AUTHENTIC VS NON-AUTHENTIC MATERIALS

By:

Diana Marcela Murcia

Yulieth Quintana Martínez

WHAT IS ATHENTIC MATERIAL?

Nunan (1999) defines authentic materials as spoken or written language data that has been produced in the course of genuine communication, and not specifically written for purposes of language teaching.

SOURCES When people first think of authentic materials they usually

assume that we are talking about newspaper and magazine articles. 

The materials used, will of course, depend on the 'usual' factors:

topic target language area skills students' needs and interests

It's no good trying to get your students fascinated by a text on the latest art movie if they are all fans of action films. You might as well save your time and energy and just use the text book!

THE QUESTION OF LEVELS

Naturally certain texts will lend themselves more easily to certain levels. 

At lower levels some possibilities include leaflets, timetables, menus, short headline type reports, audio and video advertising, or short news broadcasts. The task should be simple and relatively undemanding, and it is important to pre-teach key vocabulary so as to prevent panic. 

At more intermediate levels this list could be expanded to include longer articles, four or five minute TV or radio news reports, a higher quantity of shorter items, or even whole TV programmes, if your copyright agreements allow it. Again pre-teaching is important, although your students should be able to deal with unknown vocabulary to some extent.

At higher levels it's a case of anything goes. At an advanced level students should have some tactics for dealing with new vocabulary without panicking, but it's still useful to have a few quick definitions to hand for some of the trickier stuff!

ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS

Advantages Disadvantages

They have a positive effect on learner motivation.

They provide authentic cultural information.

They provide exposure to real language.

They relate more closely to learners ' needs.

They support a more creative approach to teaching.

Often too culturally biased, difficult to understand outside the language community.

Vocabulary might no be relevant to the student`s immediate needs.

Too many structures are mixed so lower levels have problems decoding the texts.

Special preparation is necessary, can be time consuming.

NON-AUTHENTIC MATERIAL

Non-authentic materials are those that are specifically designed for the language learners. They are either adapted or simplified or written keeping in mind the language proficiency of the learners in question.

NON-AUTHENTIC MATERIALS

  They are specially designed for

learning purposes. The language used in them is artificial.

They contain well formed sentences all the time.

They are useful for teaching grammar.

CONCLUSION

As can be seen, using authentic materials is a relatively easy and convenient way of improving not only your students' general skills, but also their confidence in a real situation. This is only a brief introduction to the ideas involved, but some of these ideas could easily be expanded to form part of a motivating and effective course.

THANKS!