Using Adapted Material and its Impact on University Students’ Motivation^*

Uso de material adaptado y su impacto en la motivación de estudiantes universitarios

Sergio Antonio Duarte** Leonardo Alberto Escobar***

**I.E.D. Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, Colombia, E-mail: seduart_un@hotmail.com Address: Carrera 7 # 7-55 Tocancipá (Cund.)

***Universidades Incca de Colombia and Manuela Beltrán, Colombia, *** E-mail: lescobar78@yahoo.com Address: Carrera 52 # 4 - 34 Bogotá D.C.

This article reports on the development of research that sought to increase the motivation of a group of students of English at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, in Bogotá, by means of the design and implementation of adapted material that responds to the necessities and profile of the students. The project started through the application of questionnaires completed by students and teachers regarding their perception towards the material they were currently using. Based on the results we obtained, we started with the design and the implementation of the material. During and after the implementation we again asked students to complete questionnaires in order to obtain their perceptions toward the new material. One of the conclusions was that adapting material can positively influence students’ motivation when learning a foreign language.

Key words: Materials design, materials evaluation, materials development, materials adaptation, motivation, global material, local material

Este artículo trata sobre el desarrollo de una investigación que buscó aumentar la motivación de un grupo de estudiantes de inglés de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá, a través del diseño e implementación de material adaptado que responda a las necesidades y perfiles de los estudiantes. El proyecto comenzó con la aplicación de cuestionarios a estudiantes y docentes en cuanto a su percepción del material que actualmente estaban usando. Con base en los resultados, se comenzó el diseño e implementación del material. Durante y después de la implementación se aplicaron otros cuestionarios a los estudiantes con el fin de obtener sus percepciones acerca del nuevo material. Una de las conclusiones fue que adaptar material puede influenciar positivamente en la motivación de los estudiantes cuando aprenden una lengua extranjera.

Palabras clave: Diseño de materiales, evaluación de materiales, desarrollo de materiales, adaptación de materiales, material global, material local

Introduction

Materials for teaching English have a fundamental role in learning a language. The way they are designed, their content, their colours, distribution, and context will greatly influence the learning process of the students by keeping them motivated. The textbook is, and always will be, a necessary tool for learning languages since it can motivate and change students’ attitude in the classroom. Therefore, the selection of a suitable textbook is not an easy task. Many times it is poorly chosen or, in some cases, teachers do not work with the book appropriately.

One problem with textbooks is that their contents can be idealistic, creating a world where everything is safe, clean, harmonious and undisturbed. What is real and significant in our lives is absent or seen as something to hide: sex, drugs, crime, war, religion, politics, history and other “taboo” topics. If students were also faced with these kinds of topics, there would be more chance of using the whole mind of the learner and the neural connections would be more meaningful. Therefore, the learning experience would also be more long-lasting for every learner in his own way (Tomlinson, 1998).

Another problem is the lack of learner involvement in the relation materialstudents, which contributes to an indifferent response from them. Many students find course books somehow boring even if that material is intended to be attractive by using colors and illustrations. Many times the formats are monotonous, as well as the methodology and the blandness of the contents, among other factors.

A third problem is that, on one hand, course books, instead of making students feel relaxed, make them feel threatened by means of recurring testing. This is due to the fact, that their materials make teachers work on them by focusing on testing students or by preparing them to pass exams. On the other hand, many course books diminish students’ interest by proposing easy practice activities that do not challenge learners cognitively or emotionally. There are activities which are solved mechanically and sometimes do not involve students in thinking-skills activities.

In order to have more suitable materials, teachers may resort to the creation and design of materials. This may help greatly to overcome many students’ learning problems by providing more familiar situations and more appropriate activities according to their needs. However, materials design is a field that is not explored enough by teachers for reasons such as the lack of investment of time, money and support from educational authorities.

Two main types of materials are seen in English teaching processes: Global and local materials (Tomlinson, 1998). The first one refers to the textbooks published on a large scale by publishing houses, and the second embraces those materials created by teachers, and intended to be used solely by their students in local contexts. This distinction was important during the project development.

Based on results of the stage of need analysis found in the target research group (see next section for further details), we started to ask ourselves: How can the implementation of different material affect students’ motivation in their specific setting?

