3rd Entry: Working with Authentic Materials

As it has been constantly emphasized in previous entries, English has become a key language in today’s world. And, as a former Chilean student and future EFL teacher, I am well aware of this matter. In my four years of preparation at the university, I have taken several courses that have guided me and supported me towards bringing English to Chilean students through the use of varied techniques and useful, innovative methods. However, in this opportunity, I will mostly consider my learning outcomes and experiences working in two courses: Pedagogy of Listening and Reading Comprehension in English and Materials’ Analysis and Design, since these subjects gave me relevant tips and academic support for designing my future lessons in a more suitable way.

In the following entry, I will address the importance of receptive skills through the lens of language acquisition, explain some basic concepts, advantages, and disadvantages in regards to working with authentic materials and, finally, I will present two activities using two different types of authentic materials, alongside a description of the class profile to which they are intended.

The Problem with Authentic Materials:

Based on my own experience as a former student immersed in the Chilean educational context, I do not remember using many materials taken from the "real world" in my English lessons. In fact, it seemed as though most of the times my teachers preferred to work with decontextualized texts –often provided by the government and supported by the use of textbooks– rather than taking the risk of including authentic materials to their lessons. Despite the fact that I do not agree with avoiding these types of materials, I do not blame them for those decisions, since I have come to learn that incorporating them, particularly in the EFL classroom, comprise a bid challenge that requires a lot of effort from the teacher. Unfortunately for me, my professors decided to stick to their "comfort zones" and, as a result of that, I did not have an accurate learning process at school, as there was a tremendous lack of preparation for receptive skills (reading and listening) based on real-world situations.
 

But, why do teachers seem to struggle so much when it comes to using authentic materials? This question has several answers and they will mainly depend on which type of authentic material will be used and which skill(s) teachers want to work with.

So, for example, in terms of listening, Gilmore (2007) explains that some disadvantages of authentic materials are that:

• they often involve rapid speech.
• students are not used to hearing features of redundancy such as repetitions, false starts, re-phrasings, self-corrections, elaborations, tautologies, fillers, etc.
• they do not have an appropriate length for academic purposes.
• they might contain unfamiliar accents.
• there is little control over the intake of language.
• students may face difficulties in recognizing linking sounds.
• there is an evident "overload" of information.
• the vocabulary of the learners might be too limited for it.

And, in relation to reading, Berardo (2006) explains that some disadvantages are that:

• texts are often too culturally biased (difficult to understand outside the language community).
• the vocabulary used might not be aligned with the students' needs.
• lower levels might have problems decoding complex structures (often mixed in authentic reading materials).
• it is really time consuming, since a special preparation is needed.
• texts can become outdated easily (news articles, stories, etc).

It can be argued that changing or adapting these type of materials is the best option in order to avoid all the previously discussed risks. However, the problem that raises from the latter is that, if teachers manipulate the materials, can they still be considered "authentic"? According to Underwood (1989), for a text to be authentic, it must have not been made or scripted for the purposes of language teaching, since they are, in their most basic sense, pieces of natural speech taken from everyday sources. Therefore, if they are changed, they will not longer be authentic (with the exception of cutting them into excerpts for the sake of length). In relation to this, the most accurate response to this problem is that teachers should, instead of adapting the materials themselves, adapt the conditions of the lesson and the nature of the tasks, so as to prepare the students and facilitate to them all the necessary tools required to deal with the materials. 

Besides, it is worth mentioning that one material can have many uses, and it is part of the teacher's duty to define what is going to be done with it. For example, low proficiency students can listen to an audio in order to gather very concrete and literal information, meanwhile high proficiency students can listen to the same audio in order to draw inferences, express opinions, make evaluations, relate with personal experiences, etc.

Why Authentic Materials?

So, if authentic materials are such troublesome materials, why don't we just ditch them and forget about them? 

Harmer (1994) suggests that authentic materials can bring a myriad of positive and necessary effects on learners, such as helping them to acquire the language faster, encouraging them to produce more and with better quality, and fostering confidence to dealing with real life situations. 

