Done by: Baxtiyorova Shaxnoza the importance of using authentic materials I n Efl classroom

Done by:Baxtiyorova Shaxnoza

THE importance of using authentic materials i n Efl classroom.

Abstract

The idea of using authentic material in language teaching is supported among references and many professionals in the field of language pedagogy. Authentic material provides the learners with many significant advantages and promotes them with high motivation and interest in language learning and lead to improving communicative competence . This paper attempted to investigate EFL teachers’ attitudes and beliefs regarding the use of authentic materials at high school level as well as advantages and disadvantages of authentic materials, selecting problems them according to communicative language principles, focusing on both reading and listening skills. There is used some statistics to proof the research,such as Fifty-seven female and male English teachers, who teach in high schools and took apart in teacher training course (TTC) with CLT framework, completed a survey questionnaire for the purpose of this study. The questionnaires were analyzed in terms of frequency and skills. The results indicate that English teachers have a positive attitude toward presenting authentic materials in the classroom. Recommendations for future research are provided

Keywords: authentic material,; EFL; curriculum; educational resources,TED, participant, research questions,factors,criteries.

Participants - The researcher, as instructor of teacher training course had asked colleagues to participant in

this study. Initially, 105 female and male English teachers who had passed teacher training course (TTC) in

Tabadkan English Department in Mashhad were asked to participate.

Participants - The researcher, as instructor of teacher training course had asked colleagues to participant in

this study. Initially, 105 female and male English teachers who had passed teacher training course (TTC) in

Tabadkan English Department in Mashhad were asked to participate.

Participants - The researcher, as instructor of teacher training course had asked colleagues to participant in

this study. Initially, 105 female and male English teachers who had passed teacher training course (TTC) in

Tabadkan English Department in Mashhad were asked to participate.

Participants - The researcher, as instructor of teacher training course had asked colleagues to participant in

this study. Initially, 105 female and male English teachers who had passed teacher training course (TTC) in

Tabadkan English Department in Mashhad were asked to participate.

Materials and methods.

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   paragragh.
   

For the purposes of this research a commonly accepted definition of authentic materials was used: materials produced 'to fulfil some social purpose in the language community' (Little, Devitt, and Singleton, 1989: 25)—that is, materials not produced for foriegn language learners. Examples are newspapers, poems, and songs. Among the authentic materials used with the classes in this study were two poems; some television listings; two short articles; an advice column from a local English-language newspaper; an American pop song; and some Englishlanguage magazine advertisements.  Utilizing authentic material in language educating is maintained among references and various specialists in the field of language instructional strategy. Authentic material gives the understudies various huge focal points and advances their inspiration and excitement for language learning and lead to upgrading informative ability (Namaziandost, Rahimi Esfahani, & Hashemifardnia, 2018;Omid & Azam, 2015¹). This implies that authentic materials in FL class can be propelling because that they are evidence that the language is utilized for real-life reason by real individuals, and valid writings will convey them closer to the objective language culture.

The Study

Purpose of the Study: The essential purpose of this study is to elicit the attitudes of Iranian English language teachers, toward using authentic materials in their classes. The study focuses on receptive skills only (listening and reading).

Research questions:

What are the teachers’ attitudes toward using authentic materials in EF L classes?

Do the teachers prefer to use authentic materials? Why?

In which levels would the teachers use authentic materials?

What are the sources that the teachers would use to obtain authentic materials?

Do the teachers need training in dealing with authentic materials? If so, what type of training?

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   Paragragh.
   

Methodology

Participants - The researcher, as instructor of teacher training course had asked colleagues to participant in this study. Initially, 105 female and male English teachers who had passed teacher training course (TTC) in Tabadkan English Department in Mashhad were asked to participate. The participants were randomly selected (By Akbari, O., & Razavi, A. )without regard to their nationality, teaching experience, or academic degree. Only 57 agreed to participate; all were passing TTC. Four had studied abroad in countries where English is the native language. Their experience in teaching English as a foreign language ranged from nine to twenty- nine years. A quantitative method was employed. The survey questionnaire (was used by Soliman E. M. Soliman, Malaysia, 2013) was distributed to TED teachers in order to find out Iranian EFL teachers attitudes and believes regarding the use of authentic materials within their English classes. Besides, the questionnaire consists of selected and open-response items. Both types of items may collect information on (a) personal profile (including years of experience, nationality, academic degree and (b) attitudes toward using authentic materials in class (see appendix B). After passing the last section , the questionnaire was distributed to all 57 initially selected potential participants. The questionnaire consisted of nine items in the form of multiple-choice questions. Participants were allowed to choose more than one answer according to their opinions. In addition, they were allowed to add their own comments regarding any item. All 57 participants who agreed to answer the questionnaire returned the surveys within the required timetable. Then the questionnaires were analyzed in terms of frequency and percentage by using skills.

3paragragh.