Therefore, it was necessary to create a plan consisting of a new proposal of locally adapted material that helped students’ learning process in an alternative way. To achieve this objective, it was also necessary to compare it with the current material we were using to obtain information on what the students preferred and examine which of the two choices, the current textbooks or the adapted material, would have a more positive effect on their motivation.

Setting

The target group chosen belonged to the program of English Intensive Courses offered by the Foreign Languages Department at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, in Bogotá. One of the authors of this paper was in charge of this group of students, of intermediate level. There were 15 students from different undergraduate programs who took English as a compulsory subject in the curriculum. The courses were intended to develop the communicative competence in the four skills, though reading is considered the cornerstone of the teaching and learning processes. Most of them willingly took the classes; but some others took them reluctantly resulting in absences, lack of participation, and failure to complete assignments, among others. Additionally, based on a questionnaire given to teachers, we found that some teachers were not comfortable with the materials suggested by the university for these intensive courses.

The study evaluated the materials that were being used to check their suitability contrasted with what students needed and preferred, as shown in a needs analysis carried out at the beginning of the project. From this point, the current and the new material were used in four different sessions of four hours each, to analyze students’ perceptions towards the two types of materials and to draw some conclusions (see Figure 1).

Literature Review

In order to give an adequate direction to the project on a reliable theory base, we researched two main areas, teaching materials design and motivation, which are the basis or foundations of our study.

1. Materials Design

The materials used in the classroom represent one of the main elements of a language class. Not only do the materials support the teaching process, but they can also affect, positively or negatively, students’ motivation. Therefore, thinking of the most accurate material for a course becomes a serious process of selection, development or adaptation, depending on what it is best for the students at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where this study took place.

In connection to this, Hutchinson & Waters (1987) present three possible and well-defined ways of having actual teaching materials to the fore during the course design:

-Materials evaluation;

-Materials development;

-Materials adaptation.

-Materials evaluation involves judging the fitness of the materials in relation to

the original purpose of the course. For this, it is necessary to define the criteria in order to evaluate the textbook objectively. Grant (1987, p. 119) presents the CATALYST Test which provides some questions that determine whether the textbooks being used are suitable for the class or not. Therefore, for the evaluation of the textbook, he proposes three steps:

-Initial evaluation;

-Detailed evaluation;

-In-use evaluation.

For the initial evaluation Grant (Ibid.) presents the CATALYST test. The eight letters in the word CATALYST represent the eight criteria by which we can decide whether a textbook/material is suitable for our classroom objectives and needs.

-Communicative? Is the textbook communicative? Will the students be able to use the language to communicate as a result of using the book?

-Aims? Does it fit in with our aims and objectives? These may be laid down by educational authorities, or devised on our own.

-Teachable? Does the course seem to be teachable? Does it seem reasonably easy to use, well organized, and easy to find your way around?

-Available add-ons? Are there any useful “adds-on”- additional materials such as teacher’s books, tapes, workbooks, etc? If so, are they available?

-Level? Does the level seem about right?

-Your impression? What is your overall impression of the course?

-Student interest? Are your students likely to find the book interesting?

-Tried and tested? Has the course been tried and tested in real classrooms? Where? By whom? What were the results? How do you know?

The detailed evaluation consists of a three-part questionnaire focusing on:

-Does the material or the course book suit your students?

-Does it suit the teacher?

-Does it suit the syllabus? (See Appendix 1).

The in-use evaluation is used to constantly evaluate the textbook and confirm its usefulness in the classroom.

Once the evaluation of the textbook has been done, it is possible to carry out Materials Development. This means the writing of materials by the teacher specifically for his / her class. This is not the common step to follow, because doing it implies spending a lot of time designing and, in general, this step is also difficult for financial reasons. Consequently, many teachers accept the textbooks that publishing houses produce on a large scale because “everything is already prepared” (Masuhara, 2004).

On the other hand, Masuhara (2004) points out that materials adaptation “involves changing existing materials in some form so that they become suitable for specific purposes, learners, teachers or situations” (p. 1). This implies considering the learners’ context, learning styles and attitudes when taking existing material to adapt it for pedagogical purposes in an EFL setting. Additionally, the author also suggests the following procedure to adapt material:

1.Select a unit of a coursebook.

