Reflection task week 8

For this task, we are learning about the materials adaptation. As proposed by Tomlinson & Masuhara (2004), “materials adaptation involves changing existing materials so that they become more suitable for specific learners, teachers and situations” (p. 11). From that definition, it shows that adaptation process for the learning materials is essential so that it can bring benefit to both teacher and students. This is because, learning materials play important role to make the situation of learning become more conducive and able the learners to understand the learning process and achieve the learning aims and objectives at the end of the lesson. Thus, it is very important for teacher to carry out the adaptation process  where from my understanding teacher have a right to decide which aspect he or she want to teach. Teacher also can customize the activities by providing supplement from other sources instead of using the available one. Moreover, as we are aware, some of the activities in the book are not that necessary to be conduct and teacher can just skip that part and add activities that he or she thinks suitable for the student’s level.

Through this task, we are able to see the similarities and differences that can be found from McDonough and Shaw, Maley, and Tomlinson and Masuhara adaptation techniques. Overall view from our finding is that, although they share more similarities in terms of the characteristics and explanation however, there are also a few differences that can be found. Furthermore, from the comparison between McDonough and Shaw with Tomlinson and Masuhara materials adaptation procedure, the similarities and differences are obviously seen from the table. From that, we found out that some procedures are similar with each other especially the description of certain concept whereas the terms used for each procedure is differed. Apart from that, this task also able we to have a clear view on the levels of the materials adaptation which comprises of three level where the 1^st level: macro adaptation, 2^nd level: adapting a unit, and 3^rd level: adaptation of specific activities in a unit. We believe that, the disclosure of the description of the three levels allow us to have a gist on what things that need to be done for every levels.

For question (d), we are ask to discuss in general what level of materials adaptation we will be using and techniques that we will employ to enrich the chapter that we have evaluated in our 1^st part of assignment. For this part, we decide to use the activities from the Malaysian English Language Form 2 Textbook. For the 1^st level that is macro adaptation, we choose to eliminate the topic entitled “Give Us Space to Run and Play” because we found that it is not necessary for the students to learn this topic. At the 2^nd level that is adapting a unit, we choose topic “ Looking Good Feeling Great” because this topic allow us to relate the real life situation context and to make it more authentic we use realia to teach the topic which focus on the writing skills using sentence connectors. For the 3^rd level that is adaption of specific activities in a unit, we come to an agreement that if the activity is not well-designed then we want to customize and adapt it. Thus, we decide to use realia so that the students will be able to give instruction using right sentence connectors. Moreover, we have confidence that by creating an activity that has the authentic purposes can actually attract the student’s interest and engage them in the learning process.

In a nutshell, adaptation is the process where teacher will try to match the teaching materials by changing some of the features available in the course book so that it is appropriate and suit the circumstance of the students. I believe that, the adaptation process can brings successful towards the process of learning of the students as they learn and receive only necessary input. Thus, teacher should carry out adaptation of the materials that is use for the student’s learning so that it suits their need. Moreover, through this task I am able to learn more on what aspect that needs to be taking into consideration in order to carry out the materials adaptation process. I am sure that by the knowledge and information that I get from this task, I am able to do the materials adaptation later.