How to select authentic materials

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The first criterion to me is that they are motivating or that the exercises that can be done with them are motivating. Roadsigns such as 'End of urban clearway' may say nothing to non-drivers, and even to drivers may yield little that can be done in the classroom. The same with petrol pump signs or the notices in railway trains. But something like the train timetable or the ticket presents things that are relevant to the students' knowledge of the foreign culture or to their functional needs when visiting it; they may also be used for various types ³of simulation activities and information processing activities in the classroom. Newspaper headlines, and the articles beneath them, also may give more general interest; graffiti may give an insight into a more popular side of life.

The second linked criterion is that they are not too ephemeral. If they are already of historical interest, there seems little point in using them. Either the teacher has to use things which are as up-to-date as possible or which have a timeless quality about them. It is still possible to discuss the Minimum Lending Rate (MLR), while it is no longer possible to discuss the Rampton brutality except as a thing of the past.

Thirdly, they have to be organised in some way. There is nothing worse than entirely disconnected bits of authentic language that are not linked to other aspects of the teaching. The obvious way to make this link is through themes; most of the examples I've quoted could be linked by the theme 'Travelling' because that was what I happened to be doing on October 8th. But they can be organised around many other themes, whether functional, such as 'shopping', 'banking', 'getting a job', 'eating out', or general discussion, 'is transport degenerating?', should smoking be banned in public places?', or in some other way. The authentic materials are not the point of the course, but a way of achieving that point. Fourthly, they have to be selected in terms of their language and content. This may seem like a contradiction: anything a native speaker says is by definition authentic, so how can we possibly censor it? But there are many things a native speaker says that I do not want in my classroom. Sometimes this is a question of language; letters to the local newspaper in England are often written by people who are unaccustomed to writing but are highly moved by some local issue; their language tends to be rather strange, often veering towards unnecessary pompousness, hypercorrectness, or even ungrammaticality. I do not feel that my students should see this kind of English unless they have to.

Selection of authentic materials

According to Berardo (2006), authentic texts must be chosen based on: suitability of content, exploitability, and readability. He believes that the content is suitable if it interests the students and is appropriate to their needs and abilities. Bacon and Finneman (1990) also assert that the authentic texts should be culturally relevant to the students’ experience. Furthermore, the way the authentic text is used to develop the students’ competence and how it can be broken for teaching purposes is called exploitability. Finally, the language of the text and the structural and lexical difficulty refers to readability.

Sources of Authentic Materials

The sources of authentic materials (whether spoken or written) are endless. The most common sources are newspapers, magazines, TV, video, radio, literature, and the internet. Although radio is easy to use, the comprehensibility of its input is the most difficult for language learners because all non-verbal information is missing... Pictures, movements, colors and body language of TV and video, unlike radio, allow learners to access non-verbal information; therefore, TV and video are easier for the language learners to comprehend. Yet it is the internet that is assumed the most useful source (Berardo, 2006). As printed materials date very quickly, the internet is always updated, is interactive, and provides visual stimulation (Berardo, 2006). Moreover, comparing to the other sources, the internet is more useful. Because, teachers can get articles, audio clips, podcasts and videos from the internet. However, as Miller (2003) states, TV is the most used medium for obtaining authentic listening materials for language instruction (see appendix A). Some studies provided insights about learners’ attitudes toward authentic input. In addition, pedagogical research required to provide recommendations for material selection and sources. The study with the aim of eliciting teachers’ attitudes toward using authentic materials is rare in Iran. Since the teachers’ role in providing authentic input is very important, this study attempts to address this issue.

4 paragragh. How can one teach authentic materials?

One important issue in teaching authentic materials is whether the activities one uses are natural or not. By natural, I mean those that the native speakers themselves use for dealing with the materials. For instance, it is perfectly natural to look at a train timetable to discover the next train to London, or the fastest train to London, or the one that has a buffet car; though the activity in the classroom is unnatural to the extent that the students do not really want this information here and now, it is a possible way of using the timetable that they may need at some time in the future out­ side the classroom.

As in this instance, one important type of natural activity is using the information in the text for some reason; many kinds of information processing exercise can be devised for the classroom that use some natural activity. For example, the railway ticket could be used in an exercise where the students were told that they had asked for a first class monthly return to Oxford: have they been given the right ticket?

Shading across from natural to unnatural activities come various types of comprehension exercise. Students may be given headlines such as no. 1, and asked to try to explain what they mean. Obviously, they are unlikely to be totally right, but the teacher can accept anything that conveys the grammatical and lexical spirit of the headline, which often has a kind of structure that in itself poses problems for students. So the teacher can exploit the grammatical and lexical richness of the authentic materials by various comprehension and discussion techniques.

Disscussion.

In the light of these findings, paper recommends that teachers of adult EFL to beginners try appropriate authentic materials in their classroom, as they may increase their learners' levels of on-task behaviour, concentration, and involvement in the target activity more than artificial materials. (It is possible to speculate that this would apply equally in intermediate and advanced classes.) They may, however, reduce the levels of learner interest engendered by the materials used. It is important that materials selected for the classroom motivate learners, so one criterion for the selection of materials should be their effect on motivation.

