Keywords: mass media, education, language teaching and learning.
In the modern world, knowledge of a foreign language is impossible in isolation from the realities of life and culture of the country that speaks this language. Modern textbooks do not always contain a sufficient number of authentic texts and exercises that contribute to effective learning to read. Magazines and newspapers, as mass media, are an integral part of this culture. It is through reading media texts that language learners can come to understand and master the features of not only the language, but also life. When learning a foreign language, students naturally expect to be able to communicate in that language.
Communication between students cannot be limited to oral communication. Learners of any foreign language must be able to listen, write, speak and read, so the entire lesson of a foreign language must combine all these components. Harmer views writing and speaking as productive skills and listening and reading as receptive skills. Consider Harmer's definition of reading: “Reading is an action performed by the eyes and the brain. The eyes receive a certain message of information, and then the brain deciphers the meaning of the message. Reading itself depends on the reading speed of the reader. Reading is one of the main language skills both in a foreign language lesson and in the entire educational process as a whole [7].
Studies concerning mass media and its use have become evident in the era of education which may lead to a significant change in how we structure learning circles in the future. Mass media has made it possible for a more flexible language learning experience, in which students are given more control and guidance.
The 21 st century marked by its information and communication technologies, in which digital practices have become a global culture and the society is moving towards becoming information society. Hence, those who don’t embrace the technology will be left behind and perhaps will be terribly relegated. Technology has become the most useful tool in almost every aspect of human daily life. Technology is considered the first revolution and thus has a significant impact on education in general and language teaching and learning in particular.
The use of digital devices such as the Internet, computers and newspapers is the new learning model in the 21st century. Moreover, mass media play a vital role in all types of developments which allow the public to quickly contact, evaluate, share and transfer either data or knowledge. It was discovered abilities that that can be developed in every different ways in which language learning takes place through the recognized study pattern, rules, and conventions. On the other hand, language acquisition expands entirely which means foreign language learners acquire language by their contact with the language that is both coherent and significant to them.
Effective teaching builds bridges between students' knowledge and the learning objectives of the course. The use of the media engages students, helps students retain knowledge, motivates interest in the subject, and illustrates the relevance of many concepts.
The wide mass media is spreading over the contemporary society, thus it has a great influence upon the citizens’ education. Mass media are diversified media technologies that are intended to reach a large audience of learners by mass communication. The technologies through which this communicating take place varies because they are different from each other i. e. radio, music, film, and television. Many learners are spending most of their time on mass media. This has led to the diversity of grades and school work. Studies show that even one or two hours of daily television watching by school aged children has significant effects on academic performance, especially creativity.
Nowadays, we are living in the fast-developing society that offers the learners a great number of new possibilities every day. First of all, these unique opportunities relate to the development of social networks, which have significantly penetrated into the modern world of education.
Richard E. Clark says that “ the design of technology-enhanced learning environment should concurrently consider learner characteristics, technology attributes and instructional methods. This facilitates learners in achieving upmost learning effectiveness ” [2, p. 443–459]. He believes that learning is a process of acquiring knowledge. It needs hard work and sometimes will make students frustrated and get bored, so that they lose their attention to a lesson. In this case, the use of media in teaching-learning process is necessary to draw students’ attention and to make teaching and learning activities more interesting and effective.
The use of media in the educational process is not something new. Many teachers are aware of that the media will be helpful. The value of mass media relies on how it is implemented in the classroom and in order to choose suitable mass media material for the classroom: topic must be chosen based on learners’ interest, need, and their level of English proficiency, as well as cultural aspects.
Media in the classroom engages students in learning and provides a better experience. Media has useful tools for demonstrating a lesson, allowing students to see examples of what they are learning. Using newspapers, brochures, magazines and news broadcasts provides authentic opportunities for students to learn using real-world media. This method simulates real-life experiences in which students must read, evaluate, and interpret information based on items that they need in their daily lives. When students use objects from the real world, they can see the connection between what they learn at school and how they can use the knowledge as a member of society.
The use of media in the classroom teaches students how to use and care for resources for further learning. Students do not only learn how to use the Internet, a dictionary, or a newspaper and a magazine for information, but they also learn how to care for and protect the items they use. Students can also learn how to find out the worth of media and learn methods to make contribution to society, producing their own media.
