Lecture task week 8 IVY CLARE

Lecture Task

 (a) Compare and contrast McDonough and Shaw, Maley and Tomlinson and Masuhara adaptation techniques. Are there are differences or are they similar?

Adaptation Technique

By thoroughly comparing and contrasting the adaptation techniques suggested by all three (McDonough&Shaw, Maley, Tomlinson&Masuhara), we noticed that all three techniques are fairly similar eventhough the terms are named differently.

Differences
The only difference between them is the organization of their techniques. For example, in McDonough & Shaw and Maley , the techniques are just organised in a simple and direct manner from ‘adding’ to ‘ re-ordering’ and ‘omission’ to ‘branching’. As for Tomlinson & Masuhara , they divided their techniques into categories which relates by the type of adaptation they are using. In our opinion, Tomlinson & Masuhara’s choice of organisation is useful whereby it can be easily be chosen by teachers based on what they would like to do with their materials.

Similarities
All of the techniques used are similar even if they have different terms. They can be categorised based on what is done to the materials when using the techniques. For example, the common technique found between them is addition. In all three techniques, they suggested that teachers can add and expand the materials using activities or exercises. The same goes for reduction. In McDonough & Shaw’s techniques, the term used is ‘simplifying’ while Maley uses the term ‘reduction’ and Tomlinson & Masuhara categorises it into ‘Minus’. All three terms share the same usage or adaptation which is removing or subtracting the unnecessary parts of the materials. Eventhough all three techniques are not organized the same, the usage or ways of adapting a material are fairly similar.

                           

(b) Compare and contrast McDonough and Shaw with Tomlinson and Masuhara’s materials  adaptation procedures. Are there are differences or are they similar?

Generally, the first move of materials’ adaptation procedures in both the McDonough & Shaw and Tomlinson and Masuhara are the same. They are only different in terms. In McDonough & Shaw, the first thing need to be identified in adapting a material is to match certain internal and external criteria to the material. External factors comprise both the overt claims made about materials and the characteristics of particular situation. Internal factors are concerned with content, organization and consistency. In this context, the matching and congruency is needed in order to localise (as in bringing in the local culture into teaching), personalise (relating the material to learners’ personal schema as in interpersonal use), individualise (relating the material to learners’ background information) and modernise (incorporate IT into teaching)the material used. This is the same as the one in Tomlinson & Masuhara’s procedure which is profiling of teaching context. It is same as there is the need to collect information about something so that later, a description about it can be done. This is important as it helps to identify the reasons/needs for adaptation. After identifying the reasons, evaluation will take place. The material will be evaluated to determine how it should be adapted in order to fit the learners’ context.

In term of differences, McDonough & Shaw do have something which is different compared to Tomlinson & Masuhara. It is that McDonough & Shaw provides specific techniques used in the material adaption. The techniques are adding (expanding and extending), deleting (subtracting and abridging), modifying (re-writing and re-structuring), simplifying (as in simplify the sentence structure) and re-ordering (putting parts of a coursebook into different order). These techniques will be applied into content areas such as language practice, tests, skills and classroom management. In other words, the material will undergo addition, deletion, modification, simplification and re-order to ‘fit’ the tests, language practice, skills and also in creating more effective classroom management.

As for Tomlinson & Masuhara, the listing of objectives comes after the evaluation. The objectives are important as it affects how the adaption to the material is to be done in the next step. However, there is no specific ‘techniques’ stated on how the adaptation should be done. In fact, the next step proceeds straight to teaching and lastly revising.

(c) List and discuss the levels of materials adaptation.

