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.