Authentic materials in extensive Reading

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On the Possible Use Of Authentic Materials in
Extensive Reading in Senior High Schools
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Section 1Introduction

• Many researchers have argued that authentic
  materials motivate learners because they are
  intrinsically more interesting or stimulating
  than artificial or non-authentic materials,
  namely, the coursebooks, in foreign language
  learning. Based on the Communicative Approach and
  Krashen's Input Hypothesis, I feel from my
  background reading that practice to date on this
  topic is still continuing and suggest applying
  authentic materials in extensive reading to
  develop and maintain a pleasure-driven and
  interest-driven attitude towards students'
  English learning in Chinese senior high schools,
  to explore the culture and linguistic knowledge
  of the target language.

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Section 2

• Authentic Materials and
• Extensive Reading
  

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2.1 The definition of authentic materials

• In CLT, it is considered desirable to give
  learners the opportunities to respond to genuine
  communications and understand language as
  actually used by native speakers (Canale and
  Swain, 1980). Authentic material has
  traditionally been defined as that written for
  native speakers, that is, ordinary everyday
  material not provided specifically for the
  language teaching purpose.

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• Authenticity lies in the interaction
  between the reader and the discourse, that is to
  say, authenticity depends on the readers
  appropriate response. Authentic texts bring
  learners close to the target language culture,
  making learning more enjoyable and therefore more
  motivating. Through the authentic materials
  provided, learners can explore a wider range of
  topics and situations in the target language,
  with the accompanying linguistics elements, than
  may be available to them in their coursebooks.

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2.2 Why authentic materials? A comparison with
the current coursebook for reading

• The main purpose of the current adolescent EFL
  coursebooks is defined as being for developmental
  language learning in instructed social contexts.
• Proponents Vs. Opponents
• It cannot meet the needs of all its use it
  imposes uniformity of syllabus and approach, and
  it removes initiative and power from teachers.

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• Furthermore, it is argued that textbooks, in the
  form of short, easy texts or dialogues, help
  learners by focusing attention on the target
  feature. They protect learners to the extent in
  which they do not prepare them for the reality of
  language use. Many teachers reflect that
  coursebooks are too bland and often fail to
  achieve the engagement needed for learning for
  example, with complaints about the safe,
  harmonious, undisturbed world of the EFL
  coursebooks, namely neutral texts.

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• So no coursebook can be ideal for any particular
  class and that, therefore, an effective classroom
  teacher needs to be able to evaluate, adapt and
  produce materials so as to ensure a match between
  the learner and the materials they use. It is
  necessary for a teacher to provide additional
  materials besides coursebooks. In Porter and
  Roberts (1981) experience, the closer the
  learner comes to normal language use, the greater
  is his enthusiasm, so the need for and usefulness
  of authentic materials have been increasingly
  acknowledged in recent years.

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• 2.3 The definition of extensive reading

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2.3.1 Intensive reading

• Intensive reading is usually confined to the
  classroom, and materials are usually short in
  length. The main intention is to train students
  in the strategies needed for successful reading,
  for instance, predicting, guessing, concluding,
  etc. Texts are studied closely so that the
  features of written English are familiarised
  gradually by students. So intensive reading is a
  process of learning instead of acquisition.

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2.3.2 Extensive reading

• Extensive reading refers to either silent
  reading in the classroom or reading accomplished
  unsupervised out of the classroom, and its aim is
  for pleasure and/or for practice. Nuttall (1996)
  describes it as the private world of reading for
  our own interest and states further that reading
  extensively is the easiest and the most effective
  way to improve reading, and it is easier to teach
  in a climate where people enjoy the activities as
  well as value them for pragmatic reasons.
• William (198410) regards extensive reading as
  the relatively rapid reading of long texts and
  emphasises that it should normally be at the
  level of the students reading or below it. This
  contrasts with careful intensive reading where
  the aim is often to stretch the student slightly.

