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182AUTHENTIC MATERIALS IN TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Nosir Sherboyev
(Tashkent, Uzbekistan)
Over the hundred years the tendency and the whole attitude to the world and trade has been changed a lot. This made an effect to the quality and way of the educational system of the world, too. The whole notion of the education and knowledge has been changed basically. The main thing that is valued nowadays is the education of the people.
The learning of the foreign language is not only the development of particular skills or the acquisition of knowledge about the language structure and the rules of using them, but also the ability to utilize the language as the main mean of interconnection with the native speakers. The study of the target language culture is considered to be the integral component of foreign language learning. In the modern methods of teaching the foreign language the usage of authentic materials stands as the main criterion of the "right" resources that are utilized while developing the language proficiency.
Nowadays there are diverse approaches to define the concept of authentic materials even if this term appeared recently in the methods of foreign language.
K.S. Krichevskaya determines the authentic materials as the literary, folklore, graphic and musical products, such as clothes, furniture, dishes and their illustrative images. The author defines the domestic and daily things to the particular group as pragmatic materials; they are advertisements, questionnaires, labels, menus and bills, maps, etc. She thinks that the role of the pragmatic things is more important rather than authentic texts from the exercise books. As K.S.Krichevskayaconsiders there can be the following classifications of pragmatic materials according to their usage:
- Study-professional sphere of communication;
- Social-cultural sphere of communication;
- Daily sphere of communication;
- Commercial sphere of communication;
- Family routine sphere of communication;
- The sphere of sports of communication.
This classification is nearly the same as the definition of the term "authentic materials" given by G.I.Voroninawho identifies the authentic texts as the texts that are taken from the communicative practice of the native speakers. She subdivided two types of authentic texts, performed by diverse genre forms:
- Functional authentic materials that do the instructional, explanatory, advertising and warning functions (direction cards, road signs, schemes, diagrams, pictures etc.)
- Informative authentic materials that do the informational function which consists of updated data (articles, interviews, the readers' letters to the publishing centers, advertisements, explanations to the graphics, comments, etc.)
According to J. Harmer the text that wasn't firstly devoted to learning goals and was written for the native speakers by the native speakers themselves is considered to be authentic.
As our specialists say the authentic materials are the texts or other resources made by the native speakers for themselves; that is all the original materials with no adaptation features.
Authentic Material is material used in the TEFL classroom which was originally created for native speakers of English.The reason we use authentic material in class rather than material specifically written for learners is to provide more variety and authenticity to the lesson. It also allows you to tailor the content of the lesson more specifically to your class needs and interests.For example, most ELT textbooks will cover general subjects like the environment, making friends, exploring a city and so on. However, if your class were a group of hotel staff
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learning English for Tourism you would want to introduce them to material that they will eventually be dealing with in their work such as train timetables, facts about the sights in the region, theater programs and so on.
Using authentic materials is one of the mainstays of an imaginative and motivating higher level course, but rarely features at levels lower than intermediate. There are several reasons for this, primarily a kind of fear that students will panic faced with language that is largely unfamiliar. This is an unnecessary fear, as using the authentic materials can be rewarding and stimulating for both teachers and students.
As you all know, the main difference between authentic vs. graded materials is that in the latter, the materials almost always revolve around a particular structure that is presented to the student. For example, if the tense being presented is, say, "The Past Tense", every single speaker in the dialogs or even the texts given to the students are in that tense. It seems as if there were no other tense in the whole world. In reality, when talking about the past, for example, native speakers may use a wider variety of tenses, sometimes even the present tense:
"Last night something very funny happened to me. I was walking down the street and suddenly a man comes and looks at me in the face and says: boy, you are ugly".
This is not uncommon in real life, but when it comes to graded materials, you will never find these types of situations that resemble real-life conversations. In spite of this, graded materials are very useful if you want to raise the students' awareness of certain structures or patterns that may be important for them to learn. Every single context they see will contain many instances of the same structure which will enable them to make inferences on how they are used.
Authentic materials, on the other hand, are real in the sense that they are not created for students as the target audience but for native speakers. The obvious advantage, of course, is that by using authentic materials you present students with actual everyday language, just as it appears in real life. The main disadvantage of these materials of course, is that sometimes they are not teacher-friendly, and you may need to spend several hours reading or watching videos until you finally find what you need in order to use in your class. In addition, on many occasions in a whole context or situation you may find just one instance of what you need to present your students with. This could be overcome if you provide students with several situations in which the pattern appears, but again, you need to have the time to research and gather the appropriate materials.
Authentic materials are the materials which are not specifically written for teaching. Songs are not the only authentic materials that we encounter in real world situations. There are many more that a second language teacher can make use of in classroom teaching. There is no theoretical, empirical or pedagogical evidence that support the claim that using songs in second language teaching can help learners to improve their communicative competence. Therefore, when someone says something, you need to have research evidence to support it. We do claim that authentic materials can have impact on learners' language skills development and several studies have pointed out that authentic materials properly selected and creatively devised for classroom use can help learners develop their second language acquisition.
Authentic materials are used to recreate a natural atmosphere of another language. Authentic materials include books, newspapers, magazines, tutorials, leaflets, menus, maps, postcards, photographs, tickets, etc. Authentic materials are spoken or written materials not specially written for classroom use but taken from the media or real life.
