The contribution of educational technologies in enlarging social-cultural skills of general school pupils Contents Introduction

1.3The implementation of authentic materials for teaching general school pupils with the help of technology.
“The advantage of authentic materials is that they give higher-level students exposure to unregulated native-speaker language – the language as it is actually used by native speakers communicating with other native speakers.”
“I see authentic materials as key in receptive skills and learning conventions – “authentic listening” to speakers, ideally on video, in particular. But I don’t necessarily see authentic materials as a model for productive skills. “Authentic” materials – a contract or an email – are often a starting point for my advanced students clients and myself to discuss how to communicate most effectively. They’ll stumble over a phrase or expression and want to discuss the meaning [and] related intentions and connotations. The authenticity of the materials makes them authoritative.”
‘There is a certain enthusiasm when a less-than-university-educated aircraft maintenance engineer holds in his hands a tool which he uses every day, and tries to explain exactly how he uses it. He can manipulate it and (to a certain extent) demonstrate it while explaining. The others in the class (all grease under the fingernail types) are equally eager, and often there is a feeding frenzy of new language.’
To sum up the advantages, my teaching colleagues feel that authentic materials⁵:

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  Help prepare learners for the ‘real’ world of communication;
  
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  Guide learners toward the language they need for their particular context;
  
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  Motivate learners to communicate, because they help make communication ‘real’.
  

