“The learner always knows more than the teacher about the learner’s own life.” — Adapted from Paulo Freire’s dialogic view of education

Introduction

One of the greatest misconceptions f in language teaching or novice service and in-service teachers is believing that the textbook is the primary resource available to teachers. While coursebooks, digital platforms, videos, and supplementary materials undoubtedly enrich instruction, one of the richest resources enters the virtual classroom every day: the learners themselves. Throughout my career as an English language teacher, curriculum designer, and teacher educator, I have often invested countless hours adapting materials to make them more relevant for my students. Ironically, the British Council's TeachingEnglish: How to Adapt Resources course reminded me that perhaps the most valuable resource has always been sitting on the other side of the screen.

The first unit of Module Three invites teachers to reconsider learners' interests, experiences, and prior knowledge as instructional resources rather than simply background information (British Council, n.d.). Although many examples presented in the course target primary and secondary education, the underlying principles are equally, if not more, powerful in adult education. Adult learners arrive in class carrying professional expertise, personal histories, cultural experiences, multilingual repertoires, and aspirations that can transform classroom interaction when appropriately incorporated into instruction.

This essay reflects on how using learners' experiences as teaching resources can increase engagement, motivation, communication, and learner autonomy in online English courses for university students and working professionals. Drawing on the British Council materials, my own classroom experiences, and established educational research, I argue that adapting resources begins not by changing worksheets but by changing where teachers look for resources in the first place.

Learners as the Most Valuable Classroom Resource

The British Council (n.d.) poses a deceptively simple question: "Have you ever considered that your learners themselves may be one of your most valuable resources?" This statement challenges traditional teacher-centered models in which knowledge flows primarily from teacher and textbook toward students. As I reflected on this question, I realized that my corporate learners and university students offer very different opportunities for personalization.

"If I compare my university students to my corporate adult learners, I think more about my corporate students because I get to create a 'quick though vague' profile of my students to know what they do and what kind of industry they hold a position in. An advantage I have regarding my adult learners is that I meet them twice a week, so with bits of small talk at the beginning, I get to know more about them. Reality is very different from my college students whom I get to see once a week, and they are very much reluctant to share much information about them. Many of them barely participate in main room speaking activities" (Acuña Solano, personal reflection, 2026).

This reflection of mine illustrates an important distinction between opportunity and willingness. Adult learners generally possess extensive life experience, yet teachers must intentionally create conditions in which those experiences become part of classroom learning. Simply having experienced learners does not automatically generate meaningful interaction.

Knowles (1984), whose theory of andragogy transformed adult education, argued that adults bring accumulated experiences that become essential resources for learning. Unlike younger learners, adults continuously evaluate new knowledge against existing professional and personal experiences. Consequently, lessons that acknowledge those experiences tend to become more meaningful and memorable. Similarly, constructivist perspectives emphasize that learners actively build new knowledge upon previous understanding rather than passively receiving information (Piaget, 1970). Vygotsky (1978) further demonstrated that learning emerges through social interaction, making learners' own experiences valuable contributions to collective classroom knowledge.

Personalization as a Catalyst for Motivation

One of the strongest messages throughout the British Council module is that personalization increases learner engagement. According to the course materials, learners become more motivated when lesson topics connect with their everyday lives, and reluctant learners often become more willing to participate when they perceive their experiences as valuable (British Council, n.d.). Among the advantages listed by the course, the ones that resonated most with me were learner participation, meaningful connections, and the recognition of students as individuals. My reflective journaling notes nicely summarizes this belief:

"Learner-centered activities help all learners participate and feel valued. Getting to know your learners helps you create personal connections and find topics that will engage them in lessons. Large, diverse classes provide a rich resource through learners' interests and experiences. Their knowledge of other cultures or languages can be used in various classroom activities" (British Council, n.d.).

This perspective aligns closely with Dörnyei's (2001) work on learner motivation. He argues that motivation flourishes when learners perceive relevance, competence, and personal value in classroom activities. Adult learners, especially professionals balancing careers, family responsibilities, and education, constantly evaluate whether classroom tasks justify their limited time and energy. Activities disconnected from their reality often feel artificial.

