The importance of using authentic materials during the lesson

THE IMPORTANCE OF USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS DURING THE LESSON
The article discusses the problems of using authentic materials on teaching foreign languages. Using authentic materials in the class can be a useful tool to motivate pupils and make them feel comfortable using the foreign language. Authentic materials, if used properly in authentic learning environments, can have lots of uses in foreign language teaching though they are not specifically designed to teach a foreign language. For this reason, foreign language teachers should act as a guide for the students to interact with the authentic materials in constructivist learning environments. In addition, learning environments in which authentic materials are used should be organized when training prospective foreign language teachers to set an example for the teachers of the future to use authentic materials in their own classrooms. In that way, prospective teachers will have a chance to see and experience, themselves, the advantages of these materials and points to consider when using them. The aim of the present study is to focus on the importance and the uses of authentic materials in foreign language teacher training program and to come up with some suggestions concerning the matter.
Keywords: communication, foreign languages, skills, authentic materials.
INTRODUCTION
In the present digital era, technology paved a new dimension in almost all the fields and the field of education has highly benefitted in bringing drastic changes in teaching and learning. With the introduction of the internet and computers in education, the teaching and learning has become easy and accessible for all the teachers and learners of English. The teachers have been using the internet to download materials, update their knowledge, get immediate solutions for their doubts and queries, show the required pictures, videos and audios to the learners, give Power Point presentations, record the learning process of the students and so on. After the introduction of the mobile phones or smart phones, there is a tremendous change in the learning style of the learners. The learners are able to learn the language both in and outside the classrooms.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Language is a tool of communication which connects people. They send and receive messages through communication. There are 6500 living languages in the world, which attract people to learn foreign languages. Learning a foreign language is made linguists to work out in the sphere of philology to create an effective way for gaining knowledge. English is a very productive language. English is the fourth most widely spoken native language in the world, and in terms of sheer number of speakers, it is the most spoken official language in the world. It is the primary language used in international affairs [1]. The role of foreign languages in modern society has made educators devise new ways of teaching them so that their results match the learners' needs and expectations. Acquiring a foreign language implies developing several skills in the target language which sometimes can be a challenge for pupils, especially when they are exposed to real-life situations of communication.
As the present generation of learners gets the opportunity of using numerous sources to learn any subject, the use of authentic materials seems to be a great help for them to improve their learning skills. The teachers can use the authentic material as additional material to develop the overall skills of the learners' learning. With the help of the authentic material, the teachers can reinforce the learning items and can give additional tasks to the learners [2]. Furthermore, these authentic materials create interest among the learners since the teachers select them with proper care by taking the needs and interests of the learners. As a result, the learners can participate with more enthusiasm in the given tasks and try to perform the tasks with utmost care and concentration. Authentic materials are abundantly used in the teaching of English by the teachers to attain better results while teaching the learners in the English language classrooms.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The concept of teaching a subject generally depends on the analysis of the nature of the particular subject, its teaching and learning doctrines ingrained in research and the theories related to philosophy and psychology of education. Teaching-learning materials constantly deal with methods, approaches, materials, syllabus and evaluation. Language teachers use two types of materials, i.e., the materials that are exclusively prepared to teach a language, for example textbooks and authentic materials such as newspapers, brochures, pamphlets, etc. that are used for the purposes other than teaching but are often used in the language classrooms while they teach a language. The materials used in the classroom are especially
prepared by the subject experts of the English language to meet the needs and requirements of the learners. Even though these materials provide standard information, they are monotonous. In motivating the learners, the materials prepared by the subject experts and they fail to present the realworld or situational language and it leads to teachers' burnout. Therefore, it is more essential for the language teachers to prepare their own materials for their teaching according to the needs and interests of the learners and also according to the demands of the prevailing society.
Since the authentic materials are more economic and effortlessly available anywhere and anytime, the teachers of English can use them to teach in their regular ELT classrooms. There are many authentic materials available to teach English such as News Papers, Brochures, Pamphlets, Flyers, Advertisements, Greeting Cards, Invitation Cards, Post-Cards, Wall Papers, Comics, Cartoons, Story Books,Agony Columns, Directories, Maps, Magazines, Journals, Pictures, Audio Cassettes, Images, TV Programmes, TV Ads, Movies, Songs, Internet Notices,Bus or Train Timetables, Recipe, Menus, Stamps, Tickets, Product Labels, Realia such as phones and dolls, Currency, Weather Reports, Puppets and so on[4].
As authentic materials are selected by the teachers according to the needs and interests of the learners to involve them in learning the English language skills and to demonstrate their skills in and outside the classrooms, the English language classrooms, they are frequently adopted in teaching the English language using reallife situations. Using authentic materials in the ELT classrooms have several advantages[8]. They are:
• Authentic materials are selected according to the needs and interests of the learners.
• They are useful to minimize the level of hesitation among the learners.
• They always provide situational language for the learners.
• The learners are exposed to real-life situations.
• They are very economical to use in ELT classrooms.
