Reading is an essential part of language learning at every level, because it supports learning in multiple ways. Reading material is considered as language input. Giving a variety of materials provides many opportunities for students to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure as they occur in authentic contexts. Mainly, the use of authentic materials has a great value to teach reading skills. The aim of this paper is to discuss the use of authentic materials in stimulating students’ reading skills.
Through using authentic materials, students can benefit from engaging with real language that is being used in a real context. There, it should be noted that this paper has a great importance to make students use real life texts in order to take awareness of how the language is actually used. Furthermore, it can be a useful source to inform both teachers and students about authenticity, different source of authentic materials and important factors in choosing authentic reading materials.
When considering the use of authentic materials Widdowson wrote: “It has been traditionally supposed that the language presented to learners should be simplified in some way for easy access and acquisition. Nowadays there are recommendations that the language presented should be authentic” (Widdowson, 1990). The term “authentic material“ has been defined in the works of many linguists. While Wallace defined it as “…real life texts, not written pedagogic purposes” (Wallace, 1992), Peacock gave the definition for authentic material as “…texts that have been produced to fulfill some social purposes in the language community”, unlike non-authentic text that are created only for language learning purposes (Peacock,1997). Nunan refers to authentic materials as any material that has not been specifically produced for the purpose of language teaching. Bacon and Finnemann define authentic materials as texts produced by native speakers for non-pedagogical purposes.
There are different definitions for the authentic materials, but they do have something in common. All the definitions highlight the fact that authentic materials mean “exposure to real language and its use in its own community”, authentic materials are the texts that are not written for language teaching purposes and we can use them in the classroom without changing it in any way for ESL students.
As the authentic materials which add a real-life element to the student’s learning experience are brought into the classroom, the lessons will be more interesting, motivating than they were before. Authentic materials is significant in increasing students’ motivation for learning and making the learner be exposed to the “real” language. Of course, we should always remember that the task should be born in mind, not the material. This means that, for example, instead of asking a beginner student to read a full-page article, the learners should be asked to read the headline and guess what the article will be about. So, in order to teach what the authentic texts are about, special terms used in it, the teacher should use different kinds of activities.
The notion of authenticity remains problematic, however. As Meinholf (1987) points out, a strict interpretation of authenticity would include only ‘original pieces of written or spoken language which occurred naturally between native speakers and could therefore be accepted as “genuine communicative acts” ’. It is also stated that as soon as texts, whatever their original use, are bought into classrooms for pedagogical purposes they have, arguably, lost authenticity. To address this problem Meinholf suggests a framework in which the learners participate themselves in the collection and selection of texts. The teachers brings in a supply of magazines of all kinds and readerships, and learners choose articles from these. This strategy, of course, is only feasible in cases where this kind of material is readily available (Wallace,1992).
The widely used sources of authentic materials are newspapers, magazines, TV, video, radio, literature, and the internet. Although radio is easy to access, its aural texts are the most difficult for language learners to comprehend. Miller claims that, “In order to use radio programs with learners, teachers need to decide on some global listening tasks for the learners” due to the fact that all non-verbal information is missing. Unlike radio, TV and video allow learners to access paralinguistic features of the spoken text; as a result, TV and video may be easier for the students to comprehend.
According to Hedge and Baird, there are two types of authentic materials:
Spoken: TV commercials, films, news items, weather forecasts, airport and station announcement, radio talks, interviews, and debates.
Written: articles, train timetables, advertisements, brochures, poems, application forms, recipes and instruction for use of equipment.
In teaching reading skills written authentic materials can be very preferable. Using authentic materials has a great importantce in stimulating students’ reading skills. Because, they are very motivating and encourage students further reading. The most useful authentic reading materials are the followings:
– The internet;
– Newspapers and magazines;
– Literature (novels, poems and short stories, fictions);
– Advertisements, flyers, brochures, schedules.
