parallel situations to those in the course book to pro- vide extra practice.Allwright (1981) sees textbooks as removing learners from negotiating the curriculum design process.These points underline the importance of having a flexible approach to the use of a course book and of choosing a course book which allows for flexibility.Table 11.1 lists the areas to consider when deciding where the course book, learners and teacher will contribute to curriculum design.Dividing the Parts of the Process In order to take a systematic approach to looking at the possible roles of the course book, teacher and learners in the curriculum design process, it is necessary to look at each part of the curriculum design process.At its simplest this may involve varying the speed, number of repetitions, whether the learners have to use their memory by closing their books, assigning some parts of the lesson as homework, or getting learners to act out parts of the material.The Course Book, the Learners and the Teacher There has been considerable debate on the role of course books in a lan- guage course.Prabhu (1989) suggests that because teaching must be matched to the learners' current knowledge, course books will not be effective because they are not in touch with the state of this knowledge.Each of these areas needs to be informed by considerations of environment, needs and prin- ciples.How oken coveredt How presentedt What format for the lesson?Responsibility: Course book Teacher Learners 

The Teacher and the Course I'flateriaI In this section we will look at a range of relationships between the teacher and the course material, ranging from strong reliance on a course book to the use of source books and the internet.2 The teacher may be inexperienced or largely untrained and there is security in following the set course book closely.Teachers who want to make the classroom activities more task-like can ask themselves the six questions proposed by Willis and Willis (2007) that were introduced in Chapter 4.Such courses are often organised around themes to provide this unity.There are several reasons why teachers may follow the course book closely:

1 Their school or Ministry of Education requires them to follow it closely.This usually is because of a wish to standardise the quantity and quality of the education that all learners get and sometimes because of a lack of trust in the skills of the teachers.Generally, the more trained and experienced teachers are, the more likely they are to reject the idea of a single textbook.This means that they need to be aware of the various parts of the curriculum design process and need to beIn this chapter we look at the relationship between the teacher and existing course books.Column 3 needs to be filled according to who is given responsibility.What assessed!When assessed?How assessed!Who assesses!The teacher may also have no idea about how to adapt the course book.4 The learners wish to cover every part of the course book.Learners sometimes complain of not seeing any obvious progress when they do not have a set course book.How much covered?Who presents!3 The teacher is convinced of the high quality of the course book.

Adopting and Adapting an
Existing Course Book
After working through this chapter you should be able to choose and adapt a course book in a Systematic way, and justify your decisions.

Curriculum design is concerned with the creation of language courses and course materials, but it is also concerned with the selection of texts and other materials for courses, and with adapting and adding to existing courses. In this chapter we look at the relationship between the teacher and existing course books. This chapter aims to help teachers clarify the roles that they, the course book and the learners play in the curriculum design process, and aims to provide teachers with a rational approach to follow when deciding to adopt or adapt a course book.

The Course Book, the Learners and the Teacher
There has been considerable debate on the role of course books in a lan- guage course. Prabhu (1989) suggests that because teaching must be matched to the learners’ current knowledge, course books will not be effective because they are not in touch with the state of this knowledge. Allwright (1981) sees textbooks as removing learners from negotiating the curriculum design process. These points underline the importance of having a flexible approach to the use of a course book and of choosing a course book which allows for flexibility.

Dividing the Parts of the Process
In order to take a systematic approach to looking at the possible roles of the course book, teacher and learners in the curriculum design process, it is necessary to look at each part of the curriculum design process.
Table 11.1 lists the areas to consider when deciding where the course book, learners and teacher will contribute to curriculum design. Each of these areas needs to be informed by considerations of environment, needs and prin- ciples. Column 3 needs to be filled according to who is given responsibility.

160​Adopting and Adapting an Existing Course Book

Table I I. I Areas and agents in assigning responsibility for parts of curriculum design

Area o(design

Content and sequencing

Format and presentation

I'Monitoring and assessing

Questions

What language contents What ideas content?
How much covered? How oken coveredt
How presentedt
What format for the lesson? Who presents!
What assessed! When assessed? How assessed! Who assesses!

Responsibility: Course book Teacher Learners


The Teacher and the Course I’flateriaI
In this section we will look at a range of relationships between the teacher and the course material, ranging from strong reliance on a course book to the use of source books and the internet.

Strong reliance on the course hook witii minimal
adaptation
Once a course book has been chosen, teachers may follow the course book very closely, making only small essential changes and additions. There are several reasons why teachers may follow the course book closely:

1 Their school or Ministry of Education requires them to follow it closely. This usually is because of a wish to standardise the quantity and quality of the education that all learners get and sometimes because of a lack of trust in the skills of the teachers.
2 The teacher may be inexperienced or largely untrained and there is security in following the set course book closely. The teacher may also have no idea about how to adapt the course book.
3 The teacher is convinced of the high quality of the course book.
4 The learners wish to cover every part of the course book.

