Adapting Coursebook Activities to Stimulate Language Learning among Rural Students: An Action Research

Material Adaptation English Coursebooks Instruction Rural Education English Language Teaching Coursebooks are substantial components of English lessons for facilitating learning. However, cultural differences may require a course material to be adapted to meet students’ needs, interests and wants. This qualitative action research study aimed to improve an English language teaching process at a rural school in a socioeconomically deprived area. The required data were gathered through semi-structured teacher interviews, semistructured student interviews, teacher memos, class discussion teacher reflections, open-ended student questionnaires. The findings of the study indicated that regional challenges affect the language learning process in rural areas negatively and this regional divide makes it difficult for students to keep up with the centralized content. When the materials are adapted in accordance with the students’ needs and profile, and regional conditions, it is possible for students to reach the learning goals. The data also show that the adapted materials contribute to meaningful learning, enthusiasm among students, engagement towards the English and increase retention. Article Info: Received Accepted Published : 26-08-2021 : 09-05-2022 : 18-06-2022


Introduction
Sociocultural factors in language lessons outline success in rural regions (Kyriacou & Zhu, 2008;Lamb, 2012;Miller, 1988); thus, it is important to strive for foreign language education Teachers who know the community in which they work, and the community's way of life can better understand students' needs and expectations (Başer, 2008). Regional knowledge can be used as an agent for promoting pre-defined objectives and language skills as the teacher transforms the content and classroom activities to make them more meaningful and related to students' context and lives (Azano, 2011). Therefore, teachers need to be aware of rural challenges and plan the instructional process accordingly (Azano, 2011;Koru & Akesson, 2011;Moll, Amanti et al., 1992). If the instructional material is not relevant to students' particular culture and lifestyles, teachers should rearrange the learning materials to foster student motivation, participation, and meaningful learning (Pardo & Téllez, 2009). Meaningful learning occurs when learners build the new knowledge onto existing knowledge, process and use it while solving a problem (Mayer, 2002). This also highlights the role of material adaptation in creating or promoting a meaningful and pleasant learning environment (Pardo & Téllez, 2009). By doing that material adaptation increases participation in ELT classes and overdependency of coursebooks (Rathert & Cabaroğlu, 2021).
Previous research shows that material adaptation appears as a necessary step in the instructional process in second language teaching and coursebooks are inescapably adapted for different reasons (Alptekin, 1984;Hyde, 1994;Sarıgöz, 2019;Kara, 2019;Tomlinson, 2016). For example, coursebook dialogues can be considered as being not compatible with predefined objectives and student profile (Süzer, 2007) or sometimes centralized coursebooks may not be suitable for the student profile and readiness (Kozikoğlu & Senemoğlu, 2018). Some other reasons for material adaptation might be institutional aims for language learning and students' needs (İnal, 2006), the need to raise students' cultural awareness (Şimşek, 2017), the need for providing a meaningful context for the language learning in general and/or vocabulary learning specifically, and providing more authentic materials (Kara, 2019). Moreover, teachers may need various types of activities, in addition to coursebook content to increase students' interests and to help them build self-confidence, improve higher order thinking skills, and show better participation (Acar, 2013;Merter, 2006). Cultural elements referred in the coursebook might be another reason for material adaptation, teachers may want to rearrange the content of the course material in line with the cultural characteristics of the location they work (Bayyurt, 2006;İnal, 2006).
Studies also have shown that local culture elements can contribute to the meaningfulness of the lesson (Bayyurt, 2006;Shin et al., 2011) and can make the lesson more appealing (Acar, 2013;Duman, 2018). While global coursebooks are more authentic and sufficient in terms of cultural content (Şimşek & Dündar, 2018) teachers believe it is difficult to transfer some themes across cultures and when the coursebooks heavily rely on the culture of the target language, it is difficult to use them effectively during the lesson (Kayapınar, 2009) and they find the dominant presence of US or UK culture limiting (Baltacı & Tanış, 2018). However, studies also highlight that locally produced coursebooks may provide a monocultural representation of the home culture, which is deemed to be insufficient by the experts in terms of proving students with the necessary cultural diversity for effective language teaching (Cortazzi & Jin, 1999;Çakır, 2010;Çelik & Erbay, 2013, Ertürk, 2013Kayaoğlu, 2011;Şimşek & Dündar, 2018;Toprakçı, & Özaydınlı, 2021) and sometimes fail to represent even only the local culture in a meaningful way (Işık, 2011). Coursebook evaluations point out that intercultural representations should be integrated more (Çakır, 2021). In that sense, ELT coursebooks are considered to be insufficient to facilitate intercultural awareness and represent Turkish culture in a very limited way (Hatipoğlu, 2018;Işık, 2011;Solhi et al., 2020;Tekir & Arikan, 2007) and they sometimes fail to meet the expectations for opportunities of localization to cross the cultural gap (Işık, 2011;Işık, 2018;Solhi et al., 2020). Studies conducted in Turkey about the ELT coursebooks at different levels highlighted that majority of the language teachers found the coursebooks used for English language teaching as insufficient in many respects (Ertürk, 2013;Dülger, 2016;Kayapınar, 2009;Kayaoğlu, 2011;Şimşek & Dündar, 2018;Tekir & Arikan, 2007;). Tomlinson (2012) also highlights the need for more empirical material adaptation studies evaluating the materials from different perspectives taking into students' perspectives, taking action and also evaluating their own attempt critically as well.
In this study context, a sociocultural gap mentioned above was observed. Students were not familiar with some sociocultural concepts in the coursebook and had difficulty in terms of feeling the need to learn English and being able to follow the lessons. Therefore, based on the above-mentioned problems and the need for more empirical studies (Tomlinson, 2012), the present action research study aimed to investigate students' and teachers' perception about the English language coursebook used for the 8 th grade students at a rural public school in terms of its cultural content, adopt and/or adapt the necessary materials, and finally present students' and teacher's perceptions of the re-designed materials. In line with this purpose, the research questions of the study are defined below: 1. How do students and English teachers in a socioeconomically deprived rural area perceive and interpret the content and activities of their English textbooks in terms of their social and cultural background?
2. To what extent did the adapted materials provide opportunities for meaningful learning?