However, before rushing into including authentic materials in the EFL classroom, teachers must make thorough analyses in order to check their validity and reliability in relation to the needs of the students. In response to this, I came up with a set of questions that may help in guiding teachers while selecting materials (Check them out here). These questions were based on a set of criteria proposed by Vandergrift and Goh (2012).

The Audience:
    

The activities that are about to be presented were meant for a group of 10th grade students. They are aligned with the second unit from the 10th graders’ program: Technology and its Effects, and are based on the textbook Teens in Motion. The topics that are addressed are mainly the consequences of the overuse of technology and, along the same lines, the high presence of smartphones in today’s society. According to MINEDUC (2018), during this unit, students should be able to understand and share ideas, opinions and experiences in relation to the use of technologies within today’s communication and the consequences that it has. Hopefully, students will participate actively in building knowledge through the comprehension of authentic and non-authentic texts and the creation of oral and written texts. In this sense, the students will apply learning strategies in relation to the four language skills and they will demonstrate that they are familiar with key functions of language and vocabulary from the unit. It is expected that students work collaboratively and spread a positive attitude towards themselves and their capabilities to use the language: expressing opinions, explaining situations, establishing connections, etc. Finally, it is worth mentioning the importance of fostering and raising awareness on a responsible use of technologies, in order to obtain the best of them.

The Activities:

• Reading Activity: Click here to see the activity

As it was mentioned before, it is important to adapt the conditions under which the students work to make the authentic materials as meaningful as possible. In this sense, the pre-reading activities were planned carefully in order to activate their previous knowledge and to facilitate the expression of personal experiences. I decided to add pictures of different technological devices that most of the students are familiar with, so, even though they might not own one of them, they can still describe them and explain their functions and purposes. Besides, a box containing common uses was added in order to facilitate communication in English. 

As for the while-reading section, the tasks were separated between the ones that required "skimming" and the ones that required "scanning", so as to help the students with the process of incorporating learning strategies. Besides, a box describing these two reading strategies was included here so as to create awareness from the students about what they are doing. The text chosen is very short and does not include many complex words or structures, plus the organization was easy to follow as it was divided into three paragraphs, each with a different content and purpose. 

In terms of questions: the signpost question is "In what way have smartphones changed our lives?", because it is used as a hook, since the information that is required to answer it is found throughout the whole text, and the student is required to read and understand everything before answering. Afterwards, a literal comprehension question was added: "According to the text, what kind of demanding tasks can smartphones handle?" in order to check the students' understanding of basic information and facts directly stated in the text. Then I included a question focused on language features,"Why does the author mean by 'glued to their cell phones'?", the aim of this question was to check the students' understanding of complex literary forms such as metaphors, in this case. Finally, in order to check once again an overall understanding of the main idea expressed in the text, the students are required to link the title with the content of the reading. In this case, students have to pay attention to language features such as the word "revolution" and its meaning, and also to infer a relation between that word and the content of the reading.
 

As for the post-reading activities, they are first communicative and then again individual. The reasons for this are that it is important to generate opportunities for the students to share their ideas and to obtain even more ideas from their classmates at the same time. That information will be fundamental for the following activity, which is to write a short paragraph expressing their opinion. In this case, the students will have many perspectives (theirs, their classmates', and the text author's) to work with. In addition, the learning strategies were again encouraged at the end by facilitating a space for the students to think and organize their ideas in meaningful ways before writing. 

Finally, a reflection was included in order to foster metacognitive skills. I consider the ability to self-monitor oneself as a key skill for developing further learning. So I created this section based on activities that I retrieved from the books that I analysed in the Comparing English Textbooks' entry, since I found them really useful as the focus was not on language but on the reflection itself (hence the "yes" and "no" format). 

In relation to the Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2018), I included multiple ways of representation such as images, colors, and texts. So students with different abilities can have options for creating meaningful learning instances. Besides, the topic and the discussions were meant to create an engaging environment in which the students can relate the contents to their own experiences, so as for them to feel more familiarized with what is being taught. Finally, in terms of the different proficiency levels that can be found on a classroom, I added the opportunity for students to answer either the minimum number of questions or all of them.
 