Mass media tools such as newspapers, the radio, and the internet may serve educational purposes. Firstly, they perfectly fulfill different types of learners’ needs. Secondly, they encourage students to learn and are a kind of entertainment. Those tools make learning more appealing because students may find something or their interest in teaching materials. Also, by watching English news or TV series, and reading newspapers, students can learn English culture. However, the most important advantage of teaching foreign language through mass media is the contact with an authentic language. Listening to native speakers can make it easier for you to perform and understand. However, there are also disadvantages of its use. Firstly, there is no curriculum. Consequently, the whole class preparation is in teachers’ hands. Secondly, mass media tools don’t always explain rules of the language usage that the course books do. For those who prefer deductive way of learning, studying only with mass media might turn out to be problematic. In addition, it is not always possible to find a reliable source that matches the level of the students. Nevertheless, it is worth introducing at least some of mass media elements to lessons to facilitate both teaching and learning.
Teachers use authentic magazines and newspapers in the process of teaching a foreign language, because the relevancy and novelty of information, the ability to use grammatical and lexical resources, as well as linguistic and cultural information are integral positive factors for students. Also, the materials of modern periodicals help to get acquainted with the whole variety of genres of journalistic style. When choosing to use an authentic article in a lesson, two difficulties arise: creating a lesson can be very energy-intensive for a teacher; the text is not always interesting for students [1, p. 105–116].
The use of authentic material in the lesson, even if the situation is not authentic, has a number of advantages, since the text conveys information to students about events in the world, thereby realizing educational value. On the other hand, textbooks often contain typical standard texts with little variety in genres, while authentic materials contain a wide range of text genres and encourage reading with pleasure, so the topics are of great interest to students. This does not imply at all that in all foreign language lessons it is needed to use only authentic texts, but if possible, try to use less artificially composed materials. Educational texts should be realistic models of written or spoken language of the target language.
Authentic media texts are useful aids to improve students' reading skills and their general level of knowledge. Nowadays, the newspaper has become an important way of presenting information [4]. With the help of articles, you can motivate students while training not only reading skills, but also other types of speech activity. There are advantages to using media texts, but there are also a number of difficulties that teachers and students themselves may face. It is also necessary to take into account the fact that there are many magazines and newspapers in English created specifically for learners of a foreign language at a certain level. In this case, it is difficult to talk about the authenticity of these media texts, so sometimes the term “simulative” or semi-authentic is used for such texts [6]. According to Harmer, “We need texts in which general meaning will be understood by students, regardless of whether they are authentic or not. But any text — authentic, semi-authentic or educational — must be a realistic model of written or spoken language. And if the teacher managed to find an authentic text that the students can handle, then the use of such material will be very effective [5, p. 25–33]. It should be noted that the use of authentic periodicals (as well as semi-authentic ones) has its own characteristics: 1) accessibility; 2) variety; 3) topic; 4) complexity; 5) culture and social problems.
In conclusion, the media can help in many areas such as: motivation, clarity, reuse, composition, revision, editing, diversity, mixed ability classrooms, updating textbook information, bringing life and color to procedures and methods in the classroom, thus, at the same time helping students improve their accuracy and fluency. Proper use and successful integration will bring many benefits to teachers and students if they use it in the right circumstances.
References:
1. Akbari O., Razavi A. Using authentic materials in the foreign language classrooms: Teachers’ perspectives in EFL classes. — International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 5(2), 2016.
2. Clark, R. E. Reconsidering Research on Learning from Media. — Review of Educational Research, 53, 1983.
3. Farmer, J. How to effectively use news articles in the EFL classroom. — The Internet TESL Journal, 14(12), 2008.
4. Gafiyatova E., Deputatova N., Biktagirova Z. New approaches to teaching reading English texts at the senior stage of education — Scopus20780303–2016–7–1-SID84998827893, 2016.
5. Harmer J. The practice of English language teaching. — Pearson: Longman, 2007.
6. Reah D. The language of newspapers. — Psychology Press, 2002
7. Swan M. The Practice of English Language Teaching. — OUP, 2018
8. Ur P. A course in language teaching trainee book. — Cambridge University Press, 1999.
