Authentic Materials: An Overview
There are many references to authentic material in the ELT literature. Books and journals contain thorough explanations of why it should or should not be included in lessons, and how it is to be used or best exploited. But those authors who support the use of authentic material have in common one idea: "exposure". In other words, the benefit students get from being exposed to the language in authentic materials.
The definition of authentic materials used in this paper is taken from Peacock (1997): materials that have been produced to fulfill some social purpose in the language community.
Widdowson's (1990) differentiation of the terms "authentic" and "genuine material" has been a seminal one in the field so I should like to mention it here: Authentic would be material designed for native speakers of English used in the classroom in a way similar to the one it was designed for. For example, a radio news report brought into the class so students discuss the report on pollution in the city where learners live.
Most of the time, though, this material is used in a genuine way, in other words, not in the way it was intended, but in a somewhat artificial way. For example, a news article where the paragraphs are cut up and jumbled so students have to put them back together in the correct order.
Another view is the difference between artificial and authentic materials (see Shortall, 2001).
Advantages
Using authentic material in the classroom, even when not done in an authentic situation, and provided it is appropriately exploited, is significant for many reasons, amongst which are:
Students are exposed to real discourse, as in videos of interviews with famous people where intermediate students listen for gist.
Authentic materials keep students informed about what is happening in the world, so they have an intrinsic educational value. As teachers, we are educators working within the school system, so education and general development are part of our responsibilities (Sanderson, 1999).
Textbooks often do not include incidental or improper English.
They can produce a sense of achievement, e.g., a brochure on England given to students to plan a 4-day visit.
The same piece of material can be used under different circumstances if the task is different.
Language change is reflected in the materials so that students and teachers can keep abreast of such changes.
Reading texts are ideal to teach/practise mini-skills such as scanning, e.g. students are given a news article and asked to look for specific information (amounts, percentages, etc.) . The teacher can have students practice some of the micro-skills mentioned by Richards (1983), e.g. basic students listen to news reports and they are asked to identify the names of countries, famous people, etc. (ability to detect key words).
Books, articles, newspapers, and so on contain a wide variety of text types, language styles not easily found in conventional teaching materials.
They can encourage reading for pleasure because they are likely to contain topics of interest to learners, especially if students are given the chance to have a say about the topics or kinds of authentic materials to be used in class.
Disadvantages
The disadvantages mentioned by several writers are:
They may be too culturally biased, so unnecessarily difficult to understand outside the language community.
The vocabulary might not be relevant to the student's immediate needs.
Too many structures are mixed so lower levels have a hard time decoding the texts.
Special preparation is necessary which can be time consuming.
With listening: too many different accents.
The material can become outdated easily, e.g. news.
There are many headlines, adverts, signs, and so on that can require good knowledge of the cultural background. Instances of this abound in the media, such as headlines that many times use abbreviations (P.O.W., M.I.A., G.O.P. and so on).
Sources of Authentic Materials
In today's globalized world, examples abound, but the most commonly used perhaps are: newspapers, TV programs, menus, magazines, the internet, movies, songs, brochures, comics, literature (novels, poems and short stories), and so forth.
I would like to look at some authentic materials in a bit more detail and then move on to a variety of sample tasks .
Literature
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.
Computer Software
Software that has been specially designed for English instruction has received some criticism particularly from teachers who back up a humanistic approach to language teaching. They state they see no reason why exercises that can be done with a textbook should be carried out with a computer. This idea stems from software such as Gapkit, Grammar mastery II and others that are really computer-guided drills. This position is quite understandable. However, together with Tense Buster, and others that drills are not all computers have to offer to EFL teaching.
General software can be used in class, be it in a genuine or in an authentic way. An example is Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? by Broderbond, which gives students opportunities to interact not only with the computer but with other students as well. There are other examples of adventure games where learners need to discover clues and unravel mysteries. These games usually involve a good amount of reading and with the use of multimedia they involve a good range of sounds, speakers of different ages and accents, and excellent images. Students can play in pairs or threes and discuss what to do next, so that the interaction that takes place is also a part of the learning process. Another advantage these games have is that they promote computer literacy, a badly needed skill in the modern world.
