Content introduction main body

Using Authentic Materials in Foreign Language Teaching

Coursebooks can be useful resources for both online tutors and classroom teachers alike. They offer a syllabus, provide controlled reading, writing, listening and speaking skills practice. Even better, they reduce the amount of time needed to prepare classes.
But, let’s face it, they’re not always that interesting or relevant for the learners. The good news is that there is an alternative to always teaching English with a coursebook. 
In fact, there’s a wealth of authentic materials and resources out there. These can help you deliver engaging, motivating online classes that meet your students’ learning objectives.
There are many reasons to want to incorporate authentic materials in your lessons, so let’s explore. 
The “authentic” in authentic materials simply means that the text, video, or audio material has not been created with English language teaching in mind. 
Instead, the learning content comes from a genuine source like a news outlet, podcast, or video platform. The teacher develops questions, activities or projects around the authentic material, graded to the level of their students. 
There are lots of advantages to teaching English with authentic texts and materials. For example, you can more easily:
1. Teach to your students’ interests
After getting to know your student (or students) on your first day of tutoring online, you’ll know plenty about their interests, goals and challenges.
You can then easily curate lesson materials that directly relate to a student’s personal or professional interests and goals. 
Of course, a simple Google search can do the trick. But you can also follow your students’ favorite sports teams, or other social accounts relating to their interests (e.g. Twitter, LinkedIn or Pinterest). There you can find topical, interesting stories, videos, or simple social posts to cover during your lessons. 
2. Show how far they’ve come 
When you stick to coursebook materials, students often feel like they are bowling with guardrails. By sharing and working on real-world texts, videos, and listening materials, students often feel more motivated. 
After all, they see that they can really comprehend real-world texts (rather than course book materials). 
What should you be aware of?
Make sure to monitor carefully, be patient, and walk them through the content as many times as needed, so they don’t feel discouraged if they find it more difficult than expected.
3. Talk about topical stories
Beyond talking about the things your students are interested in, you can also find content relating to topical news stories or local events. News, so long as it’s not upsetting or too controversial, can be a great starting point for any lesson.
Should you use any type of news story?
It always comes down to your best judgment on what you feel would make for a good classroom discussion. It’s best to avoid sad, controversial or highly contentious topics. Also, be sure to consider lesson objectives and language points before diving into the content. 
4. Make Business English class material more relevant
Business English coursebooks are often quite generic. While they have business-related vocabulary and decent role-play activities, you’ll be very lucky to find an exercise that fits your student’s role. 
So why not start using authentic materials relating to your student’s industry or company?
A great idea is to take content from the company blog, reviews, or news reports talking about the company. Students often find this type of material especially relevant.
Should you avoid any types of company-related content?
It probably goes without saying, but avoid negative reviews and press. Also, steer clear of news stories relating to lay-offs or other topics that could cause your students stress. 


Here are some examples of authentic materials and how to use them.
Newspaper or magazine articles 
Starting with the basics, newspaper or magazine articles are fairly easy to work with in the online classroom. The length and complexity of the authentic texts you select will depend on your class objectives, your students’ interests, and their level of proficiency. You can select headlines, clips, or full articles for your class. 
If you are unsure if an authentic text is suitable, or if you are worried the vocabulary is too difficult for your students, copy and paste it into Text Inspector. This free tool grades the level of the text, aligning vocabulary to the CEFR. It also helps you pick out difficult words for pre-teaching activities. 
In general, it’s best to choose shorter, less complex texts for lower level learners. Articles with clear images or illustrations can also help provide context and improve understanding too. 
Non-controversial recent news topics are great because students will very often be familiar with the story and have their own opinion. This can lead to interesting discussions in class and lots of language learning opportunities. 
Just like an ELT coursebook text, you can use pre-reading activities to cover complex or new vocabulary. You can include all the regular prediction activities to help students think critically, comprehension exercises, quizzes, ordering activities, role-plays, etc.
For starters, a simple news article headline or article can turn into:
A prediction activity: After reading the headline, ask students to predict what happened next.
A research and writing activity: Have students research the story and write their own blog post.
A debate: Give students roles and have them prepare an argument based on the content. 
A grammar transformation activity: Have students rewrite the headline using different tenses or in the passive voice, for example. 
Tweets or other social media posts
Social media posts have a big advantage over newspaper articles in that they’re very short. This makes them easier to work with in an online classroom environment.
However, be aware that social media is frontier territory. That means you never know what you are going to find online. So it’s important not to let your students loose on social media sites during class (especially if you are teaching teens or young learners). 
Instead, select your social media posts ahead of time. It’s usually a safe bet to choose tweets and content from brand accounts. This type of content is not often controversial in nature. You can screenshot them or simply copy and paste the text into a shared document. 
You are only limited by your students’ language learning goals. For example:
Vocabulary challenge: For lower level learners, students can look up unfamiliar words or paraphrase the tweet you have given them.
Change the tone: Students can adapt the register of the tweets, making them more informal or formal.
Practice answering: They can draft replies to the tweets (agreeing, disagreeing, or asking a follow-up question. 
Become a researcher: You could ask students to verify or fact check the tweet – encouraging online research, further reading and vocabulary building in class.
If you want to work with TikTok videos in class, you’ll be your students’ favorite teacher. But as mentioned before, be careful about letting students explore the platform in class. It can be distracting and even disruptive if your students lose sight of the lesson aims. 
So instead of sending a link to a video, download it using a tool like Snaptik.
Once again, choose your lesson content ahead of time. Be sure to select videos that relate to your students’ interests or will engage them in some way.
First of all, you should bear in mind that the videos themselves do not have to be a source of vocabulary. You can show stunts, dances, funny or entertaining content – guilt free. Just make sure that your activities are language centered. Here are some activities:
Describe a dance: Have students watch a dance and describe how a person moved using verbs you have previously studied. For example, “They raised their arms, spun around, fell to the ground, shook their hips…”
What happens next: Play half of a video and have students predict what happens next.
Become a superfan: Have your students write a comment as if they were a super fan of the TikToker in the video.

____________________________________

Cobb, T. & Horst, M.. Reading academic English: carrying learners across the lexical threshold. In J. Flowerdew & M. Peacock, Research perspectives in English for academic purposes(2001). (315-329). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3.