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Authentic materials to enhance English Students
communicative competence

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Authentic Material
21/02/2017

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MEd. Juan Francisco Hidalgo Sandoval

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 Authentic materials to enhance English Students communicative
competence
By: Med. Juan Francisco Hidalgo Sandoval
University of El Salvador
Western Multidisciplinary Campus
English Language Department

Abstract
This article reports valuable information about undergraduate research
work The effectiveness of using authentic materials to enhance Intensive
Intermediate English Students communicative competence. This investigation
was carried on from March 2007 to December 2007. It provides information of
how the implementation of authentic materials as a complementary tool help
students improve their communicative competence in the intermediate level of
Licenciatura Idioma Ingles opcin enseanza at the Western Multidisciplinary
Campus. The issue of using authentic material in language classrooms has
been influential over the past two decades. Moreover, many practitioners
involved in foreign language teaching and research have argued about the
benefits of using authentic material (Shrum & Glisan, 2000; Paltridge, 2001;
Guariento & Morley, 2001; Kelly & Offner & Vorland, 2002). These benefits may
rage from highlighting comprehension, presenting real language, providing
opportunities to introduce cultural issues, to enhancing motivation, and crating
language awareness.
Key words: authentic materials, activities, real context, classroom, students,
teacher, communicative competence.

Introduction
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 learners with many significant advantages and
promotes them with high motivation and interest in language learning and lead
to improving communicative competence (Guariento & Morley, 2001; Wilcox et
al., 1999). This means authentic material in FL class can be motivating because
they proof that the language is used for real-life purpose by real people, and
authentic texts will bring them closer to the target language culture. As well as
authentic materials are used with the purpose of students communicative
competence, students will have a sense that real language for communication is
being learnt, as opposite to classroom language itself. They are produce to fulfil
some social, cultural and pragmatic purposes in the language community.
Therefore, these authentic materials will result in them making the learning
process overall and even more enjoyable and thus, motivating. Additionally,
authentic materials have made a noticeable contribution in foreign language

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teaching and learning, there are also some scholars who are against the use of
these kind of materials claiming that they have no value.

Authentic materials
Students did not have the opportunity to have a direct relationship with
the language classroom and the outside world; in other words, they were only
expose to the language presented by the teacher and the instructional purposes
based on specific grammar structures (Foppli, n.d). In fact, these materials are
the core of the methodological procedures in the Conversational Area of the
Western Multidisciplinary Campus.
The main goal of all courses in the Conversational Area of the
Licenciatura en Idioma Ingles opcin enseanza at the University of El Salvador
is to help students produce natural and spontaneous language. Students are
presented with different tasks to practice and acquire the target language.
Some of the activities used to teach Intensive Intermediate English I (IIE-I)
classes are conversations, drills, games, dictation practices and the activities
that are include in the text books among others.
As El Salvador is not an English speaking country, it turns very difficult to
have access to any kind of authentic materials, since, for example, bringing a
menu or getting some comic trips from a local newspaper can be a little difficult
from some teachers. Additionally, authentic materials are time consuming.
Looking for the right material may be a little difficult and may compel teachers
to spend a lot of time looking for it
Authentic material may be a little difficult and may compel teachers to
spend a lot of time looking for it. Preparing authentic materials requires more
time then instructional materials requires, and due to the teachers academic
load and limited accessibility, they are restraint from implanting them in the
conversational classes. Sometimes the use of authentic materials at lower
levels may cause students to feel demotivated and frustrated since they lack
lexical items and structures used in the target language (Guariento & Morley,
2001).
According to Oura (n.d), through the implementation of authentic
materials teachers can motivate their students, offer them the opportunity to
deal with meaningful messages and make use of non-linguistic clues. Hence,
even though students will not be to understand every single word they read or
listen to, they will gradually get accustomed to the language and text native
English speakers use to interact in their real world.
In addition, another factor that influences the disuse of authentic
materials is culture which deals with the common values and beliefs of a people
and the behavior that reflect them (Gebhard, 1996). The problem with culture is
that sometimes not even teachers are familiar with the target culture. Thus, the