Method
This qualitative action research study aimed to improve English language teaching at a rural school in a socioeconomically deprived area. Action research can be carried out by educators to improve their practices and students' learning (Efron & Ravid, 2013). As it helps teachers understand specific problems and issues related to their classrooms, supports their reflective practices, and encourages them to take the responsibility of their work (Burns, 2010). Hence this study aimed to improve instructional practice and student learning through trying to solve a defined problem by the teacher researcher (Sikula, 1996), it employed action research design. In line with the description of Chech and Schutt (2011), in the present action research study, the researcher had a specific action and attempted to make a positive change in the situation. Action research is not limited to any one approach; qualitative, quantitative, and mixed research methods can be used; however, qualitative research methods may be more appropriate to describe the particular situation from various angles and obtain deeper data because it is limited to a specific region (Craig, 2009). Since the current study is limited to a specific school, the researcher describes the research environment from a wide perspective, participate in the study area, and has the chance to observe naturally occurring events, human interactions and relations, action research design is thought to be appropriate.
This study is conducted at a village school in Şanlıurfa, which is a city in the South-East part of Turkey. The school is 145 kilometers far away from the city center and it is a secondary school in which 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students receive education. There are 560 students, 21 teachers, and 14 classrooms in the school. It is a public school and follows English language teaching curriculum of the Ministry of National Education. There are around 50 students in 5 th and 6 th grades, 40 students in 7 th grades and 35 students in 8 th grades classrooms. Technical facilities are not sufficient at the school. There are not computers, projectors, and speakers in each classroom. There is a multi-purpose room in the school including 30 seats, a whiteboard, and a projector. The room can be used by all the teachers if they need to use a projector. Yet, teachers must bring their own computer and speakers. About a quarter of the students live in the village where the school is located, and the rest come to the school from different villages by bus on daily basis. All the students have crowded families. They have at least five siblings and some of them live with their relatives such as grandparents, uncles, etc. Nearly all the students live in houses with at most two rooms. They work as seasonal workers, and they attend the school towards the end of October and leave at the end of April so as to go to different cities and work in fields even though the academic year normally starts in September and ends in June in Turkey. They rarely go to town center and some of them have not been to Şanlıurfa city center so far.

Participants of the Study
Convenience sampling method is used to determine participants and the present research was conducted with three eight grade classes the teacher researcher works with. There were 67 students in total; however, since some students work in different rural jobs, as taking care of animals/fields, absenteeism happens quite often. Therefore, total number of participants changed between 50-67 during the lessons.
Apart from the students, two other English teachers also participated in the study. Both teachers graduated from English language teaching departments and chosen for the study because they are familiar with the research context. One of them has been working for four years at the school and has been living in the village. And she is teaching sixth graders. The other teacher has been working for two years in the area and staying at the town center. And she is teaching fifth graders.

Data Sources
Qualitative data collection tools were utilized to gather broad and detailed data related to the research questions (Merriam, 2009). As this research aims to understand students' and teachers' perspective in a socioeconomically deprived rural area about the content and activities of their English textbooks and about the adapted materials, qualitative techniques are believed to be more appropriate to examine the particular research context from different perspectives and gain deeper data (Craig, 2009). Student feedback forms, whole class discussion teacher researcher reflections, semi-structured student interviews, semi-structured teacher interviews, and teacher researcher memos were used to collect data. Data gathering instruments were prepared by the researcher and revised by three experts in the field. After the revisions suggested by the domain experts, such as writing the questions in student interview protocol in a simpler way and using shorter expressions and/or changing the order of some questions to have a top-down approach in teacher interview protocol. Table 1 shows the data collection tools in the study. Table 2 shows the triangulation of the data source.