2.List reasons why you want to adapt the unit.

3. List an evaluation criteria, thinking of the local needs.

4.Do an evaluation of the unit.

5. Based on the results, list the objectives for your adaptation.

6.Adapt the unit in the way you want to use it in your class.

7. Teach your class with the adapted unit.

8.Do a whilst- and post-evaluation to see if your objectives were achieved.

The more systematic we are, the more skilful we will be in adapting appropriate materials for our contexts. We have to create a strategy to adapt materials to the specific teaching context. Teachers can do team adaptation, which demands working with colleagues adapting materials and following a systematic process. Some of the people who can adapt materials are: teachers, materials writers, publishing houses and learners. It is very important to consider the learner role in the process of material adaptation since s/he is the ultimate beneficiary of the language experience. Therefore, it is necessary to take into consideration the likes and dislikes of learners and their context. For doing this it is mandatory to do needs analysis.

Techniques for materials adaptation

Masuhara (2004) also proposes different techniques to adapt material as shown in the tables 1, 2 and 3 The author labels every group of techniques as plus, minus and zero category. Plus category means that in the process of adaptation, the teacher will add or expand details. Minus category refers the deletion or subtraction of elements and zero category implies the modification of elements without addition or deletion.

If we apply these techniques in a systematic way we will be able to offer more varied, dynamic and interesting materials. That is precisely what we, as English teachers, want for our teaching contexts. Students and teachers will feel better using materials if they offer students a more successful experience of learning English as a foreign language.

2. Motivation

Motivation can be considered as the main factor in order to undertake any kind of activity and, more importantly, when learning a foreign language. Brown (1994) defines motivation as the extent to which you make choices about goals to pursue and the effort you will devote to that pursuit. This means that if there is no motivation, there will not be results or achievements.

The affective aspect is a fundamental factor in students’ motivation. It relates to an experience with a powerful attachment to emotions and feelings (Berman, in Tomlinson, 2000). This aspect in a course book can have an enormous impact on students’ motivation in learning English. According to Tomlinson (1998), there are at least three ways in which the affective aspect should influence language teaching materials. 1. The attitude towards the target language, the teacher, the course book, other learners and activities. 2. Making students feel relaxed and confident –this may help them to succeed in learning a language. 3. Helping students to respond to the language experiences as a whole person with all the possible emotions, attitudes, opinions and ideas. If a course book clearly considers these three aspects, motivation in learners will increase and the language experience will become more fruitful.

Tomlinson (1998) suggests three options to find the solution to this problem: 1. Locally produced coursebooks; 2. Local adaptation of coursebooks, and 3. Teacherdeveloped materials. The most suitable procedure for saving time and money, in our specific case, and maybe for most of our colleagues in our country is the local adaptation of coursebooks. Teachers can take the current textbook of the course they are working with and try to make certain modifications in terms of contents, activities, grouping and skills, responding to the specific necessities of the students.

Research Methodology

The research method used in this project was action research, which is “practitioner research aimed at improving one’s own practice” (McNiff, Lomax & Whitehead, 1996, p. 7). According to Cohen & Manion (2000, p. 226-27), action research is “a small-scale intervention in the functioning of the real world and a close examination of the effects of such an intervention.” Cohen & Manion (1985, in Nunan, 1992) add that it is first and foremost situational, being concerned with the identification of problems in a specific context.

According to the previous definitions, we certainly wanted to improve daily teaching practices. We made a close intervention and engaged in seeing the effects of this intervention on the specific setting. This is the action-research model we followed in this project:

Once the problem was identified, a needs analysis was carried out through a questionnaire which aimed to identify perceptions from teachers and students regarding the current textbook (see Appendix 2 and 3). Then, during four class sessions of four hours each, both the current and the adapted material were used in order to make a clear contrast.

Throughout the process, students answered a progressive questionnaire which provided information on their perceptions about the materials used in class (see Appendix 4 Part 1 and 2). At the end, a final questionnaire was carried out with students in order to know their degree of satisfaction towards the implemented material (see Appendix 5). Figure 1 gathers the steps taken to carry out the research study.

