Investigating English Teachers’ Understanding of Materials
Adaptation in Curriculum 2013
Rizaldy Hanifa
Department of English Education, School of Postgraduate Studies, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Materials Development, Materials Adaptation, Curriculum 2013.
Abstract: The implementation of curriculum 2013 urges teachers to be more productive, creative, and innovative in
adapting various kinds of teaching materials. However, the tendency for over-reliance on textbook may cause
teachers to have lack of experience and familiarity dealing with materials adaptation. This might lead them to
not have the best insight into materials development. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating English
teachers’ understanding of their materials adaptation in relation to curriculum 2013. The data obtained through
interview with six junior high school teachers were analysed qualitatively. The results indicated that teachers’
understanding of materials adaptation was highly good. The teachers made some adaptations to their teaching
materials which consisted of adding more language inputs, deleting and simplifying some difficult materials,
modifying the contexts of materials as well as the language tasks, and reordering the contents of textbook. In
spite of that, the teachers found it difficult to develop the materials optimally due to the limitation of the time
they had. Accordingly, some of their adaptations failed to cater students’ needs. Thus, it is important for the
teachers to participate in any materials development training or workshop in order to become better materials
developers and able to implement the curriculum well.
1 INTRODUCTION
The implementation of curriculum 2013 had caused a
lot of reforms in the development of education in
Indonesia including reforms in how teachers teach,
how students learn, how teachers assess students’
result of learning, and also how teachers make the
development of teaching materials. As stated in
Center for Curriculum and Textbook Development
(2012), the aim of curriculum 2013 is generally to
generate productive, creative, innovative and
affective human resources through the competence
strengthening in the domain of attitude (spiritual and
social), knowledge, and skills. Consequently, today
teachers, particularly those who teach English are
truly demanded to be more creative, imaginative,
inventive, resourceful, and productive especially in
developing innovative teaching materials.
Unfortunately, even though teachers are
confronted by materials change, they still find it
difficult to adjust themselves toward the change. This
phenomenon can be seen from the fact that there are
many teachers still merely rely on textbooks as their
teaching materials (Dar, 2012; Larenas, Hernandez,
and Navarrete, 2015), especially those who work
many hours at the different levels (Halim and Halim,
2016; Stec, 2016). Whereas, textbooks have a number
of shortcomings: (1) they may distort content, (2) they
may not reflect students’ needs, (3) they can deskill
teachers, and (4) they are expensive (Richards, 2002).
In addition, Gebhard (2009) states that textbooks may
lead to ideological conflict in teaching beliefs, loss of
experiential learning, and cultural incompatibility.
Lack of the variety of communication tasks (Akbari,
2015) and inadequate listening materials (Hasanah,
2016) were the other problems of textbooks designed
and prepared by the Ministry of Education.
One way to cope with this issue is by adapting the
materials. Adaptation of existing materials is the
result of recognizing a mismatch between the
teaching materials and the needs and objectives of the
classroom (Marand, 2011). Accordingly, adapting
materials is rationale; especially, if the focus is on
making the teaching more relevant to the students
(McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara, 2013). Adapting
the materials will enable teachers to achieve more
compatibility and fitness between the textbook and
the teaching environment, and maximize the value of
the book for the most effective teaching outcomes to
achieve. In doing materials adaptation, teachers can
Hanifa, R.
Investigating English Teachers’ Understanding of Materials Adaptation in Curriculum 2013.
DOI: 10.5220/0007166703190324
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 319-324
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
319

provide additional materials by reflecting on what
students like and dislike as well as what may interest
them (Ibrahim, Aziz and Nambiar, 2013). It becomes
apparent that having varied and supplementary
materials apart from the main textbook will
undoubtedly make the teaching and learning process
becomes more effective.
It is important to note that the key to success in the
development of teaching materials depends heavily
on the ability of teachers in adapting the materials.
However, the reality shows that there has been a
tendency for over-reliance on textbook as classroom
teaching materials. As a consequence, teachers may
still have lack of experience and familiarity dealing
with materials adaptation. Furthermore, some
teachers are largely untrained to do materials
adaption. Therefore, it can be postulated that they do
not have sufficient knowledge about the development
of teaching materials.
From the above elaborations in relation to the
problems, this present study is undertaken to answer
the following questions. (1) To what extent do the
teachers make adaptation to the teaching learning
materials? (2) What are the constraints encountered
by the teachers during the process of materials
adaptation? This study is expected to provide useful
information for curriculum developers, teachers,
students, schools, and people who have the same
interest on the topic of this study. Furthermore, the
result of this study hopefully will be beneficial for
teachers to support better teaching materials through
the process of materials adaptation especially English
subject.