Role of the Researcher
The literature has shown that the role of the researcher in action research can be varied; however, the main role of the action researcher is to take responsibility for a workable action and to encourage further research accordingly (O'Brien, 1998). In this study the teacher researcher has been teaching in the research area for four years as an English language teacher. In this research context she tried to understand students' and teachers' perceptions, determine if there is any mismatch, or unfamiliar elements due to the students' backgrounds and, question how to adapt the materials so that they would be useful in this situation. The role of the researcher in the study is therefore two-fold, being both a practitioner and a researcher.

Implementation
After receiving the required approvals from Middle East Technical University ethics committee and Şanlıurfa Provincial Directorate for National Education, the researcher and two other English teachers at the school separately identified the concepts/activities given in the 8 th grade English coursebook which they believe to be difficult to use in the classroom because of the students' sociocultural background based on their experiences in the rural school. They analyzed the book in terms of its appropriateness for students' language proficiency, the context of the school/area, the organization and presentation of the content in relation to students' socioeconomic background (McDonough & Shaw, 1993). After all the teachers reviewed all the units in the book and determined the concepts/activities individually, they came together and discussed them as group and reached an agreement on the concepts/activities that require adaptation. After the teachers reached an agreement about the possible ways to adapt the materials, the teacher researcher adapted materials accordingly and in line with the outcomes determined by Turkish MoNE. Three material adaptation experts were consulted for the appropriateness of the adapted materials.
The adapted materials were implemented for seven weeks, and student feedback forms and teacher memos were collected. After implementing each lesson plan, the teacher distributed open-ended students feedback forms to understand students' perceptions related to adapted activities and then guided whole class discussions about the activities used. Right after each whole class discussions, the teacher researcher wrote reflective memos. Interview questions and student feedback form were designed after an intensive literature review and three experts' opinions were solicited.

Trustworthiness
According to Lincoln and Guba (1985) there are different ways to ensure credibility such as prolonged engagement, persistent observation, triangulation, and referential adequacy materials. In accordance with that, this action research study utilized triangulation to increase conformability and used variety of data sources. As Stringer (2007) asserts, the researcher becomes an active observer if s/he keeps notes of everything in the research area. Therefore, teacher researcher paid attention to take detailed notes during every suitable time and utilized persistent observation as a technique. As the teacher researcher was also working at the same school the study took place, this warranted her prolonged time in the field. Transferability in trustworthiness refers to the applicability of the study to other similar contexts (Stringer, 2007). This study aimed to meet transferability with detailed context description, detailed explanation of research phases, data collection tools, adapted materials, and results. Dependability is another concept to ensure trustworthiness in action research and it is yielded by using reliable and valid data collection tools (Golafshani, 2003). To ensure that experts such as curriculum and instruction experts, English Language Teaching experts, and experienced English Language teachers were consulted during the development of the tools used in the study.

Data Analysis
Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Reflexive thematic analysis is the conceptualization of data encoded in semantic or latent ways with meaning-based patterns. Coding can be utilized in two ways which are "inductive or bottom-up" and "deductive or topdown". Inductive coding can be used if there is no predetermined pattern to follow and the ideas are generated as analyzing the data set. In the current study all the data were coded by using inductive approach (Braun & Clarke, 2014). Unlike the codebook or code framework approach, in the reflexive thematic approach, coding is an open and iterative process and is not fixed at the beginning of the analysis process (Clarke et al., 2015). The important thing is to gain a deeper familiarity with the data and internalize it to tell the story better (Braun & Clarke, 2019).
The coding procedure followed the six-phase framework defined by Braun and Clarke (2006); (1) first step to get familiar with the data, all the data sets were read and re-read; (2) then every single line was coded without having pre-set codes to generate initial codes; (3) in the third step, the researcher searched for themes and codes were organized into broader themes; (4) then codes were reviewed, modified and improved for a better representation of the data; (5) next the themes were defined theme, main themes or sub-themes were determined, thematic maps for the related questions were designed, (6) Lastly, the analysis was reported and written up.  (2006)).

Perceptions about the Cultural Content of English Coursebook
The data containing the perceptions about the cultural content of the book were gathered through semi-structured student and teacher interviews. First of all, the data obtained from teachers' interviews were represented under the themes of regional challenges, the impact of sociocultural incongruity and professional demands. As for student interviews, the themes were defined as course-content related perceptions and cultural perceptions.