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2.4 Why extensive reading?

• Hafiz and Tudor (1985) describe the goal of
  extensive reading as to flood learners with
  large quantities of L2 input with few or possibly
  no specific tasks to perform on this material.
  Within the conventional framework of intensive
  reading, extensive reading offers a unique
  opportunity to pull together a multiplicity of
  strands and to break down the many artificial
  barriers that conventional reading instructions
  and materials create. Thus, it is the easiest and
  most effective way of improving their reading
  skills. It is a very effective way for teachers
  to supplement a prescribed textbook that do not
  match students interests.

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• Furthermore, in a tension-free environment,
  reading extensively is the most effective way of
  improving vocabulary to achieve fluency in
  reading since lexis has been regarded as a source
  of difficulty for EFL readers. So extensive
  reading has been proposed to develop students
  recognition vocabulary. Hedge (2001) adds that
  involving learners in programmes of extensive
  reading can be a highly productive step towards
  autonomous learning. Extensive reading offers the
  learners many ways of working independently. It
  also offers learners great exposure to English
  and can be particularly significant where class
  contact time is limited.

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• Nuttall (1996) regards an extensive reading
  programme (ERP) as the single most effective way
  of improving reading skills in general. Davis
  (1995) defines an ERP as ...a supplementary
  class library scheme, attached to an English
  course, in which students are given the time,
  encouragement and materials to read pleasurably,
  at their own level, as many books as they can,
  without the pressure of testing or marks. Thus,
  students are only competing against themselves,
  and it is up to the teacher to provide the
  motivation and monitoring to ensure that the
  maximum number of books is being read in the time
  available.

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2.5 Applying authentic materials in
extensive reading
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2.5.1 Criteria for selecting authentic materials
in extensive reading
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• The set of criteria from Nuttall (1996) is
  suggested, in which she uses the acronym SAVE for
  choosing extensive reading materials
• S Short
• A Appealing
• V Varied
• E Easy
• Selective according to students current
  language proficiency and their preferences,
  especially when choosing authentic materials from
  international websites

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Section 3 Implications3.1 Why applying
authentic materials in extensive reading in
Chinese senior high schools?3.1.1 The
Educational Policy

• The New Curriculum for Senior High Schools (
  2003) states that the ultimate goal of English
  Language Teaching in the intermediate stage is to
  foster students integrated ability for using
  language. It is the essential part of the
  Curriculum to develop students reading ability.
  In recent years, the National Matriculation
  English Test (NMET) has placed particular
  emphasis on students ability in reading
  comprehension, which takes up almost 30 of the
  full mark (150) of the NMET. It is a relatively
  larger portion compared to other items of the
  tests. Summarising from the tests from 1998 to
  2004, the tendency towards reading comprehension
  in the test may be concluded as follows

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• -Materials tend to be more authentic-like
• - The volume of vocabulary is enlarged gradually
• - Students are required to speed up in completing
  reading comprehension
• - Learners ability in discourse-analysis and
  language-decoding is checked
• - the knowledge in different subjects is tested.
• According to the Curriculum (2003), after
  a three-year study throughout a senior high
  school, a student should have read 300,000 words
  maximally in addition to textbooks, which is a
  greater requirement than ever for a student in a
  senior high school. Thus it may be rather
  difficult for students to meet such a requirement
  through current EFL reading in the classroom
  since it is limited in many ways.

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3.1.2 Current EFL reading and its material in
Chinese senior high schools

• In Chinese senior high schools, students are only
  given intensive reading in the classroom. Their
  reading material is confined to their set
  textbooks which are described previously as bland
  and artificial. Textbook reading is limited in
  number, that is, 20,000-30,000 words
  approximately, which is far from enough for
  students to reach the reading requirement set by
  the Curriculum (2003), and which restricts
  students overall development in learning
  English. The limited textbook reading is
  conducted along traditional teaching method, that
  is, emphasising explicit instruction of grammar
  and vocabulary. Reading is here a mechanical
  process, teacher-directed, with repeated
  practising of comprehension exercises using
  boring reading materials.