• They are easily accessible for the teachers.
• They are available everywhere.
• They are very much helpful to develop social language skills.
• They develop the learners ability to interpret the topic they learn.
• They enhance the learners critical thinking.
• They develop creativity among the learners and the teachers.
• They make the learners aware of the situation in the society.
• They are useful for the teachers to teach the same material for different classes.
• They promote the learners to concentrate more on the language skills.
• They always motivate the learners to read for pleasure.
• They are easily available everywhere.
• They promote the learners with higher level of motivation.
• They are more useful for the students who are very slow learners.
• They promote the average learners to perform well.
• They enhance the ability of explanation and conversation of the learners.
• They support an artistic approach to ELT.
• They make the teaching and learning process easy and interesting.
• They produce a sense of achievement among the learners.
• They are more useful for the teachers to prepare alternate materials
• They offer variety of language contexts, registers, genres and styles of both written and spoken discourses.
• They are more useful for the learners whose previous knowledge and educational background is very low.
• They really build a connection between the outside world and the English classrooms.
• They promote the learners to take part in the classroom discussions actively.
• They are useful for the teachers to prepare the materials suitable for the learners.
• They serve as mediating artifact for contextualizing English language learning.
• They have a positive effect on learners' motivation.
• They develop the learners' analytical as well as reasoning skills.
• They are generally equipped with sound and pictures so that they are eyecatching and more interesting.
• They encourage the learners to take part in the classroom tasks and perform well in the given tasks.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Since the authentic materials have several benefits and they are very useful to the teachers and learners to improve their teaching and learning skills, the English language teachers and learners should utilize the authentic materials in a proper way to yield better results. Eventually, the success of the use of authentic material is on
how the language teachers select the relevant authentic materials. Hence, it is high time to discuss the use of the authentic materials by teachers in the ELT classrooms.
One of the best sources of authentic materials which are more useful in the ELT classrooms is the newspapers. Newspapers publish latest and burning news every day and the teachers can adopt the useful news reports as authentic materials to teach the learners of English [5]. Since the language used in the newspapers differ from news and the other and the vocabulary and grammatical structures also vary from day to day, it enhances the English language learners to grasp and understand the use of language in a variety of ways. Newspapers are also useful for the English language learners to improve their language skills. Newspapers present news on a variety of topics including education columns, sports columns, geographical and historical columns, cultural activities columns, etc. They also present the day-to-day language with all the possible idiomatic expressions of the local culture. The language styles that are found in the newspapers are not to be found in the prescribed textbooks and the newspapers can be analyzed in various ways such as for academic writing as the text for stylistics and semantics. Ever since the newspapers publish news related to real-life events, they arouse curiosity among the learners of English.
Magazines are enormously used as rich source of authentic materials in the ELT classrooms as they are very motivating and inspire a wide range of activities. Magazines help the learners in developing the language skills, vocabulary and grammar [6]. Magazines contain a substantial quantity of information and a wide variety of text types.
Media is used as an additional tool for language teachers to develop the presentation of the materials in the classrooms. Media plays a key role in engaging the learners' learning process of the language. The teachers of English have to select media that are used in teaching and learning process suitable for the learners' n eeds and interests. The selection of appropriate and proper media motivates the learners' to learn the learning process in a smooth way. The teachers of English should use communicative media to give more information or explanation to the learners to understand the topic easily
Brochures, pamphlets and flyers are the best key tools used for language teaching to promote the learners language skills and all of them are used for advertisement that offer a great and real information for the learners. In fact brochures are cost effective and they are widely used in teaching and learning English. Brochures come in numerous shapes and sizes and often come in bi-fold or tri-fold layout used as fl yers, coupons or business cards. The teachers can encourage
the learners to gather various brochures of museums, banks, libraries, travel agencies, car rental agencies and so on. Then the teachers can select any brochure where the hours of business are clearly visible. By using these brochures, the teachers can introduce several role-plays with the students according to their interests. This also paves a way to review the days of the week also. The teachers can also present their learners with a wide variety of travel brochures and involve the learners to talk about each of the destinations. The teachers should give a chance to the learners to select a particular destination and ask them to write about it why they like to travel to that particular place. Using the travel brochure, the teachers can enhance the language skills of the learners. The teachers can also ask the learners to collect some medical brochures from doctors' offices and use them to have some dialogue practices [7]. Once the learners read the brochures in detail, the teachers can give them some comprehension questions to answer.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, an attempt has been made to focus on the effective use of the authentic materials by the teachers in English language classrooms. First, this paper has discussed the advantages of authentic material in education. After that, this paper has brought out the importance of the authentic materials in the English language classrooms. Furthermore, this paper has emphasized mainly on the effective use of the authentic materials and how they are useful the teachers in their teaching and also how they help the learners to learn the English language in an easy and different way. Finally, this paper has also given some expedient hints not only to the teachers of English but also the learners to develop their teaching and learning skills colossally using the authentic materials in the English classrooms