Pedagogical Design

The material that was used in the intensive course was the Cutting Edge course book, intermediate level, (Longman). As described below, teachers suggested it would be useful to use other materials, according to students’ profiles. In order to present adequate adapted material we also took into consideration other series like Headway (Oxford) and other pertinent and useful course books of the same level. We applied different techniques when carrying out the adaptation process.

The resulting material was a five-lesson unit consisting of the following topics: Personal Life, Housing, Education and Community, Falling in Love and Jobs in your Community. The activities provided in the material asked students to work in pairs or larger groups. They usually had to ask questions so that the information was more meaningful and realistic. Some activities were related strictly to foreign contexts, such as “Visit Edinburgh-Scotland’s Capital City”. However, they were closely connected to another activity which involved familiar and closer contexts, such as describing his/ her own city. Appendix 6 shows a sample of a lesson of the Didactic Unit. It is Locally Adapted Material since it took pieces of different global textbooks and adapted them to students’ context and profile.

Results

The questionnaires used during the research were carefully piloted before being carried out so that we could identify ambiguities, misunderstandings and difficulties.

The information collected from the questionnaire given to five teachers (See Appendix 2) suggested that they all agree that the current or global material did not have a good connection with the students’ social and cultural context. It showed that the socio-cultural aspect was far removed from their lives. For instance, a textbook may use, as part of its contents, the habits and customs of the English Royalty in order to work on simple present and enable the learner to express routines. The learner is likely to learn and achieve the objective of identifying and using the grammar item. However, the context that exemplifies the grammatical aspect could not have been the best since for many people in Colombia English Royalty is only seen on TV news. Besides, Royalty is a condition to which people do not easily have access.

What the Needs Analysis Showed

The information from the questionnaire carried out with students in the needs analysis showed that most of the students consider the English learning process is a useful and valuable tool to acquire knowledge. However, many students just took the course due to the requirement to obtain their degree. A smaller number of students learned English for personal interest and motivation, and no one manifested learning English because he/she needed it for his /her daily life. This corresponds to what Gardner & Lambert (1972) argue in terms of the integrative and instrumental motivation. In view of this, most of the surveyed students (80%) were considered to have instrumental motivation, since they were learning English for functional purposes, that is, to fulfil a requirement, or to comprehend texts. The rest of the students (20%) were characterised by their integrative motivation, since they felt interested in learning the language to become part of the culture or to identify themselves with it.

Likewise, we could also deduce that the materials did not promote spontaneous and free communication as long as problemsolving activities were not included. The results also posed the challenge of providing students with appealing activities.

Findings during the Implementation Stage

During the implementation students were asked to think about whether certain features such as grammar structures, varied vocabulary, appropriate language, general knowledge development of the course and activities in the four skills were included in each kind of material. They stressed that materials should have all those characteristics in order to facilitate the learning process and to respond to students’ interests.

Students showed their liking for the aspects that were included in the local material. Some of these are the creative use of the language, spontaneous and free communication, realistic situations, solving problems, interesting and familiar topics, fostering of mental cognitive capacities, grouping, and games. The results clearly demonstrated the positive effect on students’ motivation for learning English.

The local material had more integrated activities than the global one. Since the local material is an adaptation, the language, the content and the activities were intentionally designed to cover students’ proficiency level, interests and socio-cultural context. This is why students showed preference towards the local adapted material and felt more familiar with it, as can be seen in the following quotes, originally written in Spanish:

The context is more familiar, thus, the local material makes the development of the activities and of the games easier.

I think it is very positive that the materials include local topics.

It allows the use of necessary expressions, adapted to our culture.

Local materials motivate language learning. They boost better comprehension of the language in all its areas: grammar, speaking, listening, etc.

Local material has a more attractive design.

As we can deduce from these comments, local materials were used not only as a means to transmit knowledge, but as a vehicle to affect students’ motivation. They could practice the language using the local materials. It was also evident that the proposed tasks around local material were clearly directed to a communicative purpose.

Findings after the Implementation Stage

After the implementation, the questionnaire included in Appendix 5 was carried out in order to dig into students’ opinions concerning the quantity and quality of activities involving the four skills, the realistic situations provided in the examples and activities from both materials, the enjoyment when working on each of them, and how challenging the activities were.