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• A series of innovations has been launched to
  improve the current EFL intensive reading and its
  material on topics, discourse, vocabulary and so
  on in Chinese senior high schools. However, in
  such a large country as China, changes take place
  so slowly that they cannot adapt to the
  high-speed development of the up-dated society.

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• In addition, English, as an EFL to Chinese
  students, is learnt in a classroom with
  artificial textbooks in limited teaching hours,
  namely, an input-poor environment. Students
  exposure to English language is far from
  sufficient, which also calls for the large amount
  of authentic L2 input.
• According to Hedge (2000), before any training in
  the use of authentic material can be effective,
  it may be the case that a certain level of
  language competence is necessary. Students of
  senior high schools have acquired basic reading
  techniques such as decoding information from the
  text, and have developed initial interest in
  English during their junior middle schools. As a
  consequence, they have been ready to extend their
  reading beyond the initial stage, to develop
  further interest and to accept the target
  language earlier by exposure to a wide variety of
  interesting authentic materials.

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3.2 Applying authentic materials in the extensive
reading programme (ERP) in Chinese senior high
schools

• In Hafiz and Tudor's three-month extra-curricular
  extensive reading programme (1985), the learners
  in an elementary school, whose reading ability is
  obviously not as developed as those in senior
  high schools, read graded books after school for
  twelve weeks. The result showed a great
  improvement in the performance of the
  experimental group especially in their writing
  skills, compared with two controlled groups. Thus
  the extensive reading programme is assumed to
  have played a contributory role. Inspired by the
  programme, I suggest carrying out an extensive
  reading programme using authentic materials in
  senior high schools, bearing the Chinese EFL
  context in mind.

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• Extensive reading carried out in an extensive
  reading programme has potential for stimulating
  the reading interest of students since they can
  select books based on their own interest, work in
  their own style and at their own pace. Students
  take the initiative to learn and are respected as
  individuals. As Cheng (1983) states, reading is
  intrinsically a private activity and that it is
  something students must do for themselves. Thus
  extensive reading provides a real insight into
  the pleasures of reading for the students.
• Hence I suggest that students should read
  various types of authentic materials extensively
  for the purpose of L2 proficiency and also for
  the experience of English-speaking cultures.
  Although it is not easy to provide an authentic
  English environment in China, students can still
  be exposed to as real an English learning context
  as possible through reading extensively with
  authentic materials.

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In the programme of extensive reading with
authentic materials for Chinese senior high
schools, I suggest what Davis calls
uninterrupted sustained silent reading (USSR)
(1995 331) as an extracurricular activity
supervised by teachers after school. In USSR,
the whole class is involved in reading authentic
texts, ranging from a weekly activity to a more
demanding one in which students read for twenty
minutes to forty minutes two or three times a
week. When observing students reading authentic
texts, teachers can be more aware of each
students strengths and weakness as a reader,
and thus better able to give students individual
support (Day and Bamford, 1998).
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• 
  3.3 Suggestions
• 3.3.1 To teachers
• EFL teachers in China should be trained to change
  the traditional approach which focuses on
  linguistic knowledge to the use of language.
  Furthermore, teachers should bear in mind that
  applying authentic material in extensive reading
  presents a broader perspective to the value of
  learning a foreign language. Thus as
  decision-makers in EFL teaching, teachers should
  not hesitate to encourage the use of authentic
  material in extensive reading to help students
  become efficient readers.
• As to the importance of the teacher factor, Thorp
  (1991) and Tudor (1993) suggest that teachers who
  are friendly, understanding, and sensitive to
  learners needs will be more likely to create a
  good learning atmosphere. Although some teachers
  may argue that they have no time and energy to
  apply authentic texts in extensive reading after
  school and there may be poor access to authentic
  materials, yet if a teacher is well aware of the
  importance and advantages of the application of
  authentic materials to extensive reading in
  senior high schools and is firmly committed to
  its introduction and implementation, then the
  students generally catch the teachers enthusiasm
  and are drawn to doing it (Day and Bamford, 1998
  42).