Authentic texts have been defined as real-life texts, not written for pedagogic purposes” They are therefore written for native speakers and contain “real” language. They are “materials that have been produced to fulfil some social purpose in the language community.” In contrast to non-authentic texts that are especially designed for language learning purposes. The language in non-authentic texts is artificial and unvaried, concentrating on something that has to be taught and often containing a series of “false-text indicators” that include: - perfectly formed sentences (all the time); - a question using a grammatical structure, gets a full answer;-repetition of structures;- very often does not “read” well. The artificial nature of the language and structures used, make them very unlike anything that the learner will encounter in the real world and very often they do not reflect how the language is really used. They are useful for teaching structures but are not very good for improving reading skills (for the simple fact that they read unnaturally). They can be useful for preparing the learner for the eventual reading of “real” texts. If authentic texts have been written not for language learning purposes but for completely different ones, where do they come from and how are they selected? The sources of authentic materials that can be used in the classroom are infinite, but the most common are newspapers, magazines, TV programs, movies, songs and literature. One of the most useful is the Internet. Whereas newspapers and any other printed material date very quickly, the Internet is continuously updated, more visually stimulating as well as being interactive, therefore promoting a more active approach to reading rather than a passive one. 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 endless amounts of many different types of material. From a even more practical/economical point of view, trying to obtain authentic materials abroad can be very expensive, an English paper/magazine can cost up to 3-4 times the price that it usually is and sometimes is not very good. Often by having unlimited access in the work place, looking for materials costs nothing, only time. 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 used to develop the students’ competence as readers. A text that can not be exploited for 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. It is important to assess the right level for the right students. Variety and presentation also influence the choice of authentic materials. A reading course can be made more interesting if a variety of texts is used. Students very often find it very boring when dealing with only one subject area, as can be the case when dealing with English for Specific Purposes (ESP). One of the advantages of using texts dealing with the same subject area is that they use the same vocabulary, with the student having to make very little conscious effort to learn it. While on the contrary, the student becomes highly specialised in that particular area and not in others. Whether the text looks authentic or not, is also very important when presenting it to the student. The “authentic” presentation, through the use of pictures, diagrams, photographs, helps put the text into a context. This helps the reader not only understand the meaning of the text better but also how it would be used. A more “attractive” text will appeal to the student and motivate them into reading. It may seem to be a very superficial aspect but the appearance of any article is the first thing that the student notices. An “attractive” looking article is more likely to grab the reader’s attention rather than a page full of type. Very often it is so easy to just download an article from the Internet and present the student a page full of impersonal print, without taking any of these factors into consideration. Other factors worth taking into consideration when choosing authentic material for the classroom can include whether the text challenges the students’ intelligence without making unreasonable linguistic demands, does the language reflect written or spoken usage, is the language in the text natural or has it been distorted in order to try and include examples of a particular teaching point? It is also important that the text lends itself to being studied, can good questions be asked about it or tasks based on it created? Above all does the text make the student want to read for himself, tell himself something he doesn’t know as well as introduce new and relevant ideas? Important Factors in Choosing Authentic Reading Material Suitability of Content Does the text interest the student? Is it relevant to the student’s needs? Does it represent the type of material that the student will use outside of the classroom?
Exploitability. Can the text be exploited for teaching purposes? For what purpose should the text be exploited? What skills/strategies can be developed by exploiting the text? Readability Is the text too easy/difficult for the student? Is it structurally too demanding/complex? How much new vocabulary does it contain? Is it relevant? Presentation Does it “look” authentic? Is it “attractive”? Does it grab the student’s attention? Does it make him want to read more? Important Factors in Choosing Authentic Reading Materials The concept of authenticity is central to CLT, with the learner being exposed to the same language as a native speaker. Four types of authenticity within the classroom have been identified and in particular to the use of authentic texts: 1. Authenticity of the texts which we may use as input data for our students; 2. Authenticity of the learners’ own interpretations of such texts; 3. Authenticity of tasks conducive to language learning; 4. Authenticity of the actual social situation of the classroom language. Widdowson has a process-orientated view of authenticity, making a distinction between “authentic” and “genuine”. Genuine is an example of native speaker language, while authentic is a native speaker response (it can also include the response the writer intended upon when writing the text.): “The language presented to them may be a genuine record of native speaker behaviour, genuine, that is to say, as textual data, but to the extent that it does not engage native speaker response it cannot be realized as authentic discourse.” Authenticity can therefore be considered to be the interaction between the reader and the text and not just the text in itself. Reading is considered to be an ongoing interaction, going beyond the physical context of the text, looking for meaning as well as processing information. Goodman takes this even further claiming that reading is “…an essential interaction between language and thought…” Where the writer encodes his thoughts as language and the reader decodes the language into thought. The Use Of Authentic Reading Materials In The Classroom One of the main ideas of using authentic materials in the classroom is to “expose” the learner to as much real language as possible. Even if the classroom is not a “real-life” situation, authentic materials do have a very important place within it. It has been argued that by taking a text out of its original context, it loses it authenticity: “As soon as texts, whatever their original purpose, are brought into classrooms for pedagogic purposes they have, arguably, lost authenticity.” Even if true, the learner is still exposed to real discourse and not the artificial language of course textbooks, which tend not to contain any incidental or improper examples. They also tend to reflect the current teaching trend. Authentic materials also give the reader the opportunity to gain real information and know what is going on in the world around them. More times than not, they have something to say, be it giving information, a review. They also produce a sense of achievement. Extracting real information from a real text in a new different language can be extremely motivating, therefore increasing students' motivation for learning by exposing them to 'real' language . They also reflect the changes in language use, (again something that does not occur in textbooks, which become very dated, very quickly) as well as giving the learner the proof that the language is real and not only studied in the classroom:
“Authentic texts can be motivating because they are proof that the language is used for real-life purposes by real people.”
The wide variety of different types of text means that it is easier to find something that will interest the learner and may even encourage further reading or reading for pleasure. Anadvantage of taking a complete newspaper or magazine into classroom, rather than photocopies of an article, is that students can actually choose what they want to read. The more the learner reads, the better a reader he will become, not only improving his language level but alsoconfidence. If the text interests the learner it can also be related to his own experiences. One of the aims of authentic materials is to help the student react in the same way L1 speakers react in their first language (L1). Learners who live in the target language environment, once outside of the classroom will encounter a variety of situations in which different reading purposes/skills are required. We can claim that learners are being exposed to real language and they feel that theyare learning the 'real' language. The main advantages of using authentic materials in the
classroom therefore include:
- having a positive effect on student motivation;
- giving authentic cultural information;
- exposing students to real language;
- relating more closely to students’ needs;
- supporting a more creative approach to teaching.
These are what make us excited and willing to use authentic materials in our classrooms, but while using them, it is inevitable that we face some problems. The negative aspects of authentic materials are that they can be too culturally biased, often a good knowledge of cultural background is required when reading, as well as too many structures being mixed, causing lower levels problems when decoding the text.
Students often bring copies of newspaper articles (in particular the tabloids) or song lyrics to the classroom, asking to translate them after having looked up each word in the dictionary and not understood a single word. Richards notes that authentic materials often contain difficult language, unneeded vocabulary items and complex language structures, which can often create problems for the teacher too. They can also become very dated, very quickly but unlike textbooks can be updated or replaced much easier and more cost effectively. The biggest problem with authentic materials is that if the wrong type of text is chosen, the vocabulary may not be relevant to the learner’s needs and too many structures can create difficulty. This can have the opposite effect, rather than motivate the learner, it can de-motivate and in Krashenite terms “put up the effective filter”.