Teachers' Awareness, Opportunities and Challenges of Adapting EFL Materials in Bangladeshi Universities

: choosing a coursebookfor a particular group of 'ttudents involves adapting the material against the context in which it is going to be used because it is easy to understancl that most text books are produced for large-scale, commercial use, and therefore are not always suitable for the neids of one's local, particular group. The teacher then, according to Hutchinson and Tones, "becomes little more than a cipher for a prepared text" (Hutchinson and Tones, 1994' in Tomlinson, 2003, p'3a7)' This statement very well refers to Bangladeshi university teachers cts most of them have i""o*" familiar with using Western textbooks like New Headway,CuttingAge,EnglishforLfe,etc'Bethatasitmay'weshould remember that ii this case the teachers might not feel comfortable about using these texts because oJ'the mismatch of the global material and local neeis of the learners. Therefore, the situation implies thqt, as teachers, it is important for us to evaluate teaching materials and then adapt them as toils to help our teachers. But the question is how far our teachers are aware of thi needfor adaptation of these EFL materials in order to make it context specific and student friendly. This paper presents EFL teachers' o*rr"rni, oj'adapting ELT coursebooks at the tertiary level in Bangladesh.


Introduction
Despite the range and variety of published materials on the market, it is difficult to find a peifect fit between learner needs and course requirements on the one hand, and what the course book contains on the other. Teachers often think of themselves as being dependent on prepared materials and they often do not believe that they are capab.le of *.itirrg good malerials themselves. Interestingly, materials adaptation seems to be something teachers do a lot, but which is rarely researched or included in training courses (Renandya and Richards, 2004).Consequently, teachers simply rely on their own personal beliefs, experience and intuition in adapting materials. Ho*"rr"r, all teachers are materials developers in that they are involved every day in matching materials to the needs and wants of their learrrers. In order to do this, they select, adapt and supplement materials when preparing their lessons and they make decisions about theii materials throughout their lessons in response to their lear-ners' reactions. They add, they delete, they lengthen, they shorten, they modify. They make use of their experience of teaching and their beliefs about language learling to "develop" materials of optimum use to their learners. W'e believe that all teachers have their own intuitive theories of language learning and that helping them to develop and articulate these theories in principled and coherent ways can help them to develop and use effective language learning materials. Why do teachers adapt materials? It all starts * Assistant Professor, Depaftment of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh 2. Literature Review It can be assumed that ELT materials should be driven by principles of language acquisition and that ideally all units of material should be principled, relevant and coherent. The reality seems to be rather different, with commercial materials being driven by considerations of what the buyers (i.e. administrators and teachers) are likely to want rather than of what the learrrers are likely to benefit from, and with most materials developers driven more by intuitions about what is likely to "work" rather than by their beliefs about what facilitates language acquisition (Tomlinson,2OO3).
From a survey of twelve countries throughout the world, Tomlinson found that about 85 percent of ELT textbooks were selected by administrators, 15 percent by teachers and 0 per cent by learners. The results of this situation are obvious: colorful photographs placed in the top right-hand corrrer of the right-hand page attract potential buyers flicking through a new book, with as many words as possible crammed on to a with the teacher intuitively feeling that something is not quite right. Teachers may feel uncomfoftable because of a mismatch with their teaching environment (national, regional, institutional, cultural, etc.), their learners (age, language level, prior learning experience, etc.), their own preferences (personality, teaching styles, etc.), the course objectives (syllabus, institutional targets, etc.), and so on.
The hope, of course, lies with local, non-commercial materials which are not driven by the profit imperative and which are driven rather by consideration of the needs and wants of their target learners and by principles of language acquisition. According to Tomlinson (2011), "imported course books" and "foreign course books" are common terms used among millions of teachers and learlers in Southeast Asia to refer to what elsewhere is known as "global course books." They are introduced and distributed in Southeast Asia even if they are not written for this particular market.
When a free-size shirt is designed for everyone, it has the potential to suit some and is likely to be rejected by others. This is exactly how imported course books operate in the region: they contain both helpful and unhelpful instructional ingredients.
As far as teaching in Bangladesh is concerned, it has been obserwed that despite several teaching practices being tried out so far after the independence of Bangladesh in 197I, we are not in a very good position regarding our teachers' teaching and teaching materials, and their success in the classroom. The most common difficulties comprise lack of proper training opportunities and limited access to materials ("Education in Bangladesh," 2008). still, we do not have any teacher produced English language teaching materials based on functions and integrated skills. However, although it is the responsibility of the goverrrment or the universities to provide opportunities for teachers to develop longer-terrn career goals and effective teaching skills, develop and adapt materials, and in-setwice teacher education, the assumption is that we do not have proper training and support from the goverrment or from the institution itself. Although for teacher professional development, the teacher herself/himself has to perceive it positively, it is expected that universities are responsible for providing financial support, training, conducting research and providing need-based materials to support teachers. fhis paper addresses whether Bangladeshi EFL teachers are aware of materials adaptation. More precisely, the research will investigate the potential opportunities and challenges of materials adaptation in @fiiary education in Bangladesh. page to achieve optimal coverage at an acceptable price. Each unit of the books maintains the same length and follows a uniforrn fonnat to make timetabling, teacher allocation and teacher preparation easier and most tasks of the books replicate conventional test types so as to facilitate examination preparation (Tomlinson, 2003).
None of these characteristics are likely to add pedagogic value to a textbook, but all are likely to promote sales. This is not, of course, an attack on commercial publishers. Many of th** try to add as much educational value to their products as possible, but for all of them the main objective is to make money. What this situation means for writers of commercial ELT materials is that they can at best try to achieve a compromise between their principles and the requirements of the publisher. In nangladesh, we still lack an effective English language textbook comprising all integrated skills. What we have on the market is based on grammar which leads to rote learning.
Some of the things which many ELT materials are currently doing are likely to inhibit language acquiiition and development. Obviously there are exceptions to these generalizationi and there are some materials which are actually and commendably doing the opposite. But most are underestimating learners both in terms of language levei and cognitive ability. In particular, they are treating linguistically low level learners as intellectually low level learners. They are impoverishing the learning experience in a misguided attempt to make learning easier by simplifying their presentation of language. They are creating an illusion of language learning by using a Presentation/ Practice /Production (PPP) approach which simplifies language use and results in shallow processing. They are also creating an illusion of language learling by ensuring that most activities are easily accomplished as a result of involving little more than memorizatton, repetition of a script or simple substitution or transformation. They are confusing language learning and skills development by trying to teach language features during listening and reading activities. They are preventing learners from achieving effective engagement by presenting them with bland, safe, harmonious texts (Wajnryb, 1996, in Tomlinson,2011 and requiring them to participate in activities which do not stimulate them to think and feel. They are providing learners with far too much de-contextualized experience of language exemplification and not nearly enough experience of language in fully contextualized use. They are focusing on activities *[i"t require different listening or reading for detailed and literal comprehension and are providing very little opportunity for the sort of aesthetic listening and reading which stimulates the total engagement so useful for promoting both enjoyment of the language and acquisition of it (Rosenblatt 1978). They are failing to help the leamers make the fuIl expertise of the language experience available to them outside the classroom. They are foiusing on uni-dimensional processing of language through activities requiring only the decoding andlor encoding of language rather than on multi-dimensional representation of language through activities involving the use of the full resources of the brain (Arnold 1999;Masuhara 2007;Tomlinson 2000c, 2001b, in Tomlinson, 2003 3.0 Methodology

