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party-you know- at that age you want to do everything your friends
do. So when my boyfriend-not my husband-when he offered me a
cigarette I accepted it. I remember feeling awfully grown-up about it.
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Then I started smoking...let’s see now...just two or three a day... and I
gradually increased.（He etc.，1993:82）
Extract B
Nearly all the sports practiced nowadays are competitive. You play to win,
and the game has little meaning unless you do you utmost to win. On the
village green, where you pick up slides and no feeling of local patriotism
involved, it’s possible to play simply for fun: but as soon as the question of
prestige arises, as soon as you feel you and some larger unit will be disgraced
if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has
played even in school football match knows this. At the intermediate level,
sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behavior of
the players but attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of
nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and
seriously believe-at any rate for short periods-that running, jumping and
kicking a ball are tests of national virtue. (Zhang， 2001：80)
The following is the result of the comparison of the above two extracts:
Extract 1
Language: informal
Incomplete sentence: What about cigars ...a pipe ... do your husband...?
Interactive expressions: you know; let’s see it now
Extract 2
Language: formal
Full of completed sentences
No interactive expressions
3. Different stylistic features
Just as we mentioned, the authentic listening material contains elements of natural
and spontaneous spoken language, which seems variable, and is very different
from one dialect area to another and very different from people of different
identities. We may see the varieties of real and spontaneous spoken language from
the following example (spoken by the landlord of a Cambridge pub in England,
who has a southern English accent):
“the man you have to watch is the one who becomes quietly belligerent, and
you sort of take him gently by the elbow to lead him to the door and the next
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thing you know is thump-you’ve been you’ve been landed one, and of course
without warning you have to collect your senses pretty quickly before he lands
you another one!”
(Harmer and Elsworth, 1989:75)
Looking at the underlined parts we can see the informal form (you sort of take) and
some idioms and slang in the speech of the pub landlord which is consistently with
his identity: to land one in you’ve been landed one and he lands you another one is
a slang meaning to hit somebody. However, the inauthentic listening material that
has the characteristics of written language does not change very often.
4. Different environmental features
Authentic listening materials have background noise while inauthentic listening
materials have no background noise. According to Ur (1984), “Noise” is the
opposite of redundancy. It occurs when the listener cannot receive or understand
information because of interference. “Noise maybe caused not only by some
outside disturbance, but also by a temporary lack of attention on the part of the
listener or by the fact that a word or a phase was not understood because it was
mispronounced or misused or because the listener simply do not know it. In any
case, a gap is left which is filled, as far as the listener is concerned, by a
meaningless buzz”. In an informal conversation the listener may request a
clarification and redundancy may often help him to construct the meaning.
However, the inauthentic listening materials are all graded to suit the level of the
foreign language learners without any “noise”.
We can see that authentic listening materials reflect the naturalness of spoken
language, which can narrow the distance between the learners and the actual social
reality. If students constantly receive the authentic listening input, they will find it
easier to communicate with native speakers in real life, and their true listening
ability can be developed.
B. Stimulating students’ motivation
Authentic listening materials, especially the current popular ones such as clips from
media always dealing with topics that are familiar to students and relevant to their
personal experience, hence, have been found appealing. Introducing and utilizing
natural materials can be a very meaningful experience for students and can capture
the interest and stimulate the imagination of students. So students will be more
motivated to learn. (Ma, 2005)
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C. Accumulating students’ knowledge
Authentic materials contain quite an amount of information covering almost every
field of human life. Therefore, applying such materials in language teaching can
provide students opportunities to accumulate their world knowledge.
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