Results showed the effect of the material on students’ motivation when involved in the use of activities around them. When implementing global materials most students just solved some exercises without finishing them. It became boring. But, when implementing the local adapted material, students felt more motivated to finish the activities since they were more meaningful to them. Students’ responses showed that 93% of them enjoyed the activities of the local adapted materials more. This contrasts with 43% who manifested that the global material was more fun. There is a great difference between the figures and we can also say that certainly, students felt more motivated to participate in the activities contained in the adapted material. The same was expressed by the teacher.

The information provided suggests that students preferred the local material in terms of how real the situations and examples are. Despite the colourfulness and the apparently updated situations, students still feel the contents or situations often presented in global textbooks are far from their reality. With the adapted material, one main intention was to expose students to more familiar and common situations. It had a direct impact on students’ motivation.

Furthermore, as for the challenge represented in the activities of the materials, the local material required students (86%) to use their mental powers to solve situations and to think about options and preferences, to give opinions, to support, to deduce, etc. It also had a positive effect on the motivation for learning with materials.

Conclusions

Based on the evidence of the results we can state that implementing any kind of material can have a significant and decisive influence on learners’ motivation in the process of learning English as a foreign language. We became conscious that it is not just a matter of presenting the students with a colourful and beautiful textbook. It implies gathering much more fundamental information about these areas: needs and circumstances of the students and the class, a coherent treatment of theories of language and learning, contents related to students’ life and context and careful attention to the layout of the pages. From our perspective, all teaching material should reflect a clear understanding and management of those definite components throughout the material. If everything is well-organized, the learning process will be an enjoyable experience, harmoniously creating a sense of peace of mind in students; so that they feel confident to face learning situations.

The level of difficulty, the vocabulary, the recycling of grammar and realistic situations were outstanding factors in obtaining good perceptions in relation to the local adapted material implemented in contrast to the global version. Moreover, the fact of having included situations connected with their daily lives, including their university lives, makes them feel more motivated and attracted to do activities in this new material. What these students needed to be motivated was to encounter living and quasi-personalized situations that helped them overcome their fear or disinterest towards the language.

The following graph shows the effect that local adapted material had on their motivation:

In the last part of the implementation stage of the adapted material, the questionnaire applied to students (see Appendix 4 - Part 2) evidenced that the local adapted material promoted the following aspects on their learning:

1.Creativity in language use

2.Free and spontaneous communication

3.Real-life situations

4.Problem-solving activities

5.Familiar and interesting topics

6.Mental cognitive capacities

7.Group work

8.Pair work

9.Individual presentations

10.Games or similar activities

Students felt more familiar with the local adapted material rather than with the global one. Although the textbook used in the courses students had taken before was considered to be quite integrative, it did not completely fit the students’ needs, weaknesses and their socio–cultural environment. The adapted material turned out to be more successful because it was designed for that group of students and thus, increased their interest and motivation as the following graphs show.

These graphics clearly suggest that students showed a preference towards the local material in terms of how real the situations and examples are in the adapted material. Despite the colorfulness and the apparently updated situations of the global material, students still feel those contents or situations are far from their reality because they deal with topics and situations that do not affect them emotionally. With the adapted material, one main intention was to expose students to more familiar and common situations. It had a direct impact on students’ motivation because it really touched and involved them cognitively and emotionally, making them feel motivated to participate in the proposed activities.

Something that affects students’ concentration on activities and the general process of learning is that very often the proposed activities are not challenging for them. This leads us to conclude that one of the advantages of local adapted materials is the possibility of adapting the activities in a way that causes them to become really challenging and interesting to the students of a specific group.

Limitations

Designing or adapting new materials is not an easy task. Getting to know the students regarding their socio-cultural aspects, interests and learning styles is a must if the material has a specific target group. The problem that may arise is that not everybody will be satisfied with the material design and there will always be students reluctant to work. Another difficulty is to find appropriate and available resources like pictures, reading texts and audio activities to enrich the material, since copying from copy-righted material may cause legal problems.

The adaptation of materials to local contexts and needs entails an enormous process of documentation and design of effective resources that should work in all or most contexts where the material is implemented. It seems a long way to go, but it is not impossible to achieve.

^* This project was conducted in the ALEX programme of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá. It was funded by the authors, with the support of the Foreign Languages Department.

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