Research Design
Since the present study aims to respond to the research questions of a qualitative nature, data collection and analysis techniques from qualitative methodology were implemented.
Qualitative research entails collecting primary textual data and examining it using interpretive analysis. Qualitative research is a very useful research methodology because it is exploratoryits purpose is to discover new ideas and insights, or even generate new theories. That is, qualitative research mostly focuses on understanding the particular and the distinctive, and does not necessarily seek or claim to generalize findings in other contexts.
In qualitative tesearch, the researcher is the primary research instrument. Here, the researchers themselves collect the data by directly obserwing or interviewing the participants, for example. The advantage of researchers doing this is that they can be responsive and adaptive to the participants and research setting and can quickly begin to explore unanticipated avenues of research. They can also collect a wide range of data and begin to think about it immediately, allowing them to clarifl, ideas promptly for accuracy of interpretation (Merriarn, 2002, in Heigham, Juanita, and Robert A. Croker, 2OO9, p.1 1). In order to elicit data a written questionnaire administered to EFL teachers in Bangladesh was used as a main instrument.

Research Questions
The primary focus of this study is on teachers and their awareness of adapting EFL materials in Bangladeshi universities and the research questions for this study are: 1. How far are the teachers aware of materials adaptation? 2. What opportunities do they have for materials adaptation? 3. What challenges do they face regarding materials adaptation?

