Reflection Task VI
Materials
Use
This
week’s reading assignments were on material use, what kind materials we could
we make use of, and what language learning skills they would foster. Starting
with the arguments put forward on the article called “Meeting EFL Learners
Halfway by Using Locally Relevant Authentic Materials”, I guess we should first
clarify what authentic material usage might be exactly meaning. An authentic
material has been defined as “an authentic text, oral or written, is one whose primary
intent is to communicate meaning”. As text books, for instance, don’t intent to
communicate information but to teach English, they might not be regarded as
authentic materials. Well, if an authentic material is “created to fulfil some social
purpose in the language community in which it was produced”, then we can find
many examples to it and use it rather often in our teaching experiences, right?
It is right to claim that authentic materials might have many variants such as
receipts, blog entries, newspapers, restaurant menus; literal works, plays etc.
might be listed as some of them. We have also quite often made use of authentic
materials during our teaching experiences. For instance, we have prepared a
lesson plan on shape poems, and made use of several shape poems in that session.
One reason behind our choice of topic was that we already knew that literature would
encourage learner interaction, and so it did. It really attracted their
attention, and the students were highly motivated to create their own shape
poems. They have also quite often asked us for some vocabulary items, and got
the chance to use these newly acquired vocabulary items in a meaningful
context. We had also brought some movie posters to the class, and wanted the
learners brainstorm on these movies, which I guess might be regarded as an
example for realia usage. Unfortunately, I have to add that I haven’t observed
my mentor teacher making use of any realia or authentic material as she mainly
followed a set course book.
Thank You!
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