Abstract:
My hypothesis is that authentic materials will be more accessible to language
learners with specifically designed language training materials that I will create,
integrating reading skills, grammar topics and cultural knowledge, using modern
research and theory in language education. Using the materials that I am proposing,
students should be better prepared for language use and experience outside of the
classroom as well.
I intend to create language training materials for high‐intermediate to
advanced students using authentic texts such as short stories, newspaper articles,
poems, and famous essay. These texts will be supplemented with notes to assist
with the understanding of vocabulary and cultural context. I will be writing original
material in the form of explanations and activities that ensure students will focus on
cultural and grammatical contexts as well, to help give students a greater
understanding both of authentic texts, but also of United States culture, and
American English from the past fifteen to twenty years in use.
Authentic texts, such as newspaper articles, novels, or short stories, are often
used for ESL/EFL learners in the classroom setting for their depictions of languagein‐
use. They are widely thought to give students more realistic linguistic examples
as compared with traditional, simplified textbook language that is often presented
in language textbooks. These materials are often adapted for the use of English
learners in various countries, usually by means of simplification, so their language is
closer to the level of the learners, often sounding stilted and inauthentic to native
speakers, in order that the learners can more easily understand them. They are also
generally somewhat deculturalized to account for the learner’s lack of knowledge
cultural context of the original material. Bacon and Finnemann (1990), however,
found that learners often preferred authentic reading material that related to
current events, and to themselves.
Young (1999) has found, as well, that evidence for the simplification of
authentic texts being helpful for students is inconsistent at best, and that the most
frequent problems encountered by English language learners are lexical in nature. I
will get around the lexical problems Young discusses by providing vocabulary notes
in the margins, with information on the difficulty of vocabulary, and thus the
necessity of explaining it from English learner dictionaries. In this way, I will be able
to get around lexical and cultural difficulties with reading authentic texts, and create
a cohesive language training materials for students of English.