2 THEORETICAL REVIEW
2.1 Curriculum 2013
Curriculum 2013 is the improvement of the previous
curriculum. In this curriculum, education does not
only emphasize knowledge (competence) and skills
(performance), but also moral education (religious
values and attitudes). The curriculum is expected to
generate productive, creative, innovative and
affective human resources through the competence
strengthening in the domain of attitude (spiritual and
social), knowledge, and skills (Center for Curriculum
and Textbook Development, 2012). Besides, the
newest curriculum also concerns with the changing of
teaching-learning methodology towards teaching
learning process which gives priorities on the learning
experiences through observing, questioning,
associating, experimenting and communicating
(Deputy Minister of Education and Culture, 2014).
Therefore, the objective of the new curriculum will be
achieved by paying attention to the educational
content, switching the learning paradigm from the
teacher-centered approach into student-centered
approach (Suherdi, 2013).
2.2 Language Teaching Materials
Teaching materials play an important role in EFL
classrooms. As Richard (2002) suggests, teaching
materials is a key component in most language
programs. They serve as the basic of the language
input learners receive and the language practice that
occurs in the classroom. According to Brown (1995),
teaching materials are any systemic description of the
techniques and exercises to be used in classroom
teaching. Materials will represent types of activities
that go on in the classroom. Tomlinson (2003),
furthermore, claims that language learning material is
(1) anything which is used by teachers or learners to
facilitate the learning of a language and (2) anything
which is deliberately used to increase the learners’
knowledge and/or experience of the language. Thus,
materials could obviously include cassettes, videos,
audios, dictionaries, grammar books, workbook,
photocopied exercises, all kinds of realia, lectures and
talks by guest speakers, internet sources, and so forth.
This spectrum of teaching resources indicates
teachers are supposed to utilize other types of
materials rather than just do the language teaching
based on the textbook.
2.3 Materials adaptation
It is likely to be true that no single material can
possibly work in all situations. Regarding to this,
Rodrigues (2015) claims that a classroom teacher
should have the capability to evaluate, adapt and
produce materials in order to ensure a match between
the learners and the materials used. Adaptation of
existing materials is the result of recognizing a
mismatch between the teaching materials and the
needs and objectives of the classroom (Marand,
2011). According to Tomlinson (2011), materials
adaptation is the process of making changes to the
materials in order to improve them or to make them
more suitable for learners.
McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara (2013)
suggest a framework for materials adaptation which
involves several steps. It starts with matching external
and internal factors. External factors comprise both
the overt claims made about materials and, more
significantly for the characteristics of particular
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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teaching situations such as learner characteristic,
physical environment, resources, and class size.
Meanwhile, internal factors are concerned with
content, organization, and consistency that include
choice of topic, skills covered, proficiency level, and
grading of exercises. To adapt materials means to try
to bring together these individual elements or
combinations of them, so that they match each other
as closely as possible.
The next step is to change content that lead to
greater appropriacy in terms of a need to personalize,
individualize or localize the content. Personalizing
refers to increasing the relevance of content in
relation to learners’ interests and their academic,
educational or professional needs. Individualizing
will address the learning styles both of individuals
and of the members of a class working closely
together. Localizing takes into account the
international geography of English language teaching
and recognizes that what may work well in some
areas may not do so in the other sites.
The last step refers to selecting techniques that
can be applied to content in order to bring about
change. There are some techniques used in materials
adaptation, namely adding, deleting or omitting,
modifying, simplifying, and reordering. Adding
technique includes extending (the technique to supply
more without methodological framework of the
original materials such as providing more exercises)
and expanding (the technique which affects
methodology like by putting in a different language
skill or a new component). Deleting means taking out
some materials which can be done on a small scale
(over part of an exercise) or on the large scale (a
whole unit of a course book). Modifying refers
essentially to a modality change, to a change in the
nature or focus of an exercise, or text or classroom
activity. Simplifying is the technique usually applied
to texts, most often to reading passages in terms of
sentence structure, lexical content, and grammatical
structures. Reordering belongs to the possibility of
putting the parts of a course book in a different order
which be done through adjusting the sequence of
presentation within a unit, or taking units in a
different sequence from that originally one.
