Authentic Materials for Teaching English

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Українська

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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, hypercoTectness, or even ungrammaticality. I do not feel tijat my students should see this kind of English unlpss they have to.

Sometimes, however, it may be the actual content of what is said that is objectionable. I deliberately included in my examples the graffiti 'Be з woman and wear a skirt', but would you use it in your classroom? Some people are sexist, racist, or have other types of prejudice, but I feel that as an educational experience the classroom has to exclude their opinions, authentic as they are. Of course a teacher can always introduce an example simply to disagree with it, but in genera! I think one does have to consider with authentic materials whether the actual content is acceptable educationally or linguistically, as one would do for any other type of material.

To illustrate what authentic materials for teaching English might look like, let's look at some samples. The fair way of doing it, I thought, was to jot down ali the pieces of English that happened to catch my eye during one particular day, October 8th, when I was travelling to a meeting in Oxford. First of all, over breakfast, I had time to look at nothing more than The headlines in the daily paper.

1. Monetary slowdown lifts hope on MMR

High Court Move on Rampton Brutality

£200,000 Yankee not so dandy for tote

Then I drove to the station to catch my train. On the way I noticed the following signs:

2. Parking spaces to let

Urban Clearway ends

At the station, I consulted the timetable, and I bought myself a day return ticket;

3. Going across London, I noticed some Advertisements and graffiti that read:

4. Be a girl and wear a skirt

5. The exworld champion suit

In the railway compartment I saw beneath the window:

6. THIS CONTROLS CENTRAL HEATING UNDER THE SEATS ON THIS SIDE OF THE COMPARTMENT

I caught a taxi in Oxford with the following notice inside it:

This taxicab is licensed to proceed

at not over walking pace along

Cornmarket Street.

BY ORDER OF LOCAL AUTHORITY

Finally, coming home by car in the evening, I stopped at a garage where the petrol pump said

8. PAY HERE

Insert money to value of petrol

You have 3 minutes to start delivery from first coin or note

INSERT QUEEN'S HEAD FIRST as shown, one note at a time

None of these extracts are faked, afl of them are quite genuine as far as the limitations of my memory and notebook go. Yet I think they must strike a non-native speaker or a student with horror. None of them remotely resembles the English found in the classroom; even when the English itself is comprehensible, it is quile unclear what the message is actually about. Why is this?

One reason is the density of cultural and situational references. Take the notice in the taxi-cab (no. 7). In fact, I had to ask the driver what it meant, and received the answer that Cornmarket Street is essentially a pedestrian street, and taxis and buses are only allowed along it provided they go slowly; only local knowledge of Oxford makes it meaningful. Or take the notice on the petrol pump (no. 8). If you have the information that it is on an automatic pump, and that г n English pound note has the Queen's head on it in a certain position, then you can see what it means. Without this information, the instructions are meaningless. Or no. 1, the headline “£200,000 Yankee not so dandy for Tote”. If you know the song “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, if you know that the Tote is the government sponsored betting