• Listening Activity: Click here to see the activity.

In my opinion, this was the most challenging activity to make, since, as stated before, listening activities can be really difficult as they involve rapid speech and the students may face difficulties in recognizing the words and the sounds, among other aspects. The decision of selecting the Get Off The Phone song was not easy at all. I spent a lot of time looking for suitable pieces of video to incorporate in this activity, but most of the ones I found were mainly academic or educative, and my intention was to give the students a more entertaining and friendly content instead of regular educational videos. That is why I chose to use this song, because it represents a problem that is real and highly present in our daily lives in an engaging way, and though it contains a lot of rapid speech, the language is constantly accompanied with meaningful visual support. Of this way, I accomplished two goals from the UDL guidelines (CAST, 2018), since the material applied was engaging and, at the same time, it offered multiple ways of perceiving the information.
 

The pre-listening activity is similar to the one from the reading activity, I took pictures from the actual video in order to make it more contextualized, and for the matching exercise, instead of just including a definition or the word in isolation, I decided to include an excerpt from the lyrics of the song, so the students would get even more familiar with and prepared for the upcoming listening activity. This is also the reason why in the sharing section, the students are suggested to discuss the meanings and read aloud the sentences, because of that way they can relate more to the sounds, which may be useful for the listening.

In order to align the activity with what is required in the program for 10th graders, I separated the video into two, so as to leave the actual song for the while-listening section and the video's introduction for the pre-listening section. This facilitated the use of predictions, which are part of the contents the students should know and are helpful for them to get prepared for what is coming in the listening.

In relation to the True or False exercise, I chose the questions very carefully so as not to frustrate the students with the rapid nature of the song. I made them considering the sections of the video that were easier to understand and in which the protagonists sang with a slower pace. In addition, I added a describing exercise so as to check the students' understanding of the main situations portrayed in the video.

And in the post-listening activity, I decided to add a communicative activity in which the students can use the information that they retrieved from the video to create a meaningful dialogue in which they represent someone giving advice to somebody struggling with a problem related to technology. Of this way, the activity sought to address the attitudinal objectives requested in the program, which were to foster positive attitudes towards the use of technologies and to raise awareness about a responsible usage.

Finally, once again I added a reflective section in which the students have the opportunity to be more self-aware of their own learning process. And, afterwards, they have the chance to exchange experiences and provide advice on how to improve. 

Reflection & Learning Gains:

As I have repeatedly said throughout this entry, authentic materials are quite a challenge for teachers, as they require a lot of preparation and scaffolding for the students. However, I understand that the learning outcomes that can be retrieved through the use of these "real-world" materials are certainly worth it. 

Throughout the making of these activities, I obtained valuable knowledge and experience that will contribute to the development of my professional competences. For example, I realized about the importance of knowing the theoretical bases that sustain the process of language acquisition (curriculum) in order to reinforce the learning strategies applied and to promote meaningful learning. Now, I pay much more attention to the programs before designing tasks, because doing so, I can avoid creating activities that might not work for the purposes of the lesson or the level of the students. 

In addition, this instance helped me improve my abilities to critique and evaluate the reliability of certain activities and materials. This will be useful for me as a future teacher, because choosing, adapting and developing dynamic and engaging materials are necessary skills for the challenging path of creating meaningful, creative and diverse learning opportunities for the students.

In relation to the feedback: click here to see the changes.

References:

Berardo, S. A. (2006). The use of authentic materials in the teaching of reading. The reading matrix, 6(2).
CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org
Gilmore, A. (2007). Authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning. Language teaching, 40(2), 97-118.
Harmer, J. (1994). The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman.
MINEDUC (2018). Planes y Programas. Programa de Estudio Octavo Básico. Santiago de Chile.
Underwood, M. (1989). Teaching listening. Harlow: Longman.
Vandergrift, L., & Goh, C. C. (2012). Teaching and learning second language listening: Metacognition in action. Routledge.

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