The Internet
With the advent of the World Wide Web, teachers have at their disposal large amounts of texts, visual stimuli, newspapers, magazines, live radio and T.V., video clips and much more. There are endless lists of useful materials for the language classroom. I should like to focus mainly on newspapers and radio stations. As with other media, there is no point in asking students to just go to the web and read some text or other. There needs to be a task, preferably one in which meaning is central and has some connection to the real world. Treasure hunts and other information searching activities are probably the most useful. More and more sites have interactive sections. For example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/communicate/ which contains message boards and where students can chat with native speakers.
Other useful websites are:
Non-Authentic Video for ELT
By Peter Viney
In the last few years, I have spent hours talking about the use of video in the classroom. One question that seems to come up again and again is the question of authentic materials. Somehow, the word 'authentic' has attained a magical status in English language teaching. People always assume that 'authentic' means good. It is seen automatically as a sign of approval. In this article I want to look at the reasons for AVOIDING authentic material on video, at least at the earlier stages. In the article, I take 'authentic' to mean originally designed for showing to a native-speaker audience. (Although in some senses, television drama has a dynamic, pace and repetition factor which makes it very different from 'authentic' dialogue in 'real' situations, and purists might argue that television drama was not authentically authentic - if you see what I mean!)
In my early years of using video, I was often desperate to use the medium and devoid of materials. I had to use authentic materials, and I did. I used the news, old silent films, sporting events (with the soundtracks removed), situation comedies - anything in fact that I could lay my hands on. Several things emerge when you are using authentic materials:
* You have to review hours of tape in order to find a few minutes of useable material.
* You have to spend hours more in planning how to use it.
* You will probably have to design support materials yourself. (Though not always. There are collections of authentic materials which have print backup available, such as Central News.)
* Activities will almost inevitably have a strong bias towards comprehension tasks. I like video materials which lend themselves to active participation by the students. Silent movies are an exception, active work will dominate over comprehension work when using silent movies. However, there is a limit to the number of times you can play Charlie Chaplin or Laurel & Hardy, and of course the backgrounds do not portray an English speaking country today! I have seen brilliant comprehension activities being used with authentic materials - but in the end the lesson seemed to revolve around explanation of vocabulary and phrases. To me, this is a non-dynamic lesson, and video is not being used in the most effective way. With all English language teaching, there are a limited number of hours available. You have to ask yourself constantly whether you are making the best use of them.
* The news and current affairs are only interesting ONCE - the day after you record them. You can't store the 9 o'clock news from Saturday May 14th 1998 and use it again in the future.
* The material will nearly always be much too long. A 30 minute sit -com can only be used for broad comprehension in its entirety. A film may take weeks or months of work - by which time interest will almost certainly have dissipated.
* Activities (such as silent viewing, sound only etc) can be imposed on any material, but only with classroom designed material will someone have considered the duration of tasks, and built them in to the script.
* You are stuck with all sorts of things which can be explained, but are really not worth the time and effort involved. For example, one beginner level video of authentic extracts from TV has this sequence:
There's (sic) twenty milk bottles in the crate, and there are twelve eggs here.
It seems inappropriate to deal with this while you are introducing the concept of 'There is …' / 'There are …' for the first time. The same video had (as redundant language): What would the elephant do if its ears were to shrink? The trouble with such redundant items is that they end up being explained. Time is wasted at best; at worst the students are confused and disheartened.
* It follows that authentic material will only work well at the higher levels.
* It will be difficult, if not impossible, to integrate the material with the syllabus your students are following.
* It's often illegal to use off-air material, or to play a feature film to a class. You may be 'stealing' someone's copyright material.
* Sometimes authentic material is used because the teacher loves it. This does not mean that the students will. Fawlty Towers is my favourite TV sitcom. I have often seen it used in the classroom. It is very funny, but the amount of time spent in explaining the verbal jokes was excessive. (Incidentally, Bob Spiers who directed some episodes of Fawlty Towers also directed Grapevine One. I point this out for lovers of trivia, rather than as a claim of comparable quality!)
