Materials Adaptation Techniques
The set of operations teachers and course designers perform on existing materials to bring them closer to learner needs, syllabus targets, or local conditions. McDonough, Shaw and Masuhara give the canonical taxonomy in Materials and Methods in ELT (3rd edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), building on earlier accounts by McDonough and Shaw and by Cunningsworth.
The standard taxonomy
Six operations recur across the literature: adding, deleting (or omitting), modifying, simplifying, reordering, and replacing.
Adding introduces new material: extra examples, a warm-up task, a homework extension, an authentic text to support an underdeveloped topic. Addition can extend (lengthen the same kind of work) or expand (bring in a different kind, e.g. a speaking task into a grammar-heavy unit).
Deleting removes content judged irrelevant, culturally awkward, or redundant. Like addition, it has a quantitative and a qualitative form: cutting items versus cutting whole sections.
Modifying rewrites at the level of language, register, or task design without changing the unit's overall shape. Common modifications include rewording rubrics, changing example sentences for cultural fit, or shifting a controlled drill toward freer practice.
Simplifying reduces linguistic or cognitive demand — shorter sentences, more frequent vocabulary, scaffolded steps — typically when material is pitched above the class.
Reordering changes the sequence in which material is taught, either within a unit (skills sequence) or across units (syllabus order), to match a different grammatical progression or topical flow.
Replacing swaps one item for another — a less effective text for a more engaging one, an outdated cultural reference for a current one — keeping the unit's slot intact.
When adaptation is needed
Adaptation answers gaps surfaced by Materials Evaluation: a coursebook whose level is uneven, whose topics ignore the local context, whose skills coverage is unbalanced, or whose pedagogic approach clashes with the institution's. The decision is rarely all-or-nothing; a teacher may delete one task, modify another, and add a third inside a single lesson.
Limits
Heavy adaptation can drain the time it was meant to save and can fragment a coursebook's internal coherence. Where the gap between book and class is too wide, course design from scratch or a different coursebook is the cleaner response.
References
- McDonough, J., Shaw, C., & Masuhara, H. (2013). Materials and Methods in ELT: A Teacher's Guide (3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
- Cunningsworth, A. (1995). Choosing Your Coursebook. Heinemann.
- Tomlinson, B., & Masuhara, H. (2018). The Complete Guide to the Theory and Practice of Materials Development for Language Learning. Wiley.