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

Abstract

Choosing a coursebook for a particular group of students involves adapting the material against the context in which it is going to be used because it is easy to understand that most text books are produced for large-scale, commercial use, and therefore are not always suitable for the needs 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, p347). This statement very well refers to Bangladeshi university teachers as most of them have become familiar with using Western textbooks like New Headway, Cutting Age, English for Life, etc. Be that as it may, we should remember that ii this case the teachers might not feel comfortable about using these texts because of the mismatch of the global material and local needs of the learners. Therefore, the situation implies that, 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 the need for adaptation of these EFL materials in order to make it context specific and student friendly. This paper presents EFL teachers’ awareness of adapting ELT coursebooks at the tertiary level in Bangladesh. In addition, it focuses on teachers’ opportunities and challenges of adapting ELT coursebooks. It is based on a criterion driven questionnaire.