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• Teachers can carefully grade authentic
  materials according to linguistic difficulties
  and topics can be classified, for students to
  choose according to their preferences and needs,
  which is strongly recommended by Day and Bamford
  (1998).
• Teachers can help set up a library of
  authentic material suitable for students of
  senior high schools. Or, in EFL situations in
  which there are not enough copies of authentic
  reading materials to pass around, teachers can
  help clip articles from English periodicals,
  international newspapers and magazines, or from
  international websites selectively. A glossary
  may be designed to facilitate students reading
  when more than 3 of new words are found in one
  authentic reading material. However, teachers
  should encourage students to read on without any
  instructions when new words of one reading
  material are below 3.
• During ERS periods, teachers can use reading
  register records or questionnaires, which
  students would fill in once a book has been read,
  in order to ensure that no one is cheating. This
  also helps teachers to check on weak readers,
  enabling them to give tactful and unobtrusive
  assistance, when necessary (Davis, 1995 331).

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3.3.2 To students

• Students are encouraged to make progress
  gradually from stage to stage. At the first year
  of their senior high school, they are advised to
  start with graded readers which are divided into
  levels 1-5, and then to move on to easier
  authentic reading. Nuttall (1996) suggests that '
  to become an effective reader, it is far more
  useful to read a lot of easy books than a few
  difficult ones', especially when students are at
  the intermediate level. Authentic materials for
  the students at this level are of various kinds,
  which range from easy to difficult, for example,
  train timetables, advertisements, weather reports
  or newspaper articles

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3.3.3 Task Design Since the extensive reading
of authentic materials is done in a
tension-free environment with no or few specific
tasks in order to maintain their interest,
students tend to be more willing to deal with
some small tasks which appeal to them. This, in
turn, can result in their more active
involvement in reading authentic texts
extensively. For example, after reading various
kinds of attractive advertisements in
newspapers, whether asked to or not, they will be
interested in designing their own
advertisements or posters. Even some interested
students could clip articles, and gradually
assemble scrapbooks of appealing materials,
perhaps arranged by topics such as fashion and
sports. Discussions and debates concerning these
topics can be promoted by students who are
interested. Finally, when reading, for example,
a short story, students themselves also can be
asked to add a glossary of key vocabulary to
facilitate other students reading.

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Section 4. Conclusion

• The ultimate goal of teaching English at the
  intermediate stages is to enable learners to
  communicative effectively ---- to use language
  appropriately. To achieve this goal, we need to
  bring the outside world into the classroom, not
  to idealise it conveniently from within. Thus the
  essential consideration in this essay is the
  suggestion of providing a selection of authentic
  reading materials in extensive reading as
  necessary supplements to coursebooks since
  authentic materials will be capable of enlarging
  learners authentic L2 input, generating and
  maintaining learners' spontaneous interest.
• However, considerable empirical studies
  should be needed before any authentic materials
  are applied to extensive reading programmes in
  Chinese senior high schools.

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• What is more, some obstacles of using authentic
  materials in extensive reading programme,
  however, need considering as well, for instance,
  how to allocate time of reading authentic
  materials extensively with the tight classroom
  teaching schedules in senior high schools and
  the problem of less access to authentic materials
  for students in China, an EFL country, than that
  in ESL countries, etc.
• However, it is my belief that, in spite of
  those obstacles,
• the use of authentic materials in extensive
  reading may become increasingly significant in
  senior high schools and that the consequent
  increase in both qualitative and quantitative
  authentic materials may greatly improve our
  knowledge about factors which facilitate the
  learning of English language.

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• Thank you for your attention.