The greatest areas of flexibility for a teacher when following a course book closely are in how the material is presented (format and presentation), and monitoring and assessment. The techniques that are used to present the

Adopting and Adapting an Existing Course Book​16 I

material can be varied to suit the interests and proficiency of the learners. At its simplest this may involve varying the speed, number of repetitions, whether the learners have to use their memory by closing their books, assigning some parts of the lesson as homework, or getting learners to act out parts of the material. With more adaptation this may involve the teacher adding a game-like challenge to some of the activities by using competing teams, or by creating parallel situations to those in the course book to pro- vide extra practice. Teachers who want to make the classroom activities more task-like can ask themselves the six questions proposed by Willis and Willis (2007) that were introduced in Chapter 4. For any question that gets a “no” answer, the teacher then considers a way to adapt the activity so that the answer becomes “yes”.
Most course books do not provide a lot of guidance on monitoring and assessing progress, and teachers following a course closely may need to design tests to do this. Teachers also need to be aware of other ways of monitoring their success and their learners’ success, such as watching learners as they do activities, asking learners how they did certain activities, and looking at the results of an activity.

Adapting a course book
Once a course book has been chosen, teachers may wish to make substantial changes to it. There are several reasons for doing this and these could be classified as responding to the environment, taking account of needs, or putting principles into practice. Here are some of them.

The course book does not include all the activities that the teacher has used successfully before.
2 The course book material does not fit comfortably into the time avail- able for the course.
3 The course book contains content that is unsuitable for the learners’ level of proficiency or age.
4 The learners’ knowledge and skill do not match that involved in the course book (Prabhu, 1989).
5 The course book does not include language items, skills, ideas, discourse or strategies that the learners need.
The course book does not apply principles that the teacher feels should be applied.
7​​The course book does not involve the learners in the curriculum design process (Allwright, 1981).

Because of these reasons or reasons like these, the teacher may wish to adapt the course book. In this example, the teacher does not have the option of abandoning the course book, perhaps because it is the required text for the

162​Adopting and Adapting an Existing Course Book
course, the learners have already bought it, or overall it has more positive features than negative features.
The teacher can do the following things to adapt a course book. Note how the suggestions relate to the three parts of the central circle of the curriculum design diagram.

1 Add or omit content. Theteacher adds exercises to give extra practice to items that are frequently used in the language or which require extra time to learn. The teacher skips over confusing or unimportant parts ofa lesson, for example teaching only one item in pairs of words that might interfere with each other.
2 Change the sequencing of the content. The teacher introduces some items earlier in the course because they are needed to do added activities.
3 Change the format. Instead of beginning the lesson with a dialogue, the teacher puts it towards the end of the lesson and uses the other exercises in the lesson to prepare for it.
4 Change the presentation. The teacher uses different techniques than those used in the book. For example a 4/3/2 fluency activity is used to practise some of the dialogues.
5 Add or omit monitoring. The teacher encourages the learners to make tests to check each other’s learning of what is in the lesson (Clarke, 1989).
6 Add or omit assessment. The teacher introduces weekly tests to encourage learners to do homework or to let them see their progress.

An example of the teacher adding content may be through the addition of an extensive reading component to the course. The teacher may decide to do this because she does not feel the course book is applying principles that the teacher believes are important. In this case the principles (from Chapter 4) are:

Comprehensible input: There should be substantial quantities of interesting comprehensible receptive activity in both listening and reading.
Fluency: A language course should provide activities aimed at increas- ing fluency with which learners can use the language they already know, both receptively and productively.
Time on task: As much time as possible should be spent focusing on and using the second language.

Tanaka and Stapleton (2007) describe the implementation and the results of this type of addition in a Japanese high school. As a means of preparing them for graded readers, students read teacher-made reading materials for a short time in class over a period of about five months. Reading speed gains were

Adopting and Adapting an Existing Course Book​163
recorded for all students, and for those who also read graded readers reading comprehension also improved.
Progressive adaptation of a course book over several courses can be a safe way for a teacher to develop professionally through a modest amount of action research. As we have seen in Chapter 9, it is also a useful way of beginning to design your own course.

Using source 6ooks instead o/ course 6ooAs
The proper role of course books in courses is a matter of debate (Richards, 1985). Prabhu (1989) suggests that learners would be better served if teachers did not use course books but assembled their courses by drawing on a variety of source books such as conversation books, timed reading books, intensive- reading books, listening texts, as well as teacher-made material. There are several reasons for doing this. They may be classified according to the outer circles of the curriculum design diagram.

1 A single course book does not meet the diverse needs of the learners in the class.
2 Drawing material from a variety of sources allows the teacher to keep each lesson as close as possible to what the learners need.
3 Learners can have a strong say in what kind of topics and what kind of material they work with. This allows teacher and learners to negoti- ate the syllabus during the course (Breen, 1984; Clarke, 1991).
4 Teachers have the chance to make greater use of their professional skills,
such as material preparation, course planning, adaptation of activities, and multi-level teaching in one class.
5 The circumstances under which the course is taught make it difficult to find an appropriate textbook. For example, the teaching has been divided up so that one teacher deals with reading, another deals with writing and so on. Or, the class numbers are small so that learners of widely varying levels of proficiency have to be in the same class. Current course books do not reflect “state of the art” knowledge in Applied Linguistics.

The biggest problems facing the teacher in a course drawing on source books are to provide systematic coverage of the important language and skills content of the course, and to make it seem like one unified course rather than a set of unrelated bits. Such courses are often organised around themes to provide this unity. Learners sometimes complain of not seeing any obvious progress when they do not have a set course book.
Generally, the more trained and experienced teachers are, the more likely they are to reject the idea of a single textbook. This means that they need to be aware of the various parts of the curriculum design process and need to be