Written Questionnaires
The advantages of using questionnaires as data collection tools mainly come from the fact that with the help of questionnaires, large amounts of data can be collected quickly and economically from a large sample (Krathwohl, 1998

Data Analysis and Discussion
Let us begin by looking at the questions of section A relating to use of commercial textbooks and a particular view about materials adaptation. There are two basic questions in section A: F6.q-.ii-ieA

Which EFLiESL course book(s) do you use to teach Foundation English
Courses at Table: I The result indicates that the use of westerx coursebooks in the EFL classroom for Foundation English courses has become a common practice among Bangladeshi trFL teachers withNew Headway and Intermediate English Grammar being the most commonly used textbook. Therefore, a question may generally arise as to why EFL teachers in Bangladesh are used to using these textbooks in the classroom and the answer is that, even today, Bangladesh lacks teacher-produced context-specific English language coursebooks. As we do not have our own materials, so our teachers need to depend on westem commercial coursebooks because they may find these to be useful

Total English
Step forward Others (please speciff) Coursetrook for its ready-made activities and lessons which help them to prepare for the class easily and confidently.
Dimitrios Thanasoulas (1999) in his article "Coursebook, Take It or Leave It," presents a significant point of view when he says, "Personally, I find a coursebook extremely helpful, as it guides me on what and how to teach, giving me some useful advice on the best techniques for presenting the material." A coursebook can provide teachers with the structure and help they need when starting out. Bell and Gower (in Tomlinson, 2003), in their list of advantages for the use of coursebooks state, amongst other things ,lhat: " By dealing with a cerlain amount of routine work for teachers, the coursebook frees them to attend to more important aspects of lesson planning (including materials supplementation), and to concentrate on using their creative skills" (p.1 17).
However, there are several reasons for which teachers need to adapt materials.
These include unsuitable and ineffective instruction, uninteresting topics. unsuitable materials for learners' cognitive development, unsuitable activities for a particular level of learner, etc. This in turn may affect the student's learning attitude and motivation. It is expected that if we use EFL coursebooks, it is necessary for the teacher to prepare and adapt activities according to the local needs of the learrer, especially all skills and functions to keep the classroom atmosphere interesting and free of anxiety.
2. "Interestingly, materials adaptation seem to be something teachers do a lot but which is rarely researched or included on training courses" (Tomlinson Masuhara,2005).
Please give your opinion about the above comment in relation to the Bangladeshi context? It appears from the data that there is a tendency among Bangladeshi teachers to adapt materials (strongly agree2/agreel2) but they do not have any training on it which will lead them to professional development. It also shows that, even though it is an important part of ELT, we do not have much research on materials adaptation in our country. The data also shows that teachers are aware of the needs of the leamers and are keen about preparing and developing materials accordingly. This really leads them to their professional development through self-reflection and, in order to speed it up, they need institutional support, although 7 participants agreed that they have institutional support. tr.ttfiE 3. Teachers are aware of materials adaptation to compensate for the lack of match between course aims and learner needs at tertiary level in Bangladesh. The figures indicate that teachers are aware of bridging course aims and learler needs in teitiary level education in Bangladesh. It can also be inferred that the majority of the teachers (60%i) are moderately aware of materials adaptation. Despite the variety of commercial material on the market, it is very difficult to find a perfect match between learner needs and course requirements and that is why many teachers continue to produce their own materials for classroom use. Indeed, most teachers spend coniiderable time finding, selecting, evaluating, adapting and making materials to use in their teaching. Given the results for the question of adapting published materials, it is found that the majority (completely6/moderatelylT) of the teachers agreed on adapting published materials to teach Foundation English Courses at universities. However, surprisingly, two teacher respondents expressed that they need not adapt materials of FEC at all.