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previous information reflects that the lack of exposure to authentic materials
affects IIE-I students enhancement of their communicative competence.
The implementation of authentic materials would allow students to have
contact with language used in natural settings. It will also reflect the possible
improvement reached after the application of the material proposed. Telling
students and how were going to practice listening, usually elicits looks of
dread and fear. Young learners reaction may be even more extreme. I can
read at home, I come to lessons to speak! more than one student enrolled in a
conversational class may claim that. Many students do seem to regard reading
and listening as waste of time, maybe because there are not enough post
speaking activities.
Authentic materials refer to any item that has been designed to be used
by any individual of society; that is, material that has not been designed for
teaching purposes (Numan, cited in Oura, n.d). curiously defines this kind of
materials as items that normally go into a trash can. In this sense, objects that
seem useless for some people may represent a treasure for English teachers.
This type of material gives the learner the opportunity to be exposed to how the
language is used in the real world, since students will have to cope not only with
grammar and syntax but also with nonverbal language.
The key factor is to bring reality into the classroom and let students know
how things really work in the outside world. Among these materials are articles
from newspapers, TV, radio programs, videos, video games, etc (Oura n.d).
Inside the classroom, there is a need to teach specifics language points in a
way that some teachers feel would be more understandable for learners.
Immediately, the question that arises is: what does English communicative
competence involve? Shumin (1997) and many other EFL researchers define
communicative competences as the combination of grammatical, strategic,
sociolinguistic, and discourse competences.
Students are grammatical competent when they are capable to recognize
and produce the distinctive grammatical structures of language and to use them
effectively in communication (Animosimova, n.d); however, for many students, it
is not possible to develop grammatical competence effectively. After observing
classes, researchers noticed that this is partly what is happening with IIE-I
students. As a result, their communicative competence gets affected because
every time they are about to speak, they know neither how to find the rights
words to express themselves nor to put then into phrases or sentences to
convey accurate and fluent discourse. IIE-I students feel frustrated and
embarrassed when they face those moments. Of course, this enhances the
students fear of speaking with others because they feel they will not be able to
overcome such situation successfully. Authentic material would represent and
amazing tool to help IIE-I students handle these disheartening circumstances.
Series, movies, videos, for example, can be very useful to teach students
nonverbal language, and get a different meaning from the same phrase
depending on the context and the peoples usage. In real, diverse students may

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be used varied structures to talk about past actions: last night, something very
funny happened to me. I was walking down the street and suddenly a man
comes and looks at me in the face and says: boy, you are ugly. In the
aforementioned example, the speaker is using simple past, past progressive,
and simple present to talk about the same situation. Thus, exposing students to
more authentic materials, they would encounter the different forms the language
is used in the real world.
Students (Shumin,1997) need to adapt their ear to the different accents
in English. One of the most practical ways of gaining discourse competence is
through the exposure to as much natural language as possible. For example, if
podcast were implemented in class, IIE-I students will be able to get meaning
as a whole from long utterances and to connect previous knowledge with the
new one (Brandt, 2005). Hence, IIE-I students would acquire an array of
structures and diverse lexicon to express ideas, show relationships of time and
indicate cause, contrast, and emphasis.
Researches believe that students expand their knowledge, and
understand the language without translating and using it without the
interference of L1. Plus, students would be more likely to develop a positive
attitude toward facing every day language. All the activities IIE-I students have
in class are good to build up the bases of the language and to practice it so that
they produce chunks of language. IIE-I teachers need more than providing
students with good examples of language chunks for them to repeat, transform,
memorize or expand.
Authentic materials: anything a native speaker of English would hear,
read or use in the real world.
Types of authentic materials
Listening material used in class: popular magazines, slides, comic
strips, and newspaper.
Audiovisual material used in class: films, sitcoms, series,
documentaries, videos, talk shows, and cartoons.
Realia used in class: menus, catalogs, boardgames, flyers, and
karaoke.
Exposure to real world language.
A. Students opportunity to engage in real communication.
B. Students opportunity to engage in real activities.
C. Students production of language needed in authentic
communication outside of the classroom.
Exposure to the target culture
A. Familiarization with the culture of the target language.
B. References to cultural events in holydays.
C. The development of the students tolerance toward different
cultures.
Students attitude toward learning
A. Students confidence in real situations.

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 B. Students fearlessness of making mistakes.
C. Students development of a greater sense of achievement.

Communicative competence: a learners ability to apply and use

grammatical rules, to form correct utterances, and known how to use these
utterances appropriately in L2. Some indicators of communicative competence
are grammatical competence, strategic competence, sociolinguistic
competence, and discourse competence.

Conclusion

Many researches have conducted studies about the authentic material.

They support the use of authentic material do have different views, but they
have in common one idea: exposure, exposure to real language and real life,
in other words the benefit students get from being exposed to the language in
authentic materials. The authentic materials should be used in accordance with
the students level of knowledge and the students should be helped by their
teachers to overcome the difficulties they encounter. The implementation of
authentic materials as a complementary tool in IIE-I classes help students
broaden their lexicon a little bit more, since they can use native speakers
expressions or idioms in their conversations or in any other speaking activity
they are demanded to do in class. As can be seen, using authentic materials is
relatively easy and convenient way of improving not only your students general
skills, but also their confidence in a real situation. This is only a brief
introduction to the ideas involved, but some of these ideas could easily be
expanded to form part of a motivating and effective course.

References
Herron, C., & Seay, I. (1991). The effect of authentic oral texts on
student listening comprehension in the foreign language classroom

Al Azri, R. H., & Al-Rashdi, M. H (2014). The effect of using authentic

materials in teaching. International Journal of Scientific & Technology
Research, 3(10), 249-254

Hwang, C. C.(2005). Effective EFL education through popular

authentic materials. Asian EFL Journal, 7(1), 1-12.

Peacock, M. (1997). The effect of authentic material on the motivation

of EFL learners. ELT Journal, 51(2) 144-156.
https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/51.2.144
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