Доповідь на тему "Доцільність використання автентичних текстів у процесі викладання англійської мови"

Disadvantages

of using authentic texts

1. Idiosyncrasy

What does it mean? The synonym to it is peculiarity. Using authentic texts we may have problems dealing with the idiosyncrasies of particular genres or ways that particular nationalities of native speaker write. Needless to say, the last thing that will motivate a student is to be told how much there still is to learn! These idiosyncrasies are often taken out of graded texts (which is the main thing that makes them so dull for native speakers, more so than the simplification of the language) and it is possible to do the same with authentic texts. So you have to avoid famous writers and just go for almost miscellaneous stuff like shorter newspaper articles.

2. The grading of the various parts of the texts might be different

This can be a problem with novels and poetically written magazine articles, where the descriptive introduction is often several levels higher than the story will be once the plot or dialogue starts. The same is with newspaper headlines. Approaches include giving the difficult parts in summary form and just using an extract from the original text, or doing activities just with the easy bits like the captions or dialogue.

3. The information can quickly become out of date

This can be a problem both for students, for whom the language might fly out of their heads at the same time the information gets replaced with something more important. It can also be an issue for the teacher, who might have spend lots of time preparing the pre-teach and comprehension questions only to have to throw the text away after a couple of days.

4. The difficulty can put students  out of reading

For some students the challenge and achievement of reaching the end of an authentic text for the first time is just the boost to their motivation that they need, even if they don’t touch another authentic texts until they have  managed to reach a more advanced level. For other students, the struggle of dealing with authentic texts can just convince them that the reading in English will never be worth the effort. The most common response to this from teachers and teacher’s books is to give students simple general comprehension and skimming and scanning tasks, and to skip the detailed comprehension tasks. You could try your best to choose the easiest authentic text you can find, but with a student, that doesn’t like challenge it is probably best just to stick to graded texts.

5. The vocabulary is not graded

However easy an authentic text you have managed to find, it is unlikely that every word in it is one of those ”most used words in English” that are marked in learner’s dictionaries. This can be another good opportunity for students to test their guessing vocabulary from context skills.

6. The grammar is not graded

The grading of grammar in a text is usually more difficult to spot and easier to forget about than the grading of vocabulary. A good rule of thumb is that most of the grammar should be what they have already studied, and most of the more difficult grammar should within one level.

7. The idiomatic language might quickly be out of date

This has also been a problem with textbooks over the years, but most publishers seem to have twigged that now and made the language they deal with less idiomatic and more “timeless”. With authentic texts, you can perhaps avoid overly- trendy slang by sticking to articles from stuffer publications or extracts from the books that were written in a simplified non-Shakespearean English but hadn’t got into the slangy language that many books and magazine articles nowadays have.

8. There could be copyright problems

For most publications it is perfectly legal to copy one class set of a text from the original, especially if you mark it clearly with where it came from. Restrictions usually only apply to making copies and republishing things, and anyway schools are not the first target of the copyright police.

If they want to learn every word in a text, the reading stage can go on forever and cover loads of useless language.

9. Authentic texts are usually of high level

If you did take a text written for native speakers and try to match it by language level to a selection of articles from EFL language textbooks you would always end up with it in Proficiency (e.g. very Advanced) level.

10. It might include language that isn’t in a dictionary

This could be a good time for students to practice their “guessing meaning from the context” skills, but that is only possible if they understand over 90% of the language around that word.

11. The texts are often too long

This can be a factor with articles and also for books for students to read  at home. In fact, the shortness of a graded reader can be just as much part of the appeal as the simplified language. One solution with authentic texts is to use only an extract, that can make understanding it even more difficult unless you can find some way of explaining very clearly what comes before or after the part you give them.