Textbook adaptation can be done at three levels. The first level is macro adaptation, which is ideally done before the language programme begins. After comparing what is covered in a textbook and what is required by the syllabus or examination, the teacher may find that certain areas or even whole units of the book can be omitted, and certain contents need to be supplemented. Macro adaptation is very important because it helps to avoid waste of time and energy of the teacher and the students as well. It also helps the teacher to see in advance what he or she needs to supplement so that he or she can keep an eye on materials that could be used. Based on Malaysia education context, finishing every syllabus of the English textbook is a prerequisite and the teachers are not allowed to choose another textbook. Having options to selecting textbook for teaching is not encouraging in Malaysia. Thus, it is impossible for English teachers in Malaysia to pick another textbook based on their thought in order to teach their students. On the other hand, teachers should evaluate the whole unit in the textbook and make selections on what chapters they should emphasize or less emphasize on based on the probability of the questions which will be asked in exams. For example, the topic’ pollution’,  ‘health’ and ‘technology’ are very common and popular that it have higher probability of coming out in exams. So, teachers should emphasize on those chapters.

The second level is of adaptation is adapting a unit. This could be reordering the activities, combining activities, omitting activities, rewriting or supplementing exercise material, etc. Unit adaptation helps to make the classroom teaching more smooth and cohesive. It also helps the teacher to better fulfil the aims of a unit. Before entering the class, the teacher must go through the textbook units and make decision about which activity or task is applicable in the textbook. The activity or task which are not very useful and does not give students much comprehensible input and new information, then activity can be omitted and teacher needs to replace or modify the omitted activity with a better one.

The third level is adaptation of specific activities in a unit. Occasionally an activity is regarded as valuable, but it is not well-designed or it is not feasible in a particular class. If the teacher does not want to give up the activity, he or she needs to adapt it. For instance, the activity is hard to be integrated in the classroom but it is crucial for students’ understanding in the certain objective of that particular task. Hence, the teacher should put more effort to modify or conduct and give students a clearer picture about that particular activity so that students can carry out this activity in a more efficient way.

(d) Without going in-depth into your 2nd part of your assignment (adapt and create), discuss in general what level of materials adaptation you will be using (it can be all three levels but used at different areas in the materials) and techniques you will employ to enrich the chapter you have evaluated. Briefly state the types of tasks which will accompany the current material. Please mention if there are media accompaniment with that task.

In chapter 9, there are two roles play activities where students have to work in pair. The situation of the roles play given is a conversation between a mother and a son and the other one is conversation of a doctor and his patient.  

Activity:

Firstly students have to choose either one of the situation given. They have to type out their conversation in not less than 120 words and the content of their conversation should include vocabulary and points related to their situation. This means that they have to do this task just like how they usually do in their exam for the writing/ essay section.

 They then have to act out the situation in a very authentic way and record the whole process. Their conversation has to be based on their dialogue that they have typed.

After doing both the writing and roles play part, they have to post their outcome into their tumblr account.

Each pair also has to “check out” what the other pairs have posted on their tumblr wall by giving likes and comments, and each pair has to give likes and comments to at least 5 of the other pairs. 

One of the techniques that have been implied in this activity was Maley’s adaptation techniques of branching. Maley suggested that “teachers may decide to add options to the existing activity or to suggest alternative pathways through the activities. (For example, an experiential route or an analytical route.) “. So, for the roles play activity, students can either choose the conversation between the mother and son or, the conversation between a doctor and his patient. By choosing different situation, the content, vocabulary and points that need to be included by students will be different.

Other techniques that have been included in this activity are the addition and expansion techniques proposed by Tomlinson and Masuhara. For the addition technique, Tomlinson and Masuhara stated that “teachers may add different text or activities”. Hence, there is a writing task added into the roles play activity to let students practice in their writing skill. As for the expansion technique, Tomlinson and Masuhara stated that “teachers may expand texts and activities by increasing the length, difficulty, depth, etc.” The difficulty was increased when students are required to prepare a conversation that must include certain types of language features based on the situation that have been chosen., which include points that are related to their topic. On the other hand, students are also required to memorise their dialogues and act it out in front of a recording video and show authenticity in during the roles play. This means that students have to practice few times so they can perform this task more efficiently, and this can help them in their speaking skills. 

Ivy's reflection:

I have learn a lot about adapting activities provided in textbook. Although we alerady learn and exposed the fact that we could modify activities that are not suitable in our teaching, but the powerpoint really helped   lot in giving more understanding to how to specifically adapt and modify the activities according to our preferences.

Sorry Ms, my blogger account has some problem,can't save and post anything. :O