The finding in this study was that, overall, learners reported authentic materials to be significantly less interesting than artificial materials. This stands in direct contrast to the large number of assertions listed above, to the effect that authentic materials are more motivating because they are intrinsically more interesting. These findings are a preliminary indication that this is not the case; learners were more motivated by authentic materials, but not because they were more interesting.

These results also indicate that, at least for the learners who participated, interest in the materials in use is quite separate as a component of motivation from levels of attention or action and persistence with the learning task. For this reason it was not possible to say whether authentic materials motivated learners or not. None of the authors who assert that authentic materials motivate learners make this distinction between separate components of classroom motivation. I suggest that in classroom motivation research, treating these two as separate components of motivation would lead to a clearer understanding of the meaning of the construct 'motivation', and a more precise picture of the effects of different materials on learner behaviour in the classroom.

The generalizability of the results is limited by the small scale of the study and the level of the learners, who were all beginners. It could be argued that the topic (and to a lesser extent the activity based on the material, though these were similar every day) might have affected results. I was unable to control for their effects, being unable to reliably isolate and quantify their inherent motivational level. One indication that levels of class interest in the topic or activity did not significantly affect levels of motivation is the fact that after day 8 of the study, the use of authentic materials invariably resulted in higher levels of on-task behaviour and overall class motivation. If motivational levels of the topic or activity was a major variable, this would almost certainly not have been the case. They may well remain as a minor variable.

I suggest that the classes were representative of South Korean university-level EFL classes. Also, the fact that the finding that classes did not differ significantly from each other in levels of on-task behaviour, observed motivation, or scores on the post-class learner questionnaires, allows one to speculate with more assurance that the effects are possible in other classes.

Although classes were not the same every day—varying by activity, absences, weather, day of the week, and term—I propose that the main variable in the study was the type of materials, thus making it possible to ascribe differences in motivation more surely to this factor.

Conclusion

This research paper has tried to explore some of the implications of using authentic materials in the classroom. The conclusion is that authentic materials are indeed a valuable part of the teacher's stock in trade, and can do some things that other materials are not capable of. However, inevitably they have to be used in small doses, must be carefully selected and controlled, and need well-thought out teaching exercises to be fully exploited. This study explored the attitudes of teachers toward using authentic materials in EFL classroom in Iran. The study was conducted in TED (Tabadkan English Department, one of the zones of Mashhad, Iran). The results revealed that all of the teachers had positive attitudes toward providing authentic input in their classes, regardless of their nationality, teaching experience, and academic degree. The reason for such an attitude was to improve students’ skills and expose them to the real English language. In addition, teachers indicated that they would tend to use more authentic materials in reading rather than listening classes. Furthermore, the results indicated that the internet and TV would be the most used sources for obtaining authentic materials. These findings are consistent with the current studies which provided evidence supporting the teacher’s positive attitudes toward using authentic materials in their classes as Zhafarghandi investigation and Soliman E. M. Soliman ones. According to this study, the teachers disagreed on the suitable level of students for presenting such materials. Most of the teachers believed that the language level of the text and the course objectives are the guiding criteria for selecting appropriate texts. Finally, most participants indicated a need for additional training in using authentic materials, particularly in designing appropriate tasks. The results of this study could be viewed as a starting point for further exploration into the use of authentic materials in EFL teaching.

Limitations and Recommendations

The present study has several limitations that can be noticed for future researches on teachers and students attitudes toward using authentic materials. First, the small size of the sample population sheds hesitation on the validity of the results. The same study may be conducted with English teachers at colleges rather than high schools, elementary, intermediate, or secondary schools. Third, the study focused on just teachers’ attitudes. Hence, future research should elicit Iranian learners’ attitudes toward authentic input as well. Finally, teachers’ opinions about how authentic materials can develop productive skills or how to plan instruction that incorporates such materials effectively are additional aspects of authenticity that can be explored in future investigations.

Participants - The researcher, as instructor of teacher training course had asked colleagues to participant in

this study. Initially, 105 female and male English teachers who had passed teacher training course (TTC) in

Tabadkan English Department in Mashhad were asked to participate.

Participants - The researcher, as instructor of teacher training course had asked colleagues to participant in

this study. Initially, 105 female and male English teachers who had passed teacher training course (TTC) in

Tabadkan English Department in Mashhad were asked to participate.

Participants - The researcher, as instructor of teacher training course had asked colleagues to participant in

this study. Initially, 105 female and male English teachers who had passed teacher training course (TTC) in

Tabadkan English Department in Mashhad were asked to participate.

Participants - The researcher, as instructor of teacher training course had asked colleagues to participant in

this study. Initially, 105 female and male English teachers who had passed teacher training course (TTC) in

Tabadkan English Department in Mashhad were asked to participate.

1^ Namaziandost, Rahimi Esfahani, & Hashemifardnia, 2018;Omid & Azam, 2015

2^ Soliman E. M. Soliman, Malaysia, 2013

3^ By Akbari, O., & Razavi, A