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Selecting and Adapting Materials
Compulsory reading tasks cannot help capturing our students’ attention; on the contrary, this fact deprives them of the resulting benefits of a truthful reading experience also talks about “the ineffectiveness of course texts. At their most extreme, texts of this kind are clearly intended, not to convey a message, but to indicate how certain facts are expressed in the FL.”
Canonical literature, in particular classic works, so declared by theorists and historians of literature, might not have the correct addressee in Spanish secondary students. They could be unprepared for the linguistic or aesthetic elements included in those texts or their inner message. The aesthetic delight depends on the reader’s attitude towards the text, says Wolfgang Iser (1976); maybe our students have not the proper attitude, but in addition they lack the aptitude and competences needed to enjoy limitless time reading. “Graded” books reduce the reading experience and give importance only to comprehension by means of eliminating the most important elements of the reading venture: its “difference”. Attraction, suspense, enigma, etc; all those elements can create the sense of “difference” that the reader experiments unique. This research work does not negate the positive effect of certain classical texts traditionally offered by language teachers, but wants to put more emphasis on the fact that the selection of the text must not follow any other requisite but our learners’ language improvement and their adherence to good reading habits. In order to achieve this goal the teacher’s assistance and counselling during the process is essential.
Selecting materials for the classroom is operating over the whole range of possible sources, materials, formats and genres available today. As Biancarosa& Snow confess, “educators have now a powerful array of tools at their disposal”. With the use of the text-based collaborative approach the learning process is decentralized, yet the practitioner needs to develop professional knowledge and abilities to select and adapt the text to the students. The main consideration is that those texts are correctly adapted for the interest and expectancies of the readers. “Many adolescents, both native and non-native English speakers, have out-of-school literacy skills and interests that their teachers may not even know about, but which could serve as a springboard for learning in the classroom”.
The teacher must determinate the range of topics available in accordance with students’ opinions, and “give choices” and strategies while allowing them to make the final choice out of the texts pre-selected. Teachers should always keeping in their minds that “our choices as educators play a role in shaping students’ choices”.
Later on, students’ on going reporting of the books and texts already read make the machinery of selection more precise and widen their reading experiences. Furthermore, students with their discussions, critiques and comments in the classroom start sharing a common context for learning that struggles their willingness to read more and learn more things.
The adaptation process is that which follows texts’ convenience and the preparation of the materials for the students. If there is something to omit or add in order to easy their experience this is to be fulfilled before presenting them the texts. This additional point of assistance assures their reading delight and tries freeing the reader of the anxieties that follow his inexperience. This manipulation of the text wants the uninformed reader to be as informed as a young reader needs be.
As a means to adapt the texts a whole process of assessment and reporting begins through which the teacher considers various factors: the age group level, their achievements, the curricular plan for the course and the different methods of evaluation. Later on the practitioner starts having an idea of what are the students’ individual deficiencies and to what extent is it the text adaptable to them.
An adaptation procedure would include the decoration of some dense and too-much-formal texts with pictures, funny footnotes, an appendix, or commentaries. It can also include several modifications at the level of expression in order to diminish the difficulty of some of the grammar and vocabulary included, but adapting a text not only means lowering its composite structure and inner message. If it depicts a series of supporting elements like hyperlinks, examples, film extracts, etc. it must prove being very helpful. Everything that the teacher judges suitable for their access to that specific text and motivating enough to maintain their reading attention.
Adapting texts for our students is an open intervention that allows widening and modifying the text to fit the context of the English classroom and students’ interests. However, we do not want to low estimate their capacities. There have been proposed other levelling systems aside from graded reading, “cloze tests” have been lately used to manage each student’s reading skills. This method consists of leaving blank spaces in the place of some words of a short piece of a text. Students have to prove their capacity for filling up the blanks and from their mistakes it is established the criteria of adaptation. Still, this system has proved to lower too much their capacities and so, to diminish the effort and the interest of students.
This proposal considers more didactic the fact that the reader struggles with the text’s message, albeit the message may get blurred or difficult to grasp. Through rereading, , dialogue and activities all their problems can be resolved and their answers completed.
Now that teachers have become “reading facilitators” let’s see why choosing authentic material to read against traditional “graders” and classic literature, along with ICT and new media in the classroom is the best option for making our students become avid readers.
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