Teachers' Perceptions
Regional challenges: This theme was about the mismatch between the intended use of the course content and actual classroom use of it in the study context that is experienced by teachers due to regional conditions. During the interviews, the teachers stated that the basis of a sociocultural incompatibility between the coursebook content and the students was due to the regional conditions.
Because the social opportunities of the students here are already limited… thus they have never seen the concepts given in the book such as bowling, billiards, or the types of food as salami, sausage, mild cream cheese, sandwich…. Now, of course, if the school were in the center, the students could go to the market with their family, see these foods, or go to the mall. But unfortunately, there is no such possibility here. Therefore, the book can be challenging for students.
Teachers stated that another difficulty experienced in the region was technological deficiencies. For them, technological devices such as projectors, computers or smart boards were not available in the school. On the other hand, infrastructural conditions of the village also affected the teaching process.
Or because our technological possibilities are very limited, I cannot use the essential technology ... Well… for example, when I want to teach listening, I use my own Bluetooth speaker, but when its charge is over, I cannot use it again if there is no electricity. I have to postpone. Or I want to show a video about an activity in the book, but we don't have a projection. I mean, not in every classroom… Well… there is one portable projector, but I can't get it whenever I want. For example, there are very good activities in Vitamin at EBA. If we had a smart board, or at least a projection, we could do better lessons in classrooms.
Another factor that teachers considered under the regional challenges was students readiness level in the area. The teachers stated that there were students who were illiterate at all levels and the students did not have some essential knowledge about the language structures that they should have learned in the previous years, and this situation affected the students' learning.
So unfortunately, our students' readiness level is low. For example, I ask the 5 th graders whether they had an English teacher in the primary school or not, half of them have been taught by their classroom teachers and half have never been taught English before. There are also those who are illiterate. So unfortunately, there are not suitable conditions to be successful.
The teachers also emphasized the influence of the learning environment in this region on students' attitudes. They mentioned that students were not very enthusiastic about the lessons and most of them do not consider English as important for their future career as they believe that they would not be practicing professions requiring any knowledge of English.
Very few students are not biased towards English lessons. There are some who says you're teaching us a new culture, etc. but many say that they are not interested, it is a sin. For example, when they see a foreign scientist, they say, "Isn't it a sin to learn these things?" Many think they won't need English in the future. Impact of sociocultural incongruity: When teachers' general perceptions were analyzed through semi-structured interviews, it was revealed that they thought that there was a cultural mismatch between rural students' sociocultural backgrounds and cultural activities in English textbooks and they did not know many of the concepts covered in the textbook in their mother tongue either.
Of course, the social life in these villages is different than those given in the book… So, when I say tennis court, children's theater, or fitness, gym, etc., the word itself is foreign to children. He doesn't know what it is like so he cannot understand when we teach him the English equivalent. His social life is taking sheep to graze, working in the fields and working at the small grocery store in the village, but the lives in the book are not like that. For example, I am telling about city buildings in the 6's (6 th grade). Is there a government building in this village so the children understand what I am talking about? or a shopping mall?
They explained that this cultural mismatch made English learning difficult because students had difficulty in understanding the unfamiliar concepts which remained abstract in their minds. The students found the activities that they did not see in the village as different, meaningless or absurd and they showed resistance to learning the concepts or vocabulary.
As I said before, when something is meaningless to them, indeed concepts that they are not familiar with may seem meaningless, they immediately say 'this is absurd' or so. So, it's like they're building a wall.
Professional demands: Under this theme, teachers expressed the extra responsibilities they had due to the regional conditions while teaching. They expressed that cultural mismatch could be more demanding for them such that their workload increased since they had to make up for the mismatch.
In other words, their cultural background is insufficient. Well… When this is the case, I teach children the concepts first. For example, what a museum, shopping mall, cafe, cinema is like… I have to teach them first so that they can understand. For example, the children did not know about the amusement park toys at the amusement park activity and I had them watch their videos one by one.
To prevent this (students' building invisible walls that keep them from learning new concepts) from happening, I try to give examples from their lives or from this village, because I waste too much time otherwise… I get tired too.
Moreover, the teachers expressed that they had to put more effort to handle the incongruence and increase students' learning. They stated that they would not have to do that if they worked in a city center; however, working in a village required putting extra effort necessarily.
For example, in the Yummy Breakfast unit, I bought the salami, sausage, croissant from the market beforehand and had a breakfast activity, so, I think students can understand better. But this puts more responsibility on the teacher. I think village teachers have to work harder in this sense. Because we are trying to provide a quality education with few opportunities. We're preparing children here for the high school exam. Obviously, we try to make up for these impossibilities in a place where the student cannot even go to the stationery and buy as many test books as /she wants.
But unfortunately, we have to follow the centralized schedule. When we follow the schedule exactly, it can be a bit vague to the students. That's why I always have to consider a different method or activity. Otherwise, it's like lecturing to the wall.