Krashen's (1982) Affective Filter Hypothesis also helps explain why personalized instruction matters. When learners feel respected, emotionally safe, and connected to lesson content, anxiety decreases while language acquisition becomes more efficient. Rather than viewing personalization as merely an engagement strategy, it can be understood as an essential condition for effective language learning.

Knowing Adult Learners Beyond the Coursebook

Teaching online has convinced me that some of the most meaningful moments occur before the official lesson begins. A few minutes of informal conversation while students connect to Zoom often reveal valuable information about upcoming business trips, workplace challenges, hobbies, vacations, family celebrations, or professional achievements. These seemingly casual interactions become instructional resources later. A lesson on presentations suddenly becomes more authentic when a student is preparing to deliver one at work. A discussion about travel gains immediacy when another learner has recently returned from Brazil or Japan. Vocabulary related to negotiation becomes relevant when several students work in sales or project management.

Mercer and Ryan (2018) argue that language learning is fundamentally relational. Teachers who know their learners as people, not merely language students, can design richer learning experiences. This does not imply becoming involved in learners' private lives but recognizing the professional and cultural identities they willingly bring into the classroom. For working adults, personalization often means acknowledging their expertise. Rather than positioning the teacher as the only expert, lessons become spaces where engineers explain technical processes, lawyers discuss legal systems, healthcare professionals describe patient care, and entrepreneurs share business experiences. Language becomes the medium through which existing expertise is communicated.

Balancing Personalization and Privacy

Despite its many benefits, personalization must never become intrusion. The British Council (n.d.) wisely recommends allowing learners to choose what they wish to share. This principle is particularly important in adult online education, where participants often join classes from their homes and may understandably wish to maintain professional boundaries.

Reflecting on the suggested Personal Mind Map activity, a way to track student information for lesson planning purposes and personalization, I anticipated several challenges:

"I can foresee shyness that won't allow learners to share. On the other hand, I can also foresee oversharing from more extrovertive or dominating students. I'm sure some students won't like to be asked personal questions, about sensitive topics, and they won't like to compromise their safety" (Acuña Solano, personal reflection, 2026).

These concerns highlight an important pedagogical responsibility. Effective personalization requires voluntary participation rather than obligatory self-disclosure.

Brookfield (2015) reminds educators that psychologically safe classrooms encourage authentic participation without coercion. Adults should always retain agency over what they reveal about themselves. Offering choices, such as selecting five out of eight categories or replacing personal information with professional interests, respect learner autonomy while maintaining communicative value. I particularly appreciate the British Council's (n.d.) recommendation that teachers model the activity first. By sharing selected information about ourselves, we demonstrate both vulnerability and boundaries. Learners observe not only what can be shared but also what does not need to be shared. This modeling establishes expectations while reducing uncertainty.

Adapting Activities for Adult Online Learning

Several activities introduced in the course require only minor adaptations to become highly effective for university and corporate learners. The Personal Mind Map, for example, could move beyond categories such as favorite food or pet names to include professional milestones, memorable travel experiences, industries, dream projects, influential books, languages spoken, technological tools, or career aspirations. Such modifications preserve the communicative purpose while increasing relevance for adult learners.

Similarly, the classic Find Someone Who... activity can be transformed into an engaging online communicative task. Instead of asking whether someone has "seen a snake," working adults might ask questions such as:

·	Have you ever negotiated with an international client?
·	Have you ever delivered a business presentation in English?
·	Have you ever worked with corporate colleagues from another country?
·	Have you ever learned another language for working purposes?
·	Have you ever solved a difficult problem or conflict at work?