3 METHOD
Since this study was concerned with providing
descriptions of teachers’ understanding of their
teaching learning materials adaptation in relation to
curriculum 2013; hence the use of qualitative method
offers greater opportunities for conducting
exploratory and descriptive research that uses the
context and setting to search for a deeper
understanding of the phenomena being studied. The
subjects of this study were 6 English teachers who
have been teaching in junior high schools for more
than 2 years. The respondents were selected due to
some considerations. First, they have a lot of
experiences dealing with teaching activities. Second,
they also have experiences in adapting a number of
teaching materials. The last, they have been familiar
with curriculum 2013. Therefore, they are expected to
have a lot of concepts of how to make materials
adaptation which is relevant to the curriculum 2013.
To collect the data, this study used interview as the
main instruments, conducted by the researcher
himself. The interview was carried out in a more
probing, open ended, and less structured way. The
participants were addressed several questions in order
to get the information related to each teacher’s
understanding about materials adaptation in terms of
kinds of adaptation (what) and the ways to make the
adaptation (how), as well as the constraints
encountered while making materials adaptation. The
interview guidelines used were formulated based on
the framework for materials adaptation suggested by
McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara (2013). The
interviews were done in Indonesian. The responses
were then transcribed and translated into English.
4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
From the transcriptions of interviews, some relevant
data have been identified and analyzed. The results of
analysis have been organized in terms of the
questions that this study is trying to answer. Hence,
each data will be presented in accordance with the
questions.
Question 1: To what extent do the teachers make
adaptation to the teaching learning materials?
This seek answers about teachers’ understanding
of their teaching materials adaptation. From the
results of the interview, it was noted that the
adaptation of teaching materials made by the teachers
comprised of adding, deleting, modifying,
simplifying and reordering (see figure 1). Figure 1
indicates that the highest responses from the
participants were adding and modifying. It can be
seen that there were six teachers who used adding and
modifying as the techniques to conduct materials
adaptation. Four participants selected reordering as
the next technique mostly used. Meanwhile, three
respondents preferred to simplify the materials. The
last but not least, only two participants tended to use
deleting technique which means they liked to omit
and take away some materials found.
Investigating English Teachers’ Understanding of Materials Adaptation in Curriculum 2013
321

Figure 1: Techniques of materials adaptation.
In terms of adding, teachers either add
supplementary materials needed by students or
provide them with certain materials using media. The
materials chosen to be exposed to students were
mostly highly related to students’ culture. In line with
this, Rashidi and Safari (2011) also discovered that
many ELT materials base their content on culture.
The using of the materials were not only intended to
ease students’ learning, but also to reach one
curriculum 2013’s objective: that is to strengthen the
attitude skills of the students.
The limitation of language modality encouraged
teachers to start adding other inputs by using several
media such as video, power point, and audios like
songs or dialogues from native speakers. Besides, in
order to meet the curriculum demand, teachers are
pushed to use multimedia to support the new teaching
learning methodology which prioritizes the learning
experiences through observing, questioning,
associating, experimenting, and communicating
(Deputy Minister of Education and Culture, 2014).
Computer and the internet-based technologies
provide variety of facilities for teachers to involve
different attractive activities. Suherdi (2015) and
Wilkinson (2016) also claim that the integration of
technology as materials can establish high quality
teaching and learning in nowadays education. In
addition, such media lead students to know the actual
use of language. Tomlinson (2008) reminds materials
should provide students the exposure to English in
authentic use through spoken and written texts.
Studies done by Meraji and Zamanian (2014), Akbari
and Razavi (2016), and Bajrami and Ismaili (2016)
revealed that by using the appropriate authentic
materials, teachers can enhance students’
communicative language competence. However,
some teachers may lack of familiarity with guidelines
on how to utilize ICT properly to support their
teaching. As consequence, they still rely on printed
pictures and handout.
The adding of materials also includes the addition
of tasks to enhance students’ understanding. As
suggested by the curriculum 2013, teachers need to
encourage students to be more creative, productive,
independent, and responsible in doing the tasks given
(for example, students are required to look for
additional materials such as images, text, etc.).
Curriculum 2013 expects a change in the teaching and
learning process, from transferring knowledge by the
teacher to allowing students to collect information by
themselves (Lengkanawati, 2017). This learning
paradigm will make students become more
independent of teachers and more responsible for
their own learning. Besides, the materials produced
by the students might also be very possible to match
their interests since teachers cannot determine every
student’s interest.
With regards to deleting and simplifying, the
teachers confirmed that the mismatch of teaching
materials with the ability of students caused them
either to omit or to simplify some materials.
