Using Authentic Materials and Approaches
For students to develop communicative competence in reading,
classroom and homework reading activities must resemble (or be) real-life
reading tasks that involve meaningful communication. They must therefore be
authentic in three ways.
1. The reading material must be authentic: It must be the kind of
material that students will need and want to be able to read when traveling,
studying abroad, or using the language in other contexts outside the classroom.
When selecting texts for student assignments, remember that the
difficulty of a reading text is less a function of the language, and more a
function of the conceptual difficulty and the task(s) that students are expected
to complete. Simplifying a text by changing the language often removes natural
redundancy and makes the organization somewhat difficult for students to
predict. This actually makes a text more difficult to read than if the original
were used.
Rather than simplifying a text by changing its language, make it
more approachable by eliciting students' existing knowledge in pre-reading
discussion, reviewing new vocabulary before reading, and asking students to
perform tasks that are within their competence, such as skimming to get the
main idea or scanning for specific information, before they begin intensive
reading.
2. The reading purpose must be authentic: Students must be reading
for reasons that make sense and have relevance to them. "Because the teacher
assigned it" is not an authentic reason for reading a text.
To identify relevant reading purposes, ask students how they plan
to use the language they are learning and what topics they are interested in
reading and learning about. Give them opportunities to choose their reading
assignments, and encourage them to use the library, the Internet, and foreign
language newsstands and bookstores to find other things they would like to
read.
3. The reading approach must be authentic: Students should read the
text in a way that matches the reading purpose, the type of text, and the way
people normally read. This means that reading aloud will take place only in
situations where it would take place outside the classroom, such as reading for
pleasure. The majority of students' reading should be done silently.
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