Adapting reading material for classrooms is often much better than starting from scratch as it can save time and resources. There are three main things to consider when selecting material: suitability (ensuring it fits the context of the class you are teaching in interest and appropriateness), exploitability (can it be used alongside other teaching and integrated with other concepts), and readability (does it fit with the level of reading in your class) (Brown and Lee 2015, p. 441). If all of these criteria are not met, we have to consider adapting the text.
Consider the text from “Reading Skills Practice: Foreign Exchange Emails – Exercises” (Reading Skills Practice, 2015). This text seems like around a CLB 6/7 from my estimation. It is an email exchange between young exchange students (assuming high school level). How might we adapt this text for different class levels and contexts?
1) A LINC level 4 class with mature students?
Adaptation requires changing both the reading level to make it easier for this high beginner level from the intermediate level. The sentences need to be simplified by changing the more complex sentences to smaller sentences. The vocabulary needs to be simplified to more common words (eg. ‘nationalities’ to ‘other countries’, ‘ancient’ to ‘old’), and change some of the slang words like ‘loads of’ to ‘many’. The reading could also be shortened a bit.
Adaptation also requires changing the situation of the people to make it more relatable to mature ESL students. Instead of having teenagers in an exchange program, it could be a letter to a friend from a mature person on an extended holiday in Canada taking private English lessons. Or an ESL student in Canada writing to a former ESL classmate who has moved to a different part of Canada. It’s relatively easy to change the name of places, and situations, and some experiences.
LINC level 4 Adaptation:
Hi Fran,
How are you doing? How is Toronto? Are you having fun on your holiday? How are your English lessons?
Simon
Hi Simon,
Sorry I haven’t written. I am doing fine. I am very busy with new friends and learning English. I speak English all the time with some friends I have met. They are teaching me about their own languages and countries too.
I am staying with my son and daughter-in-law. They are Susan and Paul. Their children are Lewis and Amy, and they go to primary school. I watched the movie Frozen with them many times. I know all the songs from the movie now. It is helping my English.
We live very near to my English teacher and I can walk there. I can take the bus to many shops and cafes in the city center. Next week we have a trip to the zoo. There is a festival on now. It is so much fun for the children.
I will send some photos of my family next time. Tell me how you are doing.
Fran
2) A group of international students in an EAP setting?
This group of learners have a higher reading level (possible CLB 8/9 equivalent), and therefore would require more complex language and grammar. At this level, more slang and idioms could be incorporated into the text. Different verb tenses could also be incorporated. Most of the text is in the present tense, so more past and future tenses could be used.
Although this group of learners may easily relate to the context of the email (foreign student exchange), there may also be some older learners in the group. A more general context of a friend emailing another friend about an extended holiday or about a business trip to a conference would also be a scenario that might appeal to a broader spectrum of learners.
3) Teaching in a school that uses a learning management system (LMS)?
It would be useful to place the text on the LMS, especially if it is a distance course. Copyright laws in Canada for education fall under the Fair Dealing Guidelines (CMEC 2016) and allow ‘single copy of a short excerpt from a copyright- protected work’ and must properly reference the source of the material and the author. For online materials ‘copyright law permits teachers and students to access publicly available Internet materials in the process of teaching and learning’. Also under this law, online material can be used but not if it has been prohibited for use in educational material by the owner.
Some material shared using Creative Commons licenses (Creative Commons, n.d.) will have different levels of use, with some allowing use with modifications, others not allowing modifications, others not allowing commercial use. So if you want to modify or adapt the text, you may have to get permission to do so.
4) If this text were too difficult for your learners, but is mandatory reading in the curriculum?
When the text is considered too difficult for learners, there are some steps that could be taken to make it easier. Preparation of the learners prior to reading (pre-reading) becomes much more important. There may be much vocabulary that needs to be taught in a few different sessions to allow the learners to become more comfortable with the words. This would include the slang words and idioms. A series of pictures could be used to accompany the vocabulary. Different exercises would be created to scaffold the learning using vocabulary, phrases and shorter sentences taken from the reading so that it has been seen by the learners already. Instead of reading the whole text, learners could just read one paragraph at a time, to ensure they are comfortable with it before going on to the next one.
Summary:
This exercise has used an email as a very useful reading tool that can be easily adapted for a variety of contexts and levels. There are many more very useful and authentic materials that can be used in the classroom and adapted for reading exercises. Just think about what we read each day: grocery receipts, store flyers, newspapers (online of off), food labels, forms, manuals, recipes, etc. The list is endless. All of these materials are very useful and adaptable for teaching, and often very relatable to our learners. But we must ensure that they are well integrated into our lessons and relevant to our learners.
References:
British Council. (2015). Foreign exchange emails-exercises. British Council. Retrieved
from http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/skills/reading-skills-practice/foreign-exchange-emails
Brown, D. & Lee, H. (2015). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language
pedagogy (Rev. 4th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Creative Commons (n.d.) Creative Commons Licenses. Retrieved from
CMEC (2016) Copyright, Fair Dealing, and the Classroom:
What Teachers Can and Cannot Do. Council of Ministers of Education Canada. Retrieved from https://cmec.ca/docs/copyright/CopyrightFairDealingClassroom_EN.pdf
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