Student Perceptions
When students' interviews were analyzed to see how they perceived cultural concepts in the English coursebook, the data were categorized under two major themes which were course content-related perceptions and cultural perceptions.
Course-content related perceptions: This theme described students' perceptions about the grammatical structure, vocabulary, and text difficulty in the English textbook. During the interviews, the students explained their perceptions related to course procedure, vocabulary items, reading passages and visuals. Nearly all of the students stated that vocabulary items could be difficult for them, and this situation negatively affected their learnings.
Teacher, English is a bit complicated because the meanings and spellings are read separately.
…I don't understand long reading passages… because I don't know the vocabulary.
You know, there are very long words, I have a hard time understanding them.
Moreover, students stated that the visuals given in the book were not enough to understand the concepts and they sometimes needed more visuals to understand especially unfamiliar concepts. Their comments highlighted the need for supporting students' learning process with visuals as the concepts were mostly new to them.
… I don't understand some places when I don't see it, it would be better to see a picture.
For example, teacher… there are different dishes, cakes…. how should I know if there are not pictures?
Their comments suggested that the book assumed students knew some concepts and did not provide visuals for all the concepts and vocabulary that students did not know. Therefore, according to their perceptions, vocabulary was difficult, and they required more visual support to learn the target language.
Cultural perceptions: Second theme in terms of representing students' perceptions was about how they saw the cultural content represented in the book. Students in general thought that cultural content was most of the time unfamiliar to them and they stated that they were deprived of some cultural activities and opportunities in their village compared to the life represented in the book.
… They say that they hang out with their friends, they drink coffee… We don't do these sorts of things. When I go home, I do housework for my mother.
There are not such beautiful things here… Well, teacher, I have never seen a theater or a cinema.
Students' comments showed that they compared their own lives with the life the book presents, and they observed that they lacked these experiences and opportunities in their environment. This realization also led to a feeling of dissatisfaction. When students talked about their sociocultural deprivations, nearly all of them stated that they were disadvantageous in comparison with those children who had access to various cultural activities because they did not have sociocultural opportunities to experience those activities in the village.
Their school is more advanced than our school. For example, they have a laboratory, and they can go to the laboratory. They do more activities in the gym… They don't have a village like this one…I haven't seen one. The places where they live are better.

Opportunities for Meaningful Learning Provided by Adapted Materials
The second question of the present study was about students and the teacher's perceptions about the adapted materials. Relevant data were gathered through open-ended questionnaires from students, the teacher's class discussion reflections and teacher memos.

The Perceptions of the Teacher Researcher
Based on the analysis of whole class discussion reflection memos and teacher memos, two main themes were defined as adapted materials enabled internalization and meaningful learning.

Internalization:
This theme was about the teacher researcher's opinions about how the adapted activities helped students internalize the new language input. Internalization was seemed to be achieved through promoting familiarity, providing relatedness and retention. In relation to the data, it was observed that as students got familiar with the concepts that they did not see in the rural area before, they could construct new semantic connections between the input and their previous schemata.
This was a mango cake recipe activity and there was a reading paragraph. There was not a visual of mango. Before we started to read the reading passage, I showed some mango pictures and asked them what fruit is similar to mango. Some of them said it looked like a peach, some said it was like a persimmon and some others said its skin looked like a pomegranate. One of the students said that "I imagined a totally different shape, I thought it was green and long; however, it was orange and round." Then, they tasted a piece of mango. So, they got familiarized with the unfamiliar cultural item. After they tasted it, some of them said that it was very different, but some said it was similar to apricot. Then we continued with reading the paragraph (Teacher memo-December, 2019).
Based on the recalled data, it was seen that since the adapted activities include local culture elements, students could relate the new language input to their own lives. It was observed that as students made a connection between their lives and course subject, they were more willing to learn the subject.
…I asked what they liked or did not like about the activities. When I asked students about what was good in the lesson, which activity they liked today, they gave different answers. Most of them said that they liked worksheet activity. When I asked the reasons of it, they said that some of the pictures were related to their lives in the village such as working in fields, collecting cotton, swimming in a river, playing with wheelbarrow etc. and they also added that it was very good to learn some vocabulary related to village life (Class discussion reflections-November, 2019.) Data showed that, students were also able to recall the vocabulary they had learnt in the previous weeks easily. The memos reflected the teacher researcher's notes about how she noticed students seemed to remember and try to use the target vocabulary which was not common before the application of the adapted materials.
The word pudding was mentioned in the materials that I adapted in the previous lesson, and the students got familiarized for the first time. In this lesson, after reading the mango cake recipe, some of the students asked, "is there such a thing as mango pudding?". This was a very important question because the students had seen the pudding for the first time in the previous lesson, and in this lesson, it was the first time they saw the mango. They worked on the concepts they had just learned, remembered, and commented on them, and I was very happy (Teacher memo-December, 2019).