These prompts naturally lead to meaningful follow-up questions while practicing the present perfect. More importantly, they validate learners' professional identities. The British Council (n.d.) correctly emphasizes that these questions should remain realistic, relatable, and free from sensitive topics. That recommendation becomes even more significant in multicultural online classrooms where learners may come from different organizational cultures, generations, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

From Teacher-Created Resources to Learner-Generated Resources

Perhaps the most significant shift prompted by this unit is moving from adapting materials for learners toward adapting materials with learners. Traditional lesson planning often begins by selecting a reading, video, or grammar exercise before considering how students might relate to it. This course encourages reversing that sequence. Teachers first explore what learners already know and then build instructional experiences upon that foundation.

This philosophy resonates strongly with Freire's (1970) concept of dialogic education. Rather than treating learners as empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge, education becomes a collaborative process in which teachers and learners construct understanding together. For online adult education, this shift has practical implications. Instead of constantly searching for increasingly sophisticated digital resources, teachers can invite learners to contribute authentic workplace documents, news articles from their industries, photographs from recent travels, professional dilemmas, or examples of communication challenges. These learner-generated resources often prove more engaging than commercially produced materials because they emerge directly from learners' realities. Ironically, adapting resources sometimes requires creating fewer resources.

Implications for My Professional Practice

Completing this unit prompted me to reconsider some long-established routines in my own teaching.

·	First, I intend to become more intentional about collecting information throughout a course rather than relying solely on introductory icebreakers. Small conversations accumulated over several weeks often reveal richer learner profiles than one extensive getting-to-know-you activity.
·	Second, I recognize the need to redesign speaking activities for my university students, who often remain reluctant to participate. Rather than asking broad discussion questions, I can build tasks around experiences they voluntarily identify during previous lessons. Familiar topics may lower communicative anxiety while increasing willingness to contribute.
·	Third, I wish to make greater use of learners' professional expertise as classroom content. Adult students should not temporarily suspend their identities when entering English class. Their occupations, experiences, and achievements represent authentic communicative resources capable of enriching everyone else's learning.
·	Finally, this unit reminds me that adaptation extends beyond modifying worksheets or presentations. True adaptation begins with understanding the people for whom those materials are intended.

Conclusion

The British Council's TeachingEnglish: How to Adapt Resources course reinforces an idea that experienced teachers sometimes overlook amid lesson planning, technology integration, and curriculum demands: learners themselves constitute one of the richest educational resources available.

For teachers working with young adults and professionals in online environments, this principle carries particular significance. Adult learners bring extensive experiences that can transform language classrooms into spaces of authentic communication, collaboration, and reflection. When teachers intentionally connect instruction with learners' interests, professional identities, cultural backgrounds, and life experiences, language learning becomes more meaningful because it reflects the realities learners already inhabit.

My own reflections throughout this unit confirm that personalization is neither an optional enrichment activity nor an entertaining warm-up. It is a pedagogical approach grounded in respect for learners as knowledgeable individuals. As Knowles (1984) argued decades ago, adults do not arrive as blank slates; they arrive carrying lives worth learning from.

Ultimately, adapting resources is less about producing new materials than about recognizing existing ones. Every learner enters the classroom with stories, expertise, languages, memories, ambitions, and perspectives that no textbook could ever fully replicate. As this module reminded me, the teacher's role is not merely to teach English but to create opportunities for those resources to emerge, interact, and become part of the learning experience for everyone. 

San José, Costa Rica

Monday, July 27, 2026

Blog Post #579 

 

📚 References

Acuña Solano, J. (2026). Personal reflections on the British Council course TeachingEnglish: How to Adapt Resources [Unpublished course notes].

British Council. (n.d.). TeachingEnglish: How to adapt resources – Module 3, Unit 1: Using learners' experience and knowledge as a resource.

Brookfield, S. D. (2015). The skillful teacher (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge University Press.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.

Knowles, M. S. (1984). The adult learner: A neglected species (3rd ed.). Gulf Publishing.

Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon.

Mercer, S., & Ryan, S. (2018). Psychology for language learning: Spare a thought for the teacher. Language Teaching, 51(4), 504–525.

Piaget, J. (1970). Science of education and the psychology of the child. Viking Press.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.

