The complex of using the authentic materials for teaching English at schools

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.

According to the message of the President of Kazakhstan Republic, nowadays people of our country should be able to speak at least 3 languages. In this case the methods of teaching the foreign languages at educational institutions had their own improvements. At the same time the resources that we use during English language teaching became one of the crucial aspects of this process.

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.Krichevskaya considers 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.[1]

This classification is nearly the same as the definition of the term “authentic materials” given by G.I.Voronina who 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. [1]

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.

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. [2]

In this work we’d like to give an example of using the authentic materials during the English teaching process. While having practice in one of the international schools we made one complex of using the authentic materials in teaching process for the 6^th grade students. The main resource was the book called “Jumanji” written by Chris Van Allsburg, an American writer and illustrator of children’s books. Jumanji is a fantasy-comedy composition about a supernatural board game that makes wild animals and other jungle hazards materialize upon each player’s move. Later on this book was screened in 1995, so that was a great chance for us to use the book itself as an authentic text and the film as an authentic video. In this case we can make the following kind of a complex lesson framework:

First of all during the lesson we should talk about the jungle and the animals. For example, we can make the excursion to the jungle making the slide-show presentation. This way the children will be taught to the necessary vocabulary that will be widely used while reading the book.

The second step is the book itself used as the main authentic text. The children will read one or two chapters for each lesson and during the classes they will discuss the main events happened in the texts. The summary is usually written by the students as the main resource for assessment.

After reading the book the students will be invited to the cinema to watch the film “Jumanji”. The week before the advertisement of the film and the invitation cards should be prepared to attract the students’ attentions. While entering the “cinema” the students have to buy the tickets. The tickets are made by the teacher beforehand and the children have to answer the special questions in order to get them. Certainly each question and the difficulty of the tasks should be constructed according to the levels of the students’ knowledge. Here are some examples of those questions:

- What’s the name of the main hero of the book?

- What is “Jumanji”?

- Who is the author of the book?

- What is the main idea of the story?

After buying the tickets the film will start, the following task should be done by the students while working with the authentic video:

Pre-Watching activity

Task #1: Match the word in (a) with its definition in (b)

While-watching

Task #2: Fill in the table describing the main heroes of the film

Character’s name	Personality	Appearance
Alan Parrish
Sarah Whittle

Task #3. Answer the following questions

1. What is the main rule of Jumanji game?

2. When does the film start?

3. “May God have mercy of his soul”. What does this response mean?

So this work will be the useful document for the fair assessment of the students’ comprehension of the whole composition.

While watching the video the teacher makes pauses after each happened events in order to check if the students comprehend them correctly. In the end the students are given to answer the test that will give them opportunities to express what they learned from the film and if they liked it. The task can be this way:

Post-watching activity

Task #4. Make true sentences by giving information about the relationships between main heroes of the film

Carl Bentley ……………………(Mr. Parrish)

Carl Bentley is Mr.Parrish’s employee

Sarah Whittle …………………. (Alan Parrish)

Task #5. Make a short summary of what you understood from the film including the answering to the following questions:

- What is the main idea of the film?

- Who are the main heroes of the film?

- Did you enjoy the film?

- What did you like best about the film? Why/Why not?

- Did you like the end of the film? Why/why not? (Can you imagine another ending to the film?)

The given complex of work with the authentic materials gives us the following results:

- The increasing of the motivational interest of the students;

- The development of the receptive and productive skills of the students as while working this way the children do reading, listening, writing and speaking tasks;

- The preparation of the individual who knows the foreign language and who is ready to the international communication and relation.

As can be seen, the authentic material is a relatively easy and convenient way of improving not only your students’ general skills, but also their attitude to the real resources of the target language. This would be the great chance to increase the students’ self-confidence while working with the authentic materials. This is not only the brief instruction of using these materials, but some of these ideas given can be easily expanded to form part of a motivating and effective course.

Literature:

1. N.A.Savinova, L.V.Mikhaleva “Аутентичные материалы как составная часть формаирования коммуникативной компетенции”. Tomsk, 2006

2. Sam Shepherd “Using authentic materials”. New Zealand, April, 2004

3. Zimnyaya I.A. “О слуховой и зрительой наглядности в обучении иностранному языку”. Moscow, 1970

4. Ferit Kilickaya “Authentic Materials and Cultural Content of EFL Classrooms”. Turkey, 2004