Provided meaningful learning:
This theme indicated that the adapted activities helped students learn the unfamiliar concepts meaningfully instead of rote memorization. Meaningful learning was achieved through increasing enthusiasm, increasing engagement, raising curiosity, and authentic learning. First of all, it was stated that the activities increased students' enthusiasm towards the course. The analysis revealed that they became enthusiastic to do the activities when the material was meaningful to the students.
In the original activity, going to an amusement park was given as a free time activity which can be done with friends. To familiarize the students with amusement parks, I showed the video of Vialand (an amusement park in İstanbul). They expressed that they had a lot of fun even watching this video and could not imagine the reality. The language input became meaningful to them otherwise they wouldn't be enthusiastic if they did not understand what the activity was about and they would only memorize the Turkish meaning of the word "amusement park" (Teacher memo-November, 2019).
The adapted activities were prepared in such a way that they include some sociocultural background knowledge which would be necessary to understand the activity. If students did not know a concept given in the activity, they could not do the activity such as a speaking or writing activity. After the adapted materials, it was seen that students could participate more because they had the necessary input to share their feelings, made comments or arose interest to the subject. After students could gather the necessary background knowledge, the teacher researcher noted that students' participation and engagement with the course had increased.
However, in the adapted version they created a smartphone application in groups for a specific purpose such as learning a foreign language, preparing a workout program etc. Students could actively participate to the activity because before the activity I introduced them a smart phone application for learning a foreign language. They worked in groups of three or four. All of them discussed through a smartphone application. It was impossible to do the original activity because it would not be meaningful. However, with this adapted version of the activity, all the students could participate willingly because it only required students' imagination. I gave them 10 minutes to do the activity and the groups presented their work to the class. I think the activity was much more communicative (Teacher Memo-February, 2020).
The data revealed that students wanted to learn more about new language input, and they were willing to express their own ideas using the new language structure. In other words, the adapted activities raised students' curiosity towards foreign language usage.
The students asked the English meanings of other words that came to their mind about music. In this way, their vocabulary also increases. They kept saying, "What does a note mean in English?" "My teacher, how can I say my voice is beautiful in English?". The students had a biased attitude towards learning English before. For example, they were rejecting to learn some vocabulary to use in their social life. However, after adapting the activities, their desire to learn some vocabulary seemed to have increased (Class discussion reflection-December, 2019).
In relation to the data from teacher memos and class discussion reflections, the adapted materials were seemed to contribute to authentic learning. Authentic learning was achieved through using authentic materials (e.g. concert ticket, mango fruit, play dough, Dualingo), student-led group works, reflection of the real-world contexts (inclusion of local culture elements), and creation of a product (producing a smart phone application). Reflection of realworld contexts appeared as another way to achieve authentic learning. The adapted activities were prepared as part of the real world outside the school. The data below showed that how the teacher researcher inserted local culture elements while adapting the activities to make the course context more authentic.
The activity was about some free time activities which are performed with friends. The free time activities given in the book did not reflect the activities that rural students do with their friends. The original activities include some concepts such as throwing a slumber party; however, I added some rural activities such as riding a donkey and swimming in the river so as to make the content more authentic (Teacher memo-November, 2019).
Most of the students stated that "music videos were very exciting because we felt like we were in a music program". Some students expressed that they had not seen any program in a large screen, and they said that they felt like that were in the music program called "O Ses Türkiye" (The Voice). I think that students could understand what the activity meant by saying "music band, rock concert, culture and convention center". I realized that the concepts were more meaningful after the students learnt about them and got excited (Class discussion reflection-December, 2019).