There are many references to authentic material in the ELT literature. Books and journals contain thorough explanations of why it should or should not be included in lessons, and how it is to be used or best exploited. But those authors who support the use of authentic material have in common one idea: "exposure". In other words, the benefit students get from being exposed to the language in authentic materials.
The definition of authentic materials used in this paper is taken from Peacock (1997): materials that have been produced to fulfill some social purpose in the language community.
Widdowson's (1990) differentiation of the terms "authentic" and "genuine material" has been a seminal one in the field so I should like to mention it here: Authentic would be material designed for native speakers of English used in the classroom in a way similar to the one it was designed for. For example, a radio news report brought into the class so students discuss the report on pollution in the city where learners live.
Most of the time, though, this material is used in a genuine way, in other words, not in the way it was intended, but in a somewhat artificial way. For example, a news article where the paragraphs are cut up and jumbled so students have to put them back together in the correct order.
Another view is the difference between artificial and authentic materials (see Shortall, 2001).
Advantages
Using authentic material in the classroom, even when not done in an authentic situation, and provided it is appropriately exploited, is significant for many reasons, amongst which are:
Students are exposed to real discourse, as in videos of interviews with famous people where intermediate students listen for gist.
Authentic materials keep students informed about what is happening in the world, so they have an intrinsic educational value. As teachers, we are educators working within the school system, so education and general development are part of our responsibilities (Sanderson, 1999).
Textbooks often do not include incidental or improper English.
They can produce a sense of achievement, e.g., a brochure on England given to students to plan a 4-day visit.
The same piece of material can be used under different circumstances if the task is different.
Language change is reflected in the materials so that students and teachers can keep abreast of such changes.
Reading texts are ideal to teach/practise mini-skills such as scanning, e.g. students are given a news article and asked to look for specific information (amounts, percentages, etc.) . The teacher can have students practice some of the micro-skills mentioned by Richards (1983), e.g. basic students listen to news reports and they are asked to identify the names of countries, famous people, etc. (ability to detect key words).
Books, articles, newspapers, and so on contain a wide variety of text types, language styles not easily found in conventional teaching materials.
They can encourage reading for pleasure because they are likely to contain topics of interest to learners, especially if students are given the chance to have a say about the topics or kinds of authentic materials to be used in class.
Disadvantages
The disadvantages mentioned by several writers are:
They may be too culturally biased, so unnecessarily difficult to understand outside the language community.
The vocabulary might not be relevant to the student's immediate needs.
Too many structures are mixed so lower levels have a hard time decoding the texts.
Special preparation is necessary which can be time consuming.
With listening: too many different accents.
The material can become outdated easily, e.g. news.
There are many headlines, adverts, signs, and so on that can require good knowledge of the cultural background. Instances of this abound in the media, such as headlines that many times use abbreviations (P.O.W., M.I.A., G.O.P. and so on).
Sources of Authentic Materials
In today's globalized world, examples abound, but the most commonly used perhaps are: newspapers, TV programs, menus, magazines, the internet, movies, songs, brochures, comics, literature (novels, poems and short stories), and so forth.
I would like to look at some authentic materials in a bit more detail and then move on to a variety of sample tasks .
Literature
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.
Computer Software
Software that has been specially designed for English instruction has received some criticism particularly from teachers who back up a humanistic approach to language teaching. They state they see no reason why exercises that can be done with a textbook should be carried out with a computer. This idea stems from software such as Gapkit, Grammar mastery II and others that are really computer-guided drills. This position is quite understandable. However, together with Tense Buster, and others that drills are not all computers have to offer to EFL teaching.
General software can be used in class, be it in a genuine or in an authentic way. An example is Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? by Broderbond, which gives students opportunities to interact not only with the computer but with other students as well. There are other examples of adventure games where learners need to discover clues and unravel mysteries. These games usually involve a good amount of reading and with the use of multimedia they involve a good range of sounds, speakers of different ages and accents, and excellent images. Students can play in pairs or threes and discuss what to do next, so that the interaction that takes place is also a part of the learning process. Another advantage these games have is that they promote computer literacy, a badly needed skill in the modern world.