It will be very good, if these authentic materials are identified in a bit more detail. By learning about these materials deeply, we can use them in appropriate way.
Among the sources mentioned above, the internet is considered the most useful source. While printed materials date very quickly, the internet is continuously updated, is interactive, and provides visual stimulation. From a more practical point of view, the Internet is a modern day reality, most students use it and for teachers, there is easier access to many different types of material. It provides easy access to endless amounts of different types of material (Berardo, 2006). Moreover, the internet can be the portal to other sources. For example, teachers can obtain articles, audio clips, and videos from the internet. However, despite the useful qualities of the internet, Miller (2003) indicates that a survey conducted on The ESL Magazine website concerning the most used medium for obtaining authentic listening materials for ESL/EFL instruction found the TV the most used one.
Using a well-chosen newspaper text in teaching English can bring lively and contemporary issues into the classroom and at the same time motivate the students. This is due to their report of the current international events, new important technological breakthroughs, the changing world and society; thus, always keeping students up-to-date. They also provide English learners most kinds of genres of writing written in authentic language, such as narratives, stories, letters, reports, and advertisements, etc., often rich in collocations, latest vocabulary and idioms. That can serve as examples of writing and be made use of to help train students’ writing, reading and oral communication. Moreover, newspapers provide various materials for students to broaden their knowledge, as they contain a wide range of topics, including politics, diplomacy, economy, education, health, entertainment, science and technology.
The reason for using literature in the class has been stated by Pound: «Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree». (Ezra Pound, How to Read, Part II) Of course, the focus should be on teaching language, not literature. In other words, the idea should be using literary texts as one kind among other texts. With that in mind, the tasks should aim at meaning and not form, especially literary form or stylistics. Role of books and literature is crucial in modern life as well, a driving force in education, business, law, science, medicine and entertainment. They are our heritage. Students gain the legacy of knowledge earned by those who came before. People of all ages find information, pleasure, relaxation and inspiration while reading books. Books lack the immediacy of other mass media, but they make up for that by greater thoroughness and permanence.
“People die, books never die”. (Roosevelt) Literary texts are products that reflect different aspects of society. Reasons to use literature: literature is authentic material; literature encourages interaction; literature expands language awareness; literature is motivating.
Authentic materials should be the kind of material that students will need and want to be able to read when travelling, studying abroad, or using the language in other contexts outside the classroom. Authentic materials enable learners to interact with the real language and content rather than the form. Learners feel that they are learning a target language as it is used outside the classroom. When choosing materials from the various sources, it is therefore worth taking into consideration that the aim should be to understand meaning and not form, especially when using literary texts with the emphasis being on what is being said and not necessarily on the literary form or stylistics. Nuttall gives three main criteria when choosing texts to be used in the classroom suitability of content, exploitability and readability. Suitability of content can be considered to be the most important of the three, in that the reading material should interest the students as well as be relevant to their needs. The texts should motivate as well as. Exploitability refers to how the text can be teaching purposes has no use in the classroom. Just because it is in English does not mean that it can be useful. Readability is used to describe the combination of structural and lexical difficulty of a text, as well as referring to the amount of new vocabulary and any new grammatical forms present.
There are many aspects which prove positive sides of using authentic materials. If the lessons are conducted through using authentic texts, students can feel the real language. Furthermore, lessons will be more interesting and motivating. The usage of this kind of materials always encourages students further reading.
References:
- Berardo, S. The use of authentic materials in the teaching of reading. The Reading Matrix, 6 (2), 2006
- Miller, L. Developing listening skills with authentic materials. ESL Magazine, 2003
- Nuttall, C. “Teaching Reading Skills in a foreign language” (New Edition) Oxford, Heinemann, 1996
- Sanderson, P. “Using Newspapers in the Classroom». Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- Widdowson, H. G. Aspects of Language Teaching Oxford, O. U. P. 1990, p.67
- Wallace, C. Reading Oxford, O. U. P. 1992, p.145