 

Educational Theories and Practices for Adapting ELT Resources

Educational Theories and Practices for Adapting ELT Resources by Jonathan Acuña

Introduction

In English language teaching, published materials often promise efficiency, structure, and pedagogical reliability. Though this sounds promising, for many teachers, especially those working with adult learners in online settings, ready-made materials rarely arrive as finished products. They just arrive as possibilities. They offer a starting point, not a final answer. This tension became particularly clear to me while taking the British Council’s TeachingEnglish: How to Adapt Resources course. One of the course units, focused on adapting and selecting lesson plans, invited teachers to reflect on how they search for materials online, why lesson plans often need adaptation, and how such materials can be reshaped for lower-resource contexts, large classes, and inclusive teaching. Although the course often speaks to school-based settings and younger learners, its central message remains highly relevant for teachers like me who work with young adults and working professionals online.

I found myself both aligned with and distant from the course at the same time. I agreed with the course’s emphasis on contextual relevance, learner inclusion, and teacher flexibility; however, I also realized that many examples need more refining when transferred to the world of online university classes and corporate English instruction. In my context, adaptation is not simply a matter of replacing a worksheet or simplifying a task. It is a pedagogical act of translation: translating materials created for one context into tasks that respond to adult schedules, workplace realities, digital fatigue, and the communicative priorities of learners who often come to class after a full day of work. This essay, my 575^th post on my edublog, argues that adapting lesson plans for online adult learners requires more than methodological creativity. It requires contextual reading, selective use of online resources, differentiation, and a willingness to co-create learning experiences that are professionally relevant, inclusive, and sustainable for both teacher and learner.

Searching for lesson plans: from abundance to relevance

The British Council course begins by offering practical guidance on how teachers can search for lesson plans online. It recommends searching by topic, age, level, and teaching purpose, and then evaluating whether a lesson can be used as it is or whether it needs adaptation. This guidance is sensible, especially in a digital environment where the amount of available material can be overwhelming. However, abundance does not equal relevance. The challenge is not simply finding a lesson plan but finding one that can survive contact with one’s actual learners.

My own reflection in the course makes this tension explicit: apart from looking for pictures to use in PowerPoint presentations, I “barely look for materials online,” particularly because many of them are not suitable for my online college students or my online corporate learners (Acuña Solano, 2026). Instead, I tend to begin with the coursebook and then adapt, expand, or transform it with the support of AI tools such as ChatGPT. When I do search online, I usually search for grammar points, charts, infographics, or explanations that I can modify to suit my two main teaching scenarios. This habit reveals something important: for teachers of adults, searching for resources is rarely about locating a ready-to-use lesson in a single category such as “travel” or “food.” It is more often about locating adaptable fragments, visuals, prompts, scenarios, explanations, and task ideas, that can be repurposed into a lesson with clearer relevance to learners’ academic or professional realities.

This perspective resonates with the British Council’s broader view that existing lesson plans can save preparation time, but only if teachers evaluate and adapt them for their own context (British Council, n.d.). Claire Ross (n.d.), writing for TeachingEnglish, similarly emphasizes that selecting and adapting resources must begin with an understanding of context, teacher needs, and expected outcomes. In other words, a lesson plan is not “good” in the abstract; it is useful only insofar as it fits a concrete teaching situation. For adult online teachers, that fit depends on questions such as these: Does the lesson acknowledge learners’ professional goals? Can it be delivered effectively in a synchronous online class? Does it assume physical classroom movement, shared printed handouts, or child-centered topics that would alienate adult learners? Does it help students communicate in contexts they actually inhabit?

These questions have gradually become part of my own informal checklist whenever I encounter online materials. The issue is not whether a lesson plan looks polished, but whether it can be recontextualized without losing its pedagogical value. In this sense, searching for lesson plans is less about consumption and more about discernment.