Somehow, it is good to make students feel
comfortable with the materials. Tomlinson (2011)
also claims that materials should help learners to feel
at ease. However, the tendency to delete and/or to
simplify may hinder the development of students as
well because they are put in their comfort zone all the
time. As a matter of fact, curriculum 2013 emphasizes
students to be creative in solving the problems.
Therefore, learning is supposed to enhance what the
students have gained. For this, Tomlinson (2011) and
Timmis (2016) assert materials should have
challenging activities which push learners slightly
beyond their existing proficiency.
In the data gathered, a number of changes made
by teachers in attempt to modify the materials are
apparent from the tasks given which emphasized the
understanding and using of the language through
experience. The teachers modified tasks in the book
that typically consisted of language exercises into
more authentic tasks in which students can learn how
to use English for real life communication (e.g.
talking with native speakers, sending emails). By this,
teachers can activate students’ prior knowledge and
experience to help them relate to today's lesson.
Mustafa (2010) says that children learn better from
direct experiences and from scripts which serve as
their guidelines in understanding the lesson based on
what they have experienced before.
Modifications were also made to cover the
weaknesses of the book in terms of language skills
such as lack of listening materials, so the teacher
applied the text as listening material by reading it
loudly. However, it is much better for teachers to
provide more authentic materials because one goal of
listening instruction is to help learners to understand
real life language (Maftoon, Kargozari, and
0
2
4
6
8
Number of
Participant
Materials Adaptation
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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Azarnoosh 2016). Teacher sometimes does not have
the capability to produce the same language as native
speaker. Moreover, the data confirmed that teachers
would prioritize the topics in the syllabus rather than
in the book. Therefore, they sometimes reordered the
subject matters in the textbook in attempt to make
them relevant to the curriculum.
Question 2: What are the constraints encountered
by the teachers during the process of materials
adaptation?
This question seeks to find the constraints
confronted by the teachers during the process of
materials adaptation. The data revealed that the time
limitation teachers had was thought as one constraint
in adapting learning materials. Teachers’ other
responsibilities besides teaching made them had
difficulties in managing time. Therefore, some
teachers ended up using an available material instead
of adapting it. Marand (2011) along with Halim and
Halim (2016) also found teachers rarely develop their
own materials because it is time consuming and
difficult. The other constraint referred to materials
inappropriateness resulted from teachers’ insufficient
capability to make materials adaptation. The lack of
opportunity in making materials adaptation hindered
them to develop their ability. Macalister (2016) points
out that problem will occur when teachers have little
or no experience of developing teaching materials.
Consequently, some materials adapted by the teachers
were not always suitable for their students. In this
case, McDonough, Shaw, and Masuhara (2013) argue
that activity of adaptation should take place with good
understanding of the principle and procedure of
materials development. By this, they mean it is
difficult to change something unless we are clear
about what it is we are changing.
5 CONCLUSIONS
In the light of the findings of the current study, it can
be concluded that teachers’ understanding of
materials adaptation was highly good. In order to
cope with the hindrances in learning and to fulfil the
curriculum 2013 demands, teachers made some
adaptations to their teaching materials which
consisted of adding, deleting, modifying, simplifying
and reordering. By adding, the teachers provided
students with more texts that were considerably
associated to the culture of the students. Moreover,
with the advancement of knowledge and technology,
they facilitated the language learning by utilizing
numerous media (e.g. videos, power point, audio,
etc.) from which students obtained more inputs of the
actual use of language. Besides, adding allowed the
teachers to foster student-entered learning (e.g.
students sought additional materials based on their
interests).
Meanwhile, materials considered difficult or
complicated to the students were typically deleted and
simplified by the teachers. These strategies should be
employed cautiously since the tendency to delete
and/or to simplify may hinder the development of
students. In terms of modification, the teachers
highlighted the contexts revision and tasks
adjustment. Some contexts of materials were revised
to emphasize the students’ experiences. Language
tasks were modified to be more authentic so that
students could learn how to use the language for
different purposes. The last, teachers reordered some
contents of the textbook by prioritizing the topics in
the syllabus.
Furthermore, the finding made it apparent that the
time limitation teachers had due to abundant tasks
was the main obstacle that hamper them to develop
the best materials they should have. The lack of
opportunity in making materials adaptation caused
them to not having adequate insight into materials
development which then led to materials
inappropriateness. Thus, it is important for the
teachers to participate in any training or workshop to
get deep understanding about materials development
since such activities will help them to become better
materials developers and able to implement the
curriculum well.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by a grant from the
Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education (LPDP)
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Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
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