The document discusses adapting coursebooks to better suit learners' needs and the teaching situation. It provides reasons for adaptation, including learners' needs, course requirements, classroom dynamics, and resource availability. Areas that may need adapting include methods, language content, subject matter, skill balance, progression, and cultural content. Teachers should understand learners and materials to make sensitive adaptations. Methods of adaptation include leaving out, adding, replacing, and changing materials. Coursebooks can also inspire creativity. Examples show how to personalize drills, use authentic content, make dialogues communicative, and adapt outdated materials.

1. Choose your coursebook
By Alan Cunningworth
(Chapter 12)
Group 4: Nguyễn Trần Hoài Phương
Phạm Phúc Khánh Minh
Adapting published
materials

2. 1. Why adapt coursebooks?
Learners
needs and
course
requirement
s
What the
coursebook
contains

3. Factors that affect learning/teaching
situations
The dynamics of the classroom
and the personalities involved
• Ex: YL (kids, teens), or adults
(reserved, shy, active, passive,…)
The constraints imposed by
syllabuses
• Ex: obligation from the course, or the
institution, etc.

4. The availability of resources
• Ex: reference books, online
resources,…
The expectations and
motivation of the learners
• Depends on the level of the learners

5. 2. When to adapt
Areas to adapt
coursebooks:
- Methods
- Language
content
- Subject
matter
- Balance of
skills
- Progression
and grading
- Cultural
content
Teachers need:
- To be sensitive
- To be aware of what
the learners find
difficult/ easy
- To have a good
understanding of the
nature of the
materials; experience
of working in the
learning/ teaching
situation.
Students get more

6. 3. How to adapt
3.1. Leaving out some parts of the materials
Example: parts that don’t need doing/discussing in class,
they can be assigned as homework.
3.2. Adding (published or your own) and replacing
materials with something more suitable
- The commonest components that need supplementing and
some suggestions:
+ reading (Effective reading, trusted online
newspapers/articles,…)
+ listening (CD, video lessons, practice tests,…)
+ pronunciation (Ship or sheep, Tree or three,…)
+ vocabulary (Wordpower, Vocabulary in Use,…)
+ grammar (English Grammar in Use,…)
- Some other coursebook packages: Boost (Listening,
Reading, Writing, Grammar), for YLs: Primary (Grammar,
Pronunciation, Vocabulary, Writing)
3.3. Changing the published material to make it more
suitable for your use

7. 4. A new role for the coursebook:
inspiration and creativity
A source of
practical
examples of
ideas for
teaching
An inspiration
stimulating
teachers’
creative
potential

8. 5. Some examples of adapting materials
5.1. Personalizing drills to make them more relev
Give replies like the ones:
1.Do you get up at 5 o’clock?
2.Do you chat with your friends everyday?
3.Do you help your mother after school?
4.Do you water the flowers in the afternoon?
5.Do you tidy up your bedroom every evening?
Formal, extensive
Repetitive use of “Do you”, which is a form
of Present simple tense
No situation given, quite mechanical

9. Another way of doing this activity:
• Ask the class about habits, routines and write
them on the board as a list
• Work in pairs or small groups asking and
answering questions
• Introduce the Present simple tense: forms,
question words, and adverbs of frequency (if the
level is appropriate)
• Students extend their responses to apply the
tense
• If students are able, develop into more complex
sentences:
Ex: I usually help my mother after I finish
school. I always cook rice and wash the dishes
after dinner.
Students give their own experiences in real lif
They communicate with others through Englis
Teachers focus on using a particular structure

10. 5.2. Using authentic content

11. Another way of doing this activity:
• Choose a recent shown movie that receives good comments
from the public.
• Collect information about the movie (online, newspaper,
others’ opinions..)
• Select short pieces of texts about the movie (introduction from
the website of the movie, reviews of some writers,…) and
give each a heading.
• Prepare an introduction for setting the scene by asking
general questions and watch a short trailer.
• Set questions about the movie for students to answer after
they are given the texts.
• Introduce some new vocabulary (genres, contemporary words
used in the texts)
• Design discussion (What you learn from the movie, Your
suggestion for the movie producers about the ending…)
• Extra task (can be assigned as homework): write about
his/her own favourite movie (genres, setting, characters,…)

12. 5.3. Making dialogues communicative

13. Another way of doing this activity:

14. 6. Adapting outdated
coursebooks
The choices
are somehow
sophisticated,
Require
considerable
insight into the
use of
vocabulary
The subject
matter of the
exercise is
trivial, illogical,
not producing

15. Another way of doing this activity:
• Select a suitable article from a topical
newspaper or magazine.
• Choose new words that the teacher
want to explain further.
• Delete these words, creating a gap text.
• Give the original and alternative
vocabulary options.
• Ask students to work in small groups.
• Give instructions for the task. Discuss
the choices and give their reasons.
• Present their answers in front of the

16. Thank you for your listening