Lindsay Bost Unit Adaptation/Supplementation Rationale Textbook: Saslow, Joan and Allen Ascher.

Top Notch 3: English for Todays World. 2nd ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2011. In a prior review of Top Notch 3: English for Todays World, the conversational textbook was evaluated based on its claims and was found to be an effective tool for gaining conversational skills, cultural fluency, improved pronunciation, and proper grammar usage. Areas found to require additional classroom attention and supplementation included vocabulary development and sufficient practice for fluency development. As a result of this analysis, I have created a unit outline for Unit 9: Controversial Issues from the Top Notch 3 textbook with supplementary activities to strengthen areas of the text that are lacking. Context The context that this unit is suitable for is an intermediate-proficiency general English course in a university. Because the Top Notch series is communicative and aims to increase conversational English, the current unit would be used in a speaking and listening course, while reading and writing skills would be in a corresponding course. The overall course goal is to increase conversational fluency for effective real-world communication, while subgoals include vocabulary development, grammatical accuracy, and organizational skills to express ideas clearly. Sequencing: Overall & Within Unit Overall, there were limited sequencing adaptations made to the unit. In the overall sequencing of the unit itself, the 6 sections of the unit were split into 6 class sessions over a 2-week time period, with each class lasting 1 hour. The first day of the unit contains a preview and schema activation for the upcoming material, followed by 4 days pertaining to 4 communicative goal sections of the unit. These goals are: bring up a controversial subject, discuss controversial issues politely, propose solutions to global problems, and debate the pros and cons of issues. The final day is an adaptation of the review section of the unit; it does incorporate 2 activities from the review, however one of the activities is expanded and acts as a final speaking and listening activity that requires more preparation than the previous activities. By using this task as an extended, structured final debate and discussion, students are asked to incorporate the communicative skills learned throughout the unit as well as incorporate their own ideas in writing that culminates in a meaningful, interactive way to wrap-up the unit. By making this activity meaningful and individualized, learners gain autonomy and independence in their learning by sharing their own ideas as well as increase the depth of processing necessary to retain skills (Nation & Macalister 2010).

Within each day of class, the sequencing of the textbook activities needed only minor adjustments. The inclusion of supplemental activities will be discussed in the following section. Each day is set following a fairly similar procession. By establishing a routine like this, students will know what to expect in the class and what is expected of them. Beginning each day is some sort of discussion. These discussions are either drawn directly from the textbook or created through prompts to utilize skills learned the previous day. An example of a textbook activity used as discussion is seen on the first day, which begins with a discussion question listed at the end of the preview section. By discussing this question as a class, students activate schema and begin to be conscious of their own beliefs and opinions before they are asked to do any tasks. An example of a prompt is shown in day 3. This prompt for current events would pull headlines or short news stories from the week and ask students to talk about ways to bring up these issues in conversation, which is a skill learned in day 2. I believe that starting the class period each day with a meaningful but casual discussion would help open up the class and practice fluency in a relaxed setting where their ideas are shared, keeping the ultimate goal of fluency in mind. Following the discussion is a vocabulary activity each day, with a vocabulary worksheet and/or exercises from the text. Students are asked to complete the vocabulary textbook activities in pairs to check their answers. The reason vocabulary is introduced before other textbook items (such as in day 3: discuss controversial issues politely) is so that students will be creating their glossary as they work and encounter new words, as well as be able to use them in later activities such as the conversation model modifications. One minor sequence adaptation was made in day 2, in which the pronunciation exercise is completed before the conversation model exercise. This choice was made based on the belief that by practicing pronunciation (in this case, stressing words to emphasize meaning), students will raise their awareness of emphasized words and be able to listen for them within the conversational model, which may aid them in further understanding it. The final sequencing change is that grammar and written exercises from the textbook are taken out of each day and assigned as homework. Based on their minimal relevance to the communicative goals of the course and a lack of time in a 1-hour class (McGrath 2002), students are able to complete these exercises given the clear grammar explanations and examples in the text. Supplemental Materials There are 3 types of supplementation included within this unit: prompts for discussion, vocabulary building worksheets, and a debate preparation worksheet. The prompts for discussion, as previously discussed, are either taken from textbook exercises or created to activate schema and previously learned skills. In the example given, the prompt for day 1 includes questions from the textbook exercise as well as 2 more questions relevant to the topic that may help students gather their thoughts. By using these prompts at the beginning of each class, students have the opportunity

to write a few of their ideas down with their reasoning and hold an informal class discussion. The prompts allow students to express their opinions and builds fluency through meaning-focused output (Nation and Macalister 2010) while keeping the aims of communicative skills within sight. The vocabulary worksheet is created to give students more opportunities to be exposed to the new words as well as deepen their understanding of them, which was identified as an area lacking within the textbook. Each handout, given after a brief opening class discussion, begins with a short exercise (e.g. matching, fill in the blank, crossword puzzle) to practice and review the vocabulary from the previous lesson. After, it contains the new words for the day. Students are asked to fill in the definitions for the words as they work with them. By creating their own glossary, meanings may be reinforced by having to actively write down meanings, and students have the opportunity to personalize the definitions in a way suited to their own style of learning. In addition, students are able to identify any words within the lesson that are unfamiliar and add them to their glossary. The final supplementation created is an extension of a debate activity from the chapter review. A short debate activity from day 5 prepares students in organizing and discussing pros and cons of issues, which is then carried out further for day 6. The debate prompt serves as an organizational tool for students, asking them to write down some of their own opinions, which they are then asked to write in full paragraph form, and debate the issues in class the next day. In this way, there is a combination of higher-register writing, critical thinking, practice in persuasive essay skills, as well as a combination of the previously learned skills of discussing controversial issues politely, debating the pros and cons of issues, and possibly proposing solutions. This debate may also serve as an assessment tool for a speaking and listening course as it will showcase fluency and skills development as well as speech organization, intonation, and possible vocabulary. By adapting and supplementing this unit from the textbook, strengths of the text are highlighted, while weaknesses are accounted for. In this case, many communicative exercises and activities were left unchanged, while vocabulary development and sufficient fluency practice were supplemented through additional worksheets and class discussions. Although created specifically for a speaking and listening course, this unit may be adapted for a general course through the deletion of class discussions and addition of activities and tasks that focus on reading and writing.

Works Cited McGrath, I. (2002). Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 in his Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Nation, I. S. P., & Macalister, J. (2010). Language Curriculum Design. New York: Taylor & Francis.