Why adaptation is pedagogically necessary

The British Council course invites teachers to think about why published materials often need adaptation and offers several reasons: limited resources, large classes, learners with different needs, and cultural relevance. These are essential concerns, but in my reflective journaling I felt the need to expand the list. In my context, adaptation is also shaped by internet connectivity, the downloading format of the material, job-related relevance, and the need to introduce “twists” that make the content meaningful for working adults. These additions may seem practical rather than theoretical, yet they are deeply pedagogical because they determine whether learning can happen at all.

Adult learners bring with them constraints that are different from those of children or adolescents. Many attend class after work, between family obligations, or while managing professional stress. Some need English for meetings, presentations, interviews, negotiations, or email communication; others need it for academic advancement. Their motivation is often high, but their time and cognitive energy are limited. This means that a lesson plan that is linguistically sound may still fail if it ignores learners’ professional identities or if it requires a level of preparation, emotional investment, or playful participation that does not fit the moment in which adults are learning.

Knowles’s (1984) principles of andragogy remain useful here. Adult learners, he argues, tend to be self-directed and problem-oriented, and they value learning that is immediately relevant to their lives. In language teaching, this suggests that adaptation should not only simplify or personalize content; it should also increase functional relevance in terms of work-related scenarios. A speaking activity about “planning a school picnic” may be harmless, but for corporate learners it may be far less motivating than a role-play about disagreeing diplomatically in a meeting, giving feedback to a colleague, or handling a project delay. Likewise, a reading lesson on childhood routines may be less compelling for university students than a task about professional burnout, remote collaboration, or the ethics of AI at work.

In that sense, adaptation is not a secondary act performed after “real teaching” has been planned. It is central to planning itself. Tomlinson (2013) argues that materials development should be driven by learner needs, affective engagement, and opportunities for meaningful use of language. When published materials do not fully address those needs, teachers must intervene wisely and promptly. That intervention may involve changing the topic, adjusting the task sequence, rewriting instructions, adding scaffolding, replacing examples, or altering the output expected from learners. The goal is not to disrespect the original material, but to bring it into dialogue with the teaching reality at hand.

Lower-resource contexts and the online classroom: a necessary reframing

One of the most interesting sections of the British Council course discusses how to adapt lesson plans for lower-resource contexts. It addresses situations where teachers may not have access to a projector, photocopier, internet connection, or audio equipment. These examples are highly relevant worldwide, yet they need to be reinterpreted for online teaching. In my course reflection, I noted that I could not meaningfully select any of the listed resources because the online environment restructures the question altogether. In a virtual classroom, students may use paper or digital notes; there is no need for scissors, photocopiers, or a separate audio player; and if there is no internet, there is no synchronous class (Acuña Solano, 2026). Computers or tablets are not optional extras but conditions for participation.

This does not mean that online teaching is a high-resource paradise. It simply means that resource constraints take a different form. In virtual adult classes, the real limitations often involve unstable connectivity, camera fatigue, poor audio, limited digital literacy, lack of privacy at home, and uneven access to time and attention (Acuña Solano, 2026). A lesson plan that assumes smooth breakout-room transitions, collaborative online whiteboards, constant screen sharing, and simultaneous use of several platforms may be technically impressive but pedagogically fragile. Therefore, adapting for a lower-resource online context often means simplifying the digital architecture of the lesson rather than adding more tools (Acuña Solano, 2026).

For instance, instead of requiring learners to move across multiple websites, an adult online teacher might set up a lesson around a single slide deck, a chat box, and a pair-work discussion. Instead of assigning a collaborative poster on an external platform, the teacher might ask learners to orally summarize, compare options, or type key points in the chat. Instead of depending on a sophisticated listening platform, the teacher may read a text aloud, use a short self-recorded audio clip, or ask learners to take roles and simulate a dialogue. In this sense, the spirit of the British Council’s advice still applies: good lessons do not depend on how much technology one has, but on how teachers engage learners and help them use language meaningfully (Acuña Solano, 2026).