Authentic materials are divided into:
- audio (songs, radio news / talk show / advertising, etc.);
- visual (picture and post cards, graphs and diagrams, posters, illustrations from magazines, etc.);
- audio-visual (video, video clips, etc.);
-printed (books, newspaper articles, tourist information leaflets, informational brochures, flyers, etc.). 64
As authentic materials contain difficult vocabulary and structure, they should not be used as the main means of teaching for beginning learners. The lack of vocabulary and grammar knowledge can demotivate, frustrate and discourage learners from learning. Thus, authentic materials have a noticeable contribution in language learning. They raise learners' interest, increase learning motivation, help to realize the relationship between the language that is learnt in the class and the language used in the foreign language environment.
In fact, authentic material includes any example of language which was produced originally for native English speakers.
Choosing the correct type of authentic material is important. Firstly, it must be of an appropriate level and complexity. For example, you could not give a beginners class the front page of the New York Times and ask them to analyze it. Likewise offering a company report to a class of airport staff learning English to deal with tourists would be inappropriate.
In this passage, it is discussed what we mean by "authentic materials" and look at some of the advantages they offer in teaching English. After defining the term "authen-tic","adapted"and "semi-authentic" materials, we may have two points below:
- Authentic materials offer great advantage over materials written for the purpose of language learning;
- There are also many disadvantages to using them.
Some students whose work focuses on test preparation like IELTS assume that we need to define terms. What are "authentic materials?" For them, "authentic materials" are reading texts that were written by native speakers and published in contexts designed specifically for native-speaker consumption, with no thought given to non-native accessibility. The topics, language, syntax, structure, etc., are all pitched at a target audience of native speakers and offered through media intended primarily for native speakers.
Most teachers widened the definition to include videos, television programs, and any other sources of language - or anything that might stimulate language use. There are some people who think it is too hard to understand... they weren't actually any authentic materials in most of the books.
There are some other teachers stating that authentic materials are, in principle, materials which have not been adapted in any way. If they are still in principle the same but maybe have been shortened or one or two words changed, then they would say they were only semi-authentic.'
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.
They are as keys in receptive skills and learning conventions - "authentic listening" to speakers, ideally on video, in particular. But we 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 advanced students/clients to discuss how to communicate most effectively. They will 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. To a certain extent, he can manipulate it and 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.
There are a number of advantages for using authentic materials in the language classroom. Learners are exposed to "real" language in context, which helps learners to develop a broader language base. According to Widdowson, "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". Exposure to authentic materials helps language learners to keep informed about what is hap-
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pening in the world. These materials also help learners to understand that there is a community of language users who use the language outside of the classroom; which promotes language learning and helps to introduce the learners to the target culture.
Authentic materials are different to the usual formal learning materials in that they may be more relevant, visually stimulating and target different learning styles. As a result these materials can make lessons more interesting, motivating and memorable for learners.
They can be used to develop a range of language skills and strategies, including vocabulary and grammar, speaking, reading, writing, listening and critical thinking skills.
One of the greatest advantages of authentic materials is that they are relatively inexpensive and readily available.
The work with video materials at foreign language classes makes the learning process enthralling and unusual, develops communication skills, helps to expand horizons, increase vocabulary and improve grammar. Video materials present learners the speech of native speakers; immerse them in a situation in which they learn the language of facial expressions and gestures, style, relationships and realities of the country where the language is spoken.
Moreover, video materials are a valuable tool at foreign language classes as they:
- stimulate and motivate learners' interest;
- widen learners' knowledge of the language under study;
- provide speech patterns and a model for imitation;
- show learners body and speech rhythm of people speaking a studied language;
- create a solid link between the studied materials and their practical application;
- facilitate listing as video improves the perception of foreign speech;
- foster language acquisition;
- motivate utterances;
- represent excellent material for discussion;
- increase knowledge about another culture.
However, if the video is too difficult, long or boring it can discourage and demotivate learners. Choosing video materials, a teacher should pay attention to the following criteria:
- contemporary language, relevant to the standards of the literary language;
- video must have natural pauses between sentences;
-video should match the level of learners' language knowledge;
- video should correspond to the syllabus;
- slang expressions and exclamations should be short enough and not too difficult to understand;
- the text should not be overloaded with new words, expressions and gestures of strangers;
- video should be divided into meaningful segments, lasting no more than 10-15 minutes.
The List of Used Literature
1.N.A.Savinova, L.V.Mikhaleva "Аутентичныематериалыкаксоставнаячастьфор-маированиякоммуникативнойкомпетенции". Tomsk, 2006
2.SamShepherd "Usingauthenticmaterials".NewZealand, April, 2004
3. ZimnyayaI.A. "Ослуховой и зрительой наглядности в обучении иностранному языку". Moscow, 1970
4. FeritKilickaya "Authentic Materials and Cultural Content of EFL Classrooms". Turkey, 2004
5. Куимова М. В. Обучение устной монологической речи с опорой на аутентичный письменный текст (английский язык, неязыковой вуз). Автореф. дис. ... канд. пед. наук. -Ярославль, 2005. 18 с.
6. Al Azri R. H., Al-Rashdi M. H. The Effect of using authentic materials in teaching // International journal of scientific & technology research. 2014. Vol. 3, Iss. 10. Pp. 249-254.
7. Broughton G., Brumfit Ch., Flavell R., Hill P., Pincas A. Teaching English as a foreign language. London and New York: Routledge, 1980. 257 p.
8.Gebhard J. G. Teaching English as a foreign or second language. USA: University of Michigan Press. 2006. Second Edition.
9. Kelly Ch., Kelly L., Offner M., Vorland B. Effective ways to use authentic materials with ESL/EFL students // The Internet TESL Journal, 2002. Vol. VIII, No. 11.
10.Куимова М. В.,Кобзева Н. А. Advantages and disadvantages of authentic materials use in EFL classrooms // Молодойученый. 2011. № 3-2. С. 125-127.