The Internet
With the advent of the World Wide Web, teachers have at their disposal large amounts of texts, visual stimuli, newspapers, magazines, live radio and T.V., video clips and much more. There are endless lists of useful materials for the language classroom. I should like to focus mainly on newspapers and radio stations. As with other media, there is no point in asking students to just go to the web and read some text or other. There needs to be a task, preferably one in which meaning is central and has some connection to the real world. Treasure hunts and other information searching activities are probably the most useful. More and more sites have interactive sections. For example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/communicate/ which contains message boards and where students can chat with native speakers.
Other useful websites are:
Non-Authentic Video for ELT
By Peter Viney
In the last few years, I have spent hours talking about the use of video in the classroom. One question that seems to come up again and again is the question of authentic materials. Somehow, the word 'authentic' has attained a magical status in English language teaching. People always assume that 'authentic' means good. It is seen automatically as a sign of approval. In this article I want to look at the reasons for AVOIDING authentic material on video, at least at the earlier stages. In the article, I take 'authentic' to mean originally designed for showing to a native-speaker audience. (Although in some senses, television drama has a dynamic, pace and repetition factor which makes it very different from 'authentic' dialogue in 'real' situations, and purists might argue that television drama was not authentically authentic - if you see what I mean!)
In my early years of using video, I was often desperate to use the medium and devoid of materials. I had to use authentic materials, and I did. I used the news, old silent films, sporting events (with the soundtracks removed), situation comedies - anything in fact that I could lay my hands on. Several things emerge when you are using authentic materials:
* You have to review hours of tape in order to find a few minutes of useable material.
* You have to spend hours more in planning how to use it.
* You will probably have to design support materials yourself. (Though not always. There are collections of authentic materials which have print backup available, such as Central News.)
* Activities will almost inevitably have a strong bias towards comprehension tasks. I like video materials which lend themselves to active participation by the students. Silent movies are an exception, active work will dominate over comprehension work when using silent movies. However, there is a limit to the number of times you can play Charlie Chaplin or Laurel & Hardy, and of course the backgrounds do not portray an English speaking country today! I have seen brilliant comprehension activities being used with authentic materials - but in the end the lesson seemed to revolve around explanation of vocabulary and phrases. To me, this is a non-dynamic lesson, and video is not being used in the most effective way. With all English language teaching, there are a limited number of hours available. You have to ask yourself constantly whether you are making the best use of them.
* The news and current affairs are only interesting ONCE - the day after you record them. You can't store the 9 o'clock news from Saturday May 14th 1998 and use it again in the future.
* The material will nearly always be much too long. A 30 minute sit -com can only be used for broad comprehension in its entirety. A film may take weeks or months of work - by which time interest will almost certainly have dissipated.
* Activities (such as silent viewing, sound only etc) can be imposed on any material, but only with classroom designed material will someone have considered the duration of tasks, and built them in to the script.
* You are stuck with all sorts of things which can be explained, but are really not worth the time and effort involved. For example, one beginner level video of authentic extracts from TV has this sequence:
There's (sic) twenty milk bottles in the crate, and there are twelve eggs here.
It seems inappropriate to deal with this while you are introducing the concept of 'There is …' / 'There are …' for the first time. The same video had (as redundant language): What would the elephant do if its ears were to shrink? The trouble with such redundant items is that they end up being explained. Time is wasted at best; at worst the students are confused and disheartened.
* It follows that authentic material will only work well at the higher levels.
* It will be difficult, if not impossible, to integrate the material with the syllabus your students are following.
* It's often illegal to use off-air material, or to play a feature film to a class. You may be 'stealing' someone's copyright material.
* Sometimes authentic material is used because the teacher loves it. This does not mean that the students will. Fawlty Towers is my favourite TV sitcom. I have often seen it used in the classroom. It is very funny, but the amount of time spent in explaining the verbal jokes was excessive. (Incidentally, Bob Spiers who directed some episodes of Fawlty Towers also directed Grapevine One. I point this out for lovers of trivia, rather than as a claim of comparable quality!)
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