The Perceptions of Students
Based on the open-ended questionnaire analysis, it can be said that students were content with the adapted activities in general. Majority of them stated that "everything was good". When they were specifically asked about what they learnt in the activities, the learners wrote that they familiarized with some new concepts and vocabulary. The students also expressed what was new to them in the studied lesson. Regarding this, students stated that "I learnt what a concert ticket looks like…how a concert can be…I learned to call eggs as omelet". In a different unit, students expressed that "I learnt what a gym and a swimming pool can look like".
Moreover, they stated that they liked the visuals used in the adapted activities. Some of them wrote that "the pictures in the worksheet were good…I liked the theater scene that we watched…I liked the amusement park video". Another positive perception of the adapted materials was the use of realia. Many students stated that they liked the realia used in the activity. For example, students indicated that "I liked that the teacher brought a real mango…I liked making different foods using play dough". Furthermore, the students reported that they liked the cultural relevance. For example, they stated that "I liked the picture of people working in the fields…". Some of the students stated that they liked the activities because they were enjoyable "the activity was very enjoyable, I liked that".
The students also expressed that they were not content with the allocated time for the tasks and some stated that "we played with the play dough for a short time". Similarly, some expressed that "it would be better if we could play more". In a different unit, students expressed insufficient time of the activity by stating "it would be better if the concert activity would take longer". Some of them stated that the activity would be better if there were not technical problems. When there were some technical problems with the speakers, the volume of the videos became low, and students expressed their dissatisfaction related to the technical problem and stated that "the volume was not sufficient…it would be better if the volume was high". Some of the students expressed that they did not like the reading passage and stated that "I did not like reading". Only, few of the students did not like the activities and found them boring. They mentioned that "the activity was boring".
The students also made suggestions to improve the activities. Although many of the students liked the cultural relevance in the activities, few of them stated that they would like to see more cultural relevance. These students mentioned that "it would be better if the music was şevko (a traditional dance music) …I would like to listen to şevko". Another improvement area mentioned by the students was about the numbers of the visuals used. Although some students stated that they liked the visuals, some others needed more visuals to better understand the input; "it would be better if we could watch different types of theater, it would be better if we could see more videos related to amusement parks". Lastly, few students mentioned that they prefer the activities to be implemented in Turkish; "it would be better if the activities were in Turkish."