What changes is the form of adaptation. In the online adult classroom, adaptation often means stripping away digital excess so that communication can remain central. It means recognizing that every additional platform increases cognitive load. It also means understanding that a beautifully designed task can fail if it asks too much of learners who are already dividing their attention between work messages, family responsibilities, and the demands of being visibly present on screen.

Differentiation, mixed ability, and inclusive design for adults

If one idea from the course aligns especially strongly with my own teaching, it is the emphasis on inclusion and differentiation. The course asks teachers to reflect on learners with different abilities, needs, and preferences. In my own practice, mixed-ability teaching is one of the defining realities of university-level and adult online instruction. Students often enter the same class with different experience levels in English, different confidence levels, different professional backgrounds, and different relationships to speaking. Some are quick, verbal, and willing to take risks; others are thoughtful but hesitant, accurate but slow, or highly competent readers who struggle to speak spontaneously.

Rather than treating this variation as a problem to be erased, I have increasingly treated it as a design principle. In my course reflection, I explained that instead of creating a single speaking activity for the whole class, I create six sketchpads and allow students to choose two of them. This gives them a measure of agency and lets them engage with topics they find more meaningful. In corporate classes, I often create six scenarios based on workplace dilemmas so that learners can discuss situations that feel closer to their own professional world (Acuña Solano, 2026). This is, in essence, differentiation through choice.

The British Council’s adaptation guide highlights several forms of differentiation: changing content, process, and product; providing scaffolding; and extending tasks for those who need more challenge (British Council, 2025). These principles are highly compatible with adult online teaching. Tomlinson’s (2014) model of differentiated instruction similarly emphasizes flexible pathways toward shared learning goals. Not all learners need the same route to reach the same destination. In an online speaking lesson, for example, differentiation may involve offering two versions of a prompt, allowing learners to choose between discussing a case study or a personal scenario, giving sentence starters to those who need support, or inviting stronger learners to reformulate or expand ideas more critically.

Importantly, differentiation in adult classes should not feel infantilizing. Adults usually do not want visibly “easy” tasks that expose them as weaker learners. What tends to work better is layered design: tasks that are open enough to allow learners to participate at different depths. A discussion question such as “How should a manager respond to an employee who consistently misses deadlines?” can generate simple answers from a lower-level student and nuanced responses from a more advanced one. A role-play can include optional challenge cards for learners who want to extend the interaction. A writing task can offer a model and a vocabulary bank without making those supports mandatory. In this way, inclusion becomes less about separating learners and more about widening access to participation.

Relevance, professional identity, and the adult learner

Perhaps the most significant adaptation I make to published resources is not methodological but thematic. I adapt for relevance. In my course notes, I remarked that many online lesson plans do not connect to my learners’ lives and that coursebooks often need to be reshaped for working adults in corporate positions. This is one of the clearest lessons I have learned from teaching adults: relevance is not decorative; it is motivational infrastructure (Acuña Solano, 2026).

Dörnyei (2001) has shown that learner motivation in language classrooms is strongly influenced by task value, learner self-concept, and the perceived usefulness of classroom activities. Adult learners are especially sensitive to this. They may politely complete a task about fictional teenagers or leisure activities they have long outgrown, but their energy changes when the topic touches performance reviews, difficult clients, hybrid work, intercultural misunderstandings, or career aspirations. In those moments, language stops being a school subject and becomes a tool for self-expression and professional action (Acuña Solano, 2026).

This is why I often replace textbook speaking tasks with sketchpads built around corporate dilemmas, workplace tensions, ethical decisions, or communication breakdowns. These scenarios allow learners to draw on lived experience while practicing target language in a way that feels purposeful (Acuña Solano, 2026). They also allow me to co-create meaning with students. Their examples, frustrations, and insights enrich the lesson in ways that no generic worksheet can. In this sense, adapting materials for adults is not only about teacher intervention; it is also about recognizing learners as contributors to the lesson. The British Council course itself clearly emphasizes the value of learner contributions and the importance of adapting materials to local realities (British Council, 2026). For adult learners, this often means making room for their professional narratives, not merely asking them to perform language in artificial situations.