The Foundation English Course (FEC) in public and private universities in
Bangladesh is introduced to provide students with a sound foundation in the skills and competencies required to use English in an acadernic context. Teachers on foundation courses have the task of preparing students to be familiar with English medium classroom instruction and more specifically, equipping these students with the skills to enable them to be successful in their parlicular subjects in undergraduate and other programs.
The objective of the FEC at the tertiary level in our country is to cover the skills required to study their degree courses effectively, and in my opinion, it is very challenging to bridge the gap between the objective and the achievement to make the courses successful. The reasons are that the leamers are all foreign language speakers of English and almost all of them come from Bangla medium background except a very few from English medium. So, in order to make it suitable for the level of learners, the teachers might feel that they need to adapt commercial coursebooks to teach FEC at universities. An essential criticism of commercial materials, particularly those produced for the world-wide EFL market, is that they are necessarily generic and not aimed at any specific group of learners or any particular cultural or educational context. The possible lack of "fi1" between teaching context and coursebook has been expressed thus: "Our modern coursebooks are full of speech acts and functions based on situations which most foreign-language students will never encounter... 'Globally' designed coursebooks have continued to be stubbornly Anglo-centric. Appealing to the world market as they do, they cannot by definition draw on local varieties of English and have not gone very far in recognizing English as an international language, either." (Altan, 1995, p.59, in Howard, J. and Major, J,2072). For many teachers, designing or adapting their own teaching materials enables them to take into account their particular learning environment and to overcome the lack of "fit" of the coursebook. As it is clear that it is not possible to target any local culture in commercial materials, it is the language teachers' responsibility to integrate local culture into their teaching after adapting materials.
7. Suitability of coursebook materials for language level, prior learning experience, learning styles oftarget learner To what extent do you think the coursebook materials you use are suitable for language level, prior leaming experience, learning styles of your target learlers?
As far as language level, prior leaming experience, learning styles of target learners are concemed, most of the teachers agreed that commercial coursebooks are moderately (completely|/moderatelyl4) suitable for these learning elements. It is widely acknowledged that textbooks are the common materials used in language classes. They may be the teacher, the trainer, the authority, the resource, and the ideology in the foreign language classroom. (Hinkel,1999 in Turkan, Sultan, and Servet Ce1ik,2007). Such textbooks are mass produced for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) purposes all over the world. These global materials aim to meet the needs of language learners, so that they can function well linguistically. Thus, it is extremely important that these textbooks include the vital components to teach the language and are appropriate for learners' needs, language level, prior leaming experience, and learning styles. Yet regrettably, the commercial coursebook materials we use are not always suitable for the language level, prior learning experience, and learning styles of our target learners whereas textbooks produced al a national level for parlicular countries suit the students' local cultures, language level, prior learning experience, and learning styles. Majority of the teachers (moderately 15) agreed that these commercial coursebooks that we use suit moderately teachers' personalities, teaching styles, beliefs about language learning and teaching. Cnly 4 teachers chose the option "complete1y." Teachers may feel uncomfortable with a commercial textbook because of a mismatch with their own preferences (personality, teaching styles, beliefs about language learning and teaching), e.g., the materials offer a 1ot of communicative activities but a teacher fears he or she will lose control of the class by doing them. It appears from the results that teacher produced materials can overcome this mismatch. Therefore, initially, teachers can adapt the existing coursebook materials in order to suit their personalities, teaching styles, beliefs about language leaming and teaching, and gradually move towards writing their own materials. Arguably a teacher represents the most significant factor in any language teaching operation. Their personalities, teaching styles and beliefs about language learning and teaching play an important role in the throughput of different students in the institution.
So it can be assumed that the commercial coursebooks cannot suit a teacher's personality, teaching style, beliefs about language leaming and teaching.
Again in designing their own materials, teachers can also make decisions about the most appropriate organizing principle or focus for the materials and activities. And this can be changed over the course of the program if necessary. Most coursebooks remain organized around grammar elements and the PPP (presentation, practice, production) model of teaching, often with an "unrelenting fomat" which can be "deeply unengaging" (Hanner,200l,p.6). The teacher is typically a "constant" in the throughput of different students in the institution, and works in different ways at the interface of several systems the classroom, the school, the educational environment all of which affect a teacher's professional attitude and behavior. Personalization is another advantage of teacher-designed materials. In his 1991 afticle, Block argues in favor of "'home-made" materials saying that they add a personal touch to teaching that students appreciate. Tapping into the interests and taking account the leaming styles of students is likely to increase motivation and engagement in learrring. Podromou (2002) fur1her suggests that there is also greater choice, freedom and scope for spontaneity when teachers develop their own materials.

Coursebook materials and the Foundation English course objectives (sytlabus, institutional targets)
To what extent do you think the coursebook materials you use match with the Foundation English course objectives (syllabus, institutional targets)?