Discussion, Conclusion, and Implications
This action research study aimed increase the effectiveness of English language course at a rural school. The findings of the study indicated that regional challenges affect the learning process negatively and this regional divide makes it difficult for students to keep up with the centralized content. When the materials adapted according to the students' needs, profile, and regional conditions, it is possible for students to reach the learning goals.
One of the most important findings of this study was about the limiting effect of the several factors of rural areas, such as sociocultural/socioeconomic deprivations, low readiness level of the students and technological limitations which is in line with the related literature (Aksoy, 2008;Çakıroğlu & Çakıroğlu, 2003;Çiftçi & Cin, 2017;Kızılaslan, 2012;Yıldız, 2020). Teachers mentioned that the regional context creates socio economic disadvantages for the students. Village schools in Turkey have limited social and economic opportunities unlike urban schools, and therefore these schools have some unique needs (Çakıroğlu & Çakıroğlu, 2003). These limited opportunities in village schools adversely affect quality education and students' academic success (Aksoy, 2008). For teachers, these limitations are worsened with the students' low readiness level for English language course. Students' data also support this as they expressed that they were having difficulties with vocabulary and grammar which were supposed to be appropriated for their level. As they were lacking in prerequisite knowledge, they found vocabulary and grammar activities more difficult than their own level; however, the units cover the vocabulary items and grammar structures which belong to the previous years. The literature also points out that rural students have lower readiness level in contrast to their peers in urban schools (Çiftçi & Cin, 2017;Kızılaslan, 2012). For example, Güvendir (2017) reveals a similar finding in his study stating that one of the prominent reasons of rural students' having difficulty in English is about students' low readiness level and lacking necessary prerequisite knowledge required by their grade. In this context, students' working as seasonal workers and therefore their frequent absenteeism might have caused their low readiness.
Another point that teachers mentioned is lack of technological opportunities at their school. They expressed that they cannot integrate technology in the lessons because of frequent power cuts, lack of the internet, inadequate projector, and speakers. This result is commonly mentioned in national and international studies about the education in the rural area (Applegate, 2008;Bakı, & Bütüner, 2009;Gökçe et al., 2017;Güvendir, 2017;Taneri & Engin-Demir, 2011;Yıldız, 2020). If teachers could reach technological devices as an information source more easily and had less technological problems, they might have helped students to become more familiar with many sociocultural elements that the students were unfamiliar with.
Teachers also believe that there are some sociocultural discrepancies between students' sociocultural background and the content of the book activities caused by regional conditions. As a result of that, new language input may not make sense to the students like the students studying in urban areas. Rural students hardly travel outside their town, they lack some opportunities to develop themselves socio culturally; therefore, there might exist a sociocultural mismatch between their lives and the coursebook content (Aslan, 2013;Babacan, 2007) as sometimes centralized education systems may ignore different lifestyles and sociocultural backgrounds which alter depending on geographical characteristics of a country (Kızılaslan, 2012). Under these circumstances it is not possible for students to make sense of the new language input if their sociocultural background is not sufficient to understand them (Kıroğlu, 2008;Öztürk, 2015). Analysis also showed that teachers had to put extra effort to overcome the negative effects of these sociocultural mismatches and other regional challenges such as technological deficiencies. Various studies show that quality education and instruction mostly depend on teachers' effort in rural schools (Güvendir, 2017;Özdeş, 2012;Yılmaz & Izgar, 2009), teachers need to adapt the content in accordance with students' needs and local culture (Çakır, 2010).
According to the data retrieved through whole class discussion teacher reflections and teacher memos, the adapted materials helped students internalize the language input by increasing students' familiarity with the unknown vocabulary and concepts, by providing relatedness and retention. In that sense, students', and teacher's data present corresponding results to indicate that the adopted materials worked as planned. Similarly, Duarte and Escobar (2008) reported that in their study where they adopted the course materials taking students' proficiency level, sociocultural background, and interests into account, students showed tendency towards the local adapted materials and mentioned that adapted materials seemed more familiar. In the study of Roe (2008) it was revealed that it was beneficial for students to include the texts including items about their own culture in the curriculum in terms of their self-confidence and motivation. In this study, students' data were similar with the result in that one of the points that they liked about adapted activities was cultural relevance. Altın and Saracaloğlu (2018) also reported that integrating culture to the instructional materials can contribute to students' vocabulary knowledge and that cultural relevance is important for students' attitudes towards learning English. Students' data analysis results were compatible with the teachers' data in that student participants expressed that they feel deprived of some opportunities, and they do not have access to experience some cultural activities in the rural area. In accordance with the analysis of teachers and student interviews this leads to low motivation as well. In that sense, using familiar content, local culture elements in the instruction process can increase student motivations and academic success (Alptekin, 1993(Alptekin, /2006Gardner, 1985;Huang et al., 2017;McKay, 2002).
The data also showed that the adapted materials contributed to meaningful learning, increased enthusiasm among students, engagement towards the English and increased retention. As long as students find the context meaningful, they can develop an enthusiasm for learning (Sullo, 2009). For a language learning experience to be meaningful, students should be willing to relate newly learnt knowledge to already existing ones and the task should also make sense to them. Meaningful learning also increases retention of the newly learned knowledge (Brown, 2000).
Another result of the current study which contributed to meaningful learning was that the adapted materials helped to create an authentic learning experience. In the design process, the teacher adapted the activities initiating real life experiences, local culture relevance, using real and concrete materials, and increasing collaboration with group works. Authentic learning environment was attractive for the students as well. Guo (2012), Güler and Büyükkarcı (2020), Ünver (2017), Peacock (1997), Varmış-Kılıç (2011) have also observed the positive effects of authentic materials on students' interest and ability in learning English.
With reference to the results of this study, some implications can be summarized as follows. First, teachers are of paramount importance in terms of adapting the materials and bridging the gap between the centralized content and students' sociocultural background. Therefore, it seems sound to say that they should be prepared to meet the challenges of teaching in rural and remote areas and material adaptation. It would be helpful for them if they could become familiar with the challenges of the rural classrooms in their preservice education. To reduce teacher exhaustion there could be units under the MONE, working together with the teachers to guide and support the material adaptation process of in-service teachers. In-service teachers should renew their knowledge through in-service trainings about material adaptation. The content of the books should be evaluated regularly and revised by the experts working in collaboration with teachers teaching in rural areas. Furthermore, building a reliable feedback system among the practitioner teachers, authors, program developers at MONE could be helpful to identify the deficits in teaching at rural regions of the country. There are many problems that teachers face in the rural areas but identifying them is half the battle in that sense. Therefore, the need for more empirical studies and action research conducted by practitioner teachers cannot be neglected. There could be platforms where teachers can share their experiences, effective strategies they used, adapted materials, and so on.
For future research, succeeding studies could be conducted for different levels, with different books and in different parts of the country, so different factors affecting rural education could be handled. Moreover, quasi-experimental or experimental research designs could be employed in that integrating different design types can describe different aspects of the context. Quality instruments that capture students' and teachers' perceptions regarding the books used and regarding the effects of the studies could facilitate teaching and learning process in rural areas.
This study has several limitations. First, the students work as seasonal workers and that is why they cannot come to school until November, and they leave towards the end of April. Although five units are to be covered per semester key to the curriculum, the researcher could cover three units per semester and therefore, only five units were chosen to be adapted in total. Hence, the researcher had to start implementing the adapted lesson plans and materials two months later than it should be. Other limitation is about technology use. Nearly all the lesson plans require using the projector for visuals and videos. However, in the village, power failure occurs frequently, and the projector cannot be used. At those times, the teacher used her computer to show them the videos and students gathered around the computer screen. One another limitation is about researcher bias. Since the teacher developed the lesson plans herself and employed the student interviews, there can be bias in the data gathering procedure. To minimize the effect, the students were reminded that they were not going to gain any bonus points or being penalized for their answers. Another limitation of the current study appears as a result of nature of action research design such that the findings cannot be generalized to larger populations. According to Yıldırım and Şimşek (2016) unlike quantitative designs, qualitative research designs are deprived of generalizability but provide in-depth description of a particular situation.