Text Adaptation

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At times, it may be necessary for a teacher to adapt a text in order to make it more accessible to their students. For the TESL 0130  Reading and Vocabulary class we were asked to consider how we might adapt a text so that it would be usable in our EAL classroom. The text, from the British Council, contains reading skills practice and exercises regarding foreign exchange emails and is geared toward teenagers. It can be found at the following link:

Reading Skills Practice: Foreign Exchange Emails

The class that I have recently begun teaching is a range of  CLB 1-4 in listening and speaking, with many of the students at the Literacy level for reading and writing. This text is at a higher level than the students are currently working at and would therefore require some adaptations.

I analyzed the text based on its suitability, exploitability, and readability and determined that I could use some of the content and ideas from the original text and make adaptations to make it workable in my classroom. In addition to changing the text, I would make changes to the lesson.

Suitability: Writing an email message to a friend is a common experience. Learning how to write a friendly email message is a task-based learning activity.

Exploitability: The content of the message could be related to several class objectives including sharing personal information, informal language, and using appropriate verb tenses. The lesson incorporates reading, comprehension, vocabulary study and discussion. Additional speaking activities and a writing activity could be added to the lesson.

Readability: The level of the text is a little bit high; it includes some vocabulary, verb tenses and informal expressions that would be unfamiliar to my students. The length of the sentences is good overall, with a couple of them being too long or complex.

Text adaptation: I would modify the text by making it a bit shorter; I would omit a few sentences from the message. I would also simplify and shorten a couple of the longer and more complex sentences. I would delete or substitute a few of the hard words with synonyms. Additionally, I would put key vocabulary in bold print.

Lesson adaptation: I would introduce the topic and purpose of friendly e-mail messages and have a class discussion. Finding out the students’ experience and familiarity with the topic would help to guide the instruction. I would also share some shorter, simpler e-mail messages that included vocabulary and structures that the students were already familiar with before moving on to this message. I would use this text in a subsequent lesson.

Before reading this message, I would pre-teach the vocabulary words that I had selected and put in bold print, providing synonyms and visuals where possible. I would read the email message aloud to the class once, and then read it again, paraphrasing and explaining some words, phrases, and sentences as I went along.

After reading through the message several times I would move on to comprehension activities. I would put the students in heterogeneous groups to complete the questions. I would create a couple of questions focusing on the main ideas of the message and use the true/false questions provided to check on details. I also like the informal language vocabulary activity that is included as it exposes the students to some common expressions they may hear or read.

I would have a class discussion after reviewing the activities and go through any questions or comments the students had as a result of studying several emails. I would have the class work together to come up with the basic structure of a friendly email, including subject, greeting, body, closing, and signature. Finally, I would have the students practice writing a friendly email message to one of their friends or family members as a writing activity.

A useful blog post by Nathan Hall, Adapting Texts for Use in the English Classroom, was shared with me by my instructor, Anna. It includes ideas and tools for adapting texts. I highly recommend checking it out!

 Adapting Texts for Use in the English Classroom

Text adaptation is something that all teachers may have to do at one point or another so that all of their students are able to access the text. Making modifications to the readability of a text will give all students an opportunity to be successful.

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