USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS IN TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Abstract

During the past decades, teaching a foreign language has gained much more attention in most countries around the world. As a result, searching for appropriate and effective teaching materials occupies a great space of instructors’ thinking. The purpose of learning a foreign language is to be able to benefit from using it in the real world, in real situations. Therefore, most of the language teachers think whether it is enough to teach the language using the course book tasks, which are regarded artificial because they are designed for teaching purposes only, or if they should adopt using authentic materials to scaffold learners’ learning process in general and develop reading skills in particular. Authentic materials are among the most important tools a teacher can and must use in class in order to make his/her teaching go smoothly and be effective in transmitting the necessary knowledge to all students. In this article is given some details and points of using authentic materials while teaching foreign languages and  explained some challenges of applying this in the classroom.