TESL - 0130 Adapting a Text

Unit 2 - Adapting a Text

As to get into the spirit of Halloween, I decided to look at a text relating to this celebration. I am not teaching at the moment; However, I’ll would be adapting this text for mainly ESL classes for high school students, ages between 16 -18 at the advanced level.

  

The course stated that there are three criteria’s for selecting a text: Suitability, Exploitability, and Readability.

Suitability: Is this text interesting and appropriate for my class? Yes, I believe it is. The students are at the age in which the dilemma of the article states. I also believe it would be interesting for all English Language Learners to know the customs of the Country they are staying in and the fact that their fellow student/friends and school will be experiencing these customs. Therefore it is relevant and they could easily relate to the issue at hand.

Is this text challenging? Yes, but in a good way. There will be new words that they will experience as they read through the text, which will help with expanding their vocabulary. Speaking and pronunciation might also play a challenging part.

Exploitability: Is this text usable for instructional tasks and techniques and that is integratable with other skills like reading, writing, and speaking?  Yes. This text can be fused and can integrate well with the other skills, no problem. For example, finding definitions to new words, listening activities, paraphrasing, summarizing, and writing a part of the text in another person or tense. It also gives way to critical thinking, why is this a problem? Is there another point of view? Group and pair discussions, etc…

Readability: Is this a text with lexical and structural difficulty that will challenge students without overwhelming them? Yes, provided that they are at the Intermediate level I believe. The text was graded on Readable.io, it stated that the text was a grading letter A, which states according to them, that at least 80% of the general public with a reading level of great 8 should be able to read this text without much trouble. However, there are words that the students will have troubles with, there might also be too many long words that we can shorten to make it readable.

Adaptation with a text:

-I would give small picture representations of the topic of discussion at the beginning of class (pictures of common symbols and chocolate). Small conversations of what they know about it vs. what they would like to know on Halloween? Show pictures of typical Halloween outings and explain the concept of “Trick or Treating,” to get a better idea behind the custom.

-Give the class the Heading of the news article "New Brunswick city bans trick-or-treating for kids over 16, sets Halloween curfew", pair-share as to make their own conclusions and discuss their answers as a class.

- Give out the article as a ‘hand-out’, so they can have a better understanding of the information, work in pairs/groups. Read the news article as a class. Stop when necessary to clarify concepts and misunderstandings.

-But on board any new word that the students have troubles with, and later have them find the definitions along with a synonym and an antonym for better reference.

- Show a news clip, so that they can understand what they read with a visual representation of the news. NB town council wages war on Halloween "mischief".

-Give the class a hand-out with a few exercise questions based on what they have read from the article. Some examples of the exercises may include: matching vocabulary words to their meaning, true and false statements, and a few short answer questions to see if they understood the reading, and one or two questions for group discussion, which would be part of their long answer.

Hope it's to your liking, laters!

Resources

Budden, J. (2008). Adapting materials for mixed ability classes. British Council. Retrieved from https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/adapting-materials-mixed-ability-classes

Rebel Canada. (2017, September 24).NB Town council wages war on Halloween "mischief." Youtube. Retrevied from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UUPZGrK_LY 

Staff. (2017, September 19). New Brunswick city bans trick-or-treating for kids over 16, sets Halloween curfew. Global News. Retrieved from https://globalnews.ca/news/3756827/new-brunswick-city-bans-trick-or-treating-for-kids-over-16-sets-halloween-curfew/