Adaptation as reflective professionalism

What emerges from all of this is that adaptation is not a technical afterthought but a form of reflective professionalism (Acuña Solano, 2026). It requires the teacher to read the lesson plan, read the learners, and read the teaching environment simultaneously. It also requires humility. Not every adaptation works. Some tasks still need more refining after they are taught. Some attempts at relevance become too specific; others remain too generic. Some differentiated tasks create choice but not enough challenge. Some digital simplifications go too far and reduce interaction. Adaptation, then, is not a one-time intervention but an ongoing cycle of planning, testing, observing, and revising.

For this reason, I increasingly see adaptation as something that can benefit from collaboration. Teachers do not always have to work alone. In institutions where colleagues teach similar learner profiles, teachers can share the workload by exchanging adapted speaking prompts, comparing what worked in online discussions, or building a shared bank of workplace scenarios and differentiated tasks. The British Council course mentions the value of collaboration and even encourages teachers to co-create lesson plans. In adult ELT, this collaborative spirit could be particularly valuable, since so many of us spend time reinventing materials to make them suitable for professional learners. A shared repository of adaptable adult-focused tasks, categorized by language aim, workplace function, CEFR level, and modality, would save time and reduce isolation.

Conclusion

The British Council’s How to Adapt Resources course offers a useful framework for thinking about lesson plan adaptation, but its greatest value lies not in the literal examples it provides; it lies in the mindset it encourages. It asks teachers to stop treating published materials as fixed scripts and instead approach them as flexible resources that must be interpreted through context. For teachers of young adults and working adults online, this mindset is indispensable. Our learners do not simply need lessons that are grammatically sound or visually attractive. They need lessons that acknowledge their schedules, their goals, their professional identities, their mixed proficiency profiles, and the digital conditions under which they learn.

My own reflections throughout the course confirm that adaptation is not peripheral to my teaching; it is at the heart of it. Because I work in online university and corporate contexts, I rarely use online lesson plans exactly as they are. I search selectively, adapt relentlessly, and often build speaking tasks from scratch so that learners can engage with situations that resemble their own lives. I use differentiation through choice, simplify digital delivery when necessary, and treat relevance as a central criterion rather than a luxury. In doing so, I have come to see adaptation not as evidence that published materials are inadequate, but as evidence that teaching is interpretive work (Acuña Solano, 2026). Materials can open doors, but teachers must decide which ones are worth entering, which ones must be rebuilt, and which ones must be left behind.

Ultimately, adapting resources for adult online learners is an ethical as well as pedagogical commitment. It means refusing to ask learners to inhabit a classroom world that ignores who they are. It means shaping lessons that are not merely usable, but meaningful. And it means recognizing that in language teaching, context is not a background variable. It is the very place where learning either becomes possible or remains theoretical.  

San José, Costa Rica

Friday, July 17, 2026

📚 References

Acuña Solano, J. (2026). Personal reflections and notes on Module 2, Unit 2 of the British Council course “TeachingEnglish: How to adapt resources” [Unpublished course notes].

British Council. (2025). How to adapt resources for your learners [PDF]. TeachingEnglish. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/files/2025-06/LG_I%20%282025%29_How%20to%20adapt%20resources%20for%20your%20learners_FINAL2.pdf

British Council. (n.d.). TeachingEnglish: How to adapt resources. TeachingEnglish. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/training/courses/teachingenglish-how-adapt-resources

Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge University Press.

Knowles, M. S. (1984). The adult learner: A neglected species (3rd ed.). Gulf Publishing.

Ross, C. (n.d.). Selecting and adapting learning resources for teachers: Ensuring relevance to context. TeachingEnglish, British Council. https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teacher-educators/planning-learning/selecting-and-adapting-learning

Tomlinson, B. (2013). Developing materials for language teaching (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners (2nd ed.). ASCD.

ELT Material Adaptation Strategies and Contexts

ELT Material Adaptation Strategies and Contexts by Jonathan Acuña

Click to enlarge the infographic