Moderatelv Not sure
Never thought about it Not at all 1 t7 5 1 Completely As majority of the teachers (42%) opted for "moderately," it appears that they believe in local materials or adapting commercial coursebooks which can reduce the gap between the objectives of coursebook materials and the Foundation English courses. It is perhaps surprising that 5 teachers chose "not sure," which may mean that they are not very aware of the issue. It is needless to say that global aims usually cannot match with local aims and consequently teachers may feel uncomfortable with a commercial textbook because of a mismatch with materials (texts, tasks, activities), e.g., the text is interesting but the activities are boring and do not seem to fully exploit the text. Even the content of the local syllabus may vary a lot with that of a published material.
ffiffiH Questions pertaining to teacherso opportunities and challenges of adapting ELT coursebooks You are given choices from l-5. In each case S:strongly agree 4:agree 3:not sure 2 :disagree I :strongly dis agree 10. Training on material adaptation None of the teachers strongly agreed to the idea that "teachers have sufficient training on materials adaptation" and only 12.5% of the participants agreed to the idea. On the other hand, 43%o agreed that teachers lack sufficient training on materials adaptation. Therefore, lack of sufficient training on materials adaptation is reported by Bangladeshi EFL teachers as a major difficulty in adapting EFL materials in FEC in Bangladeshi tefiiary level education. t2 Teachers are able to afford sufficient time for adapting appropriate EFL classroom materials for the students of FEC 11. Teachers' easy access to a variety of EFL materials The teacher respondents are almost divided (agree l2/disagree 10) abortt their opinion.
At present, most of the private universities have a rich library and the resources and facilities available to the teacher-designer can be considered as an element of context. Clearly, teachers must be realistic about what they can achieve in terms of materials design and production within the limitations of available resources and facilities.
Access to resources such as computers (with or without Internet access), a video player and TV, radio, cassette recorder, CD player, photocopier, language lab., digital camera, whiteboard, OHP, scissors, cardboard, laminator, etc. will impact on decisions in materials writing and adapting.
12. Teachers' time for adapting appropriate EFL classroom materials for the students of FEC On closer inspection, it seems that the teachers are equally divided about their opinion as 12 teachers responded in favor of the statement and the other 12 responded against it.
A key disadvantage of adapting materials, and perhaps the key factor inhibiting many teachers from producing their own teaching materials, is time. To adapt any material, teachers need to think of the needs and interests of their learners, their own teaching capabilities and constraints such as time. The aim of any adaptation should be to maximize effective learning within the given time and context and to make both teaching and learning much more interesting. These involve a lot of time.

Availability of sufficient authentic teaching materials
The majority of teachers (strongly agree 7/agree 13) reported that they have sufficient authentic teaching materials available to adapt the coursebook material in Bangladeshi universities which can be considered as a big opportunity for them to adapt materials.
There is almost an unlimited supply of materials available online that come directly from the target cultures of the languages we teach. These resources provide "real life" linguistic input as well as valuable cultural inforrnation for our students. As far as logistic support is concerned, most Bangladeshi private universities have online facilities and resourceful libraries for the teachers and students. Teachers can collect literature, including poetry, folktales, short stories, fiction, non-fiction, novels, etc., from the university library and can access different websites to collect authentic materials to adapt coursebooks. According to Tomlinson (2011), materials for learners at all levels must provide exposure to the authentic use of English through spoken and written texts with the potential to engage the learners cognitively and affectively. If they don't provide such texts and they don't stimulate the learners to think and feel whilst experiencing them, there is very little chance of the materials facilitating any durable language acquisition at all.

Students' level of English proficiency
Here, again, the teachers in this study were divided about their opinion almost equally. 25o/o teacher respondents agreed that the students' level of English proficiency at FEC encourages teachers to adapt coursebook materials, but on the other hand,25%o teacher respondents disagreed on this point whereas l2.5yo were unsure about it. In Bangladesh, students are usually familiar with traditional grammar based teaching in their secondary and higher secondary education, and consequently, when they enroll in post-secondary level in universities, their acquired system of rote learning bars them from adapting to communicative classroom learning (Report of the English Teaching Task

Conclusion
Teachers must weigh up the benefits and costs of adapting their own teaching materials and make their own decision as to whether it is worth the time and effort. As Harmer (2001) puts it, "The good DIY (Do-It-Yourself) teacher, with time on his or her hands, with unlimited resources, and the confidence to marshal those resources into a clear and coherent language program, is probably about as good as it gets for the average language leamer" (p. 9). Materials may yary in quality, quantity and level. The activities in a coursebook may be problematic in terms of skills and sub-skills, order of the activities, timing, learning styles, etc. Since we are still very dependent on commercial coursebooks, it should be the teacher's responsibility to be aware of the materials if they fit into the objectives of the class. The teacher should evaluate the level, communicative activities, the balance of skills, learning style, any audio-visual materials needed, the timing, culture, authenticity of input. Inevitably, there will be numerous constraints on any materials designer and compromises will be necessary.
The findings of this study indicate that the use of western coursebooks in the EFL classroom has become a conrmon practice among Bangladeshi EFL teachers. It also appears from the study that there is a tendency among Bangladeshi teachers to adapt materials, although they do not have any training on it. The majority of the teachers believe that foreign coursebooks cannot meet the needs of local, particular groups of learners completely. One of the major findings of the study is that the majority of the You are given a choice of 1-5. In each case 5:strongly agree 4:agree 3:not sure 2:disagree 1:strongly disagree (Question: 2-3) For the following comment please type an "X" in the appropriate box.
2. "Interestingly, materials adaptation seem to be something teachers do a lot but which is rarely researched or included on training courses." ( j) Other English courses (please specify)