THE USE OF AUTHENTIC MATERIAL IN TEACHING ENGLISH IN THE ESL/EFL CLASSROOMS As technology progresses, there have been
tremendous changes in the field of education,
especially, in teaching English in the ESL/EFL
classrooms. It is a fact that most of the learners do
not show more attention towards their normal
textbooks while learning the language, the teachers
search for alternative materials to satisfy the ESL/EFL
learners’ needs and interests. Therefore, the teachers
of English adopt the teaching materials using various
sources in order to motivate the learners towards
learning the English language with a lot of interest
and enthusiasm. To fulfill the learners’ needs and
attain the desired results in their ESL/EFL classrooms,
the teachers of English have to make use of the more
economic, useful and readily available authentic
materials.
According
to
Widdowson
(1990),
“Authentic materials give exposure to real language
and its use in its own community”. Nunan (1999)
asserts, “Any spoken or written materials which are
not pedagogical purposes”. Also, Sanderson (1999)
says, “Authentic materials are materials that we can
use in the classroom and that have not been changed
in any way for ESL students”. Even researches
proved that there are many advantages of using the
authentic materials in the ESL/EFL classrooms such as
newspapers, magazines, TV programmes, TV ads,
songs, movies, the internet, literature, menus,
brochures, label products, bus timetables, comics,
realia like dolls and phones and so on. In accordance
with the knowledge and needs of the learners, the
authentic materials can be successfully used in the
ESL/EFL classrooms at all the levels and prepare the
learners to accomplish the tasks efficaciously.
