Authentic Materials: Enhancing Students' Engagement in Learning - Essay Sample

Introduction

Often, the authentic materials bring students in direct interaction with the language in connection to real-life experiences, with a proper exposure into the real world of communication delivers a proper and ideal opportunity for the learners to acquire language (Erbaggio et al., 2016). Through the use of oral or listening authentic materials, the students are more engaged in the classroom similar to the video materials in the classroom offer students with an opportunity to understand and perceive different verbal elements of communication such as body language, facial expressions, among others (Erbaggio et al., 2016). Also, students could listen to different conversations as offered by the different authentic materials based on the learning objective. Primarily, authentic materials motivate students into learning the different elements of language, structure and grammar rules, and vocabulary from the textbook learning material (Erbaggio et al., 2016).

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Reasons for the Selection of This Text and the 12 Vocabulary Items

I selected this for three main reasons. First, the authentic material is a proper guide and is relevant to the advanced level learners. It means, with the complexity and content included in the materials, the 15 advanced learners can understand and relate with the material significantly. Second, the authentic material meets the educational requirement for every advanced learners' materials by providing critical information to the learners. Third, the authentic material functions as a challenging material that pushes for critical thinking among the students. The reason for my vocabulary selection is based on the fact that the vocabulary increases comprehension, which is the ultimate goal for reading and improves reading, writing, and speaking.

However, I adopted the material "WWII: eighty years on, the world is still haunted by a catastrophe foretold by Peter Beaumont" by making changes to the text. Within the changes, I removed the different historical stories because they were not part of the learning objective. Also, in explanation of the adoption of the material, I made the changes to ensure that the text met the criteria for the advanced learners as well as maintain the word count.

Why My Activities Would Be Appropriate for This Class

The activities included in the materials would be appropriate for this class in different ways, for example, the activities offer a connection of the authentic texts to real-life contexts since the learners need to see and understand how grammar is utilized in real-life interactions. In language, grammar should not be taught to the students as a testing objective, but it is meant to ensure that learners can correctly express their thoughts without the fear of contradiction. Also, I feel the activities I choose would be appropriate since they offer a significant learning experience for the advanced learners whereby each of the learners is engaged in the learning activity and ensure inclusive instruction.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using the Internet for Teaching and Language Resources

There is the availability of a vast collection of authentic materials which makes the internet suitable for teaching in the classroom setup, particularly reading (Sharma & Barrett, 2007). Traditionally, reading was associated with the grammatical translation method, whereby foreign language was taught to learners to enhance students reading abilities. However, today, language has been taught to warrant an emphasis on communicative competence since language is intended to enable and enhance communication. The internet accommodates other teaching materials for the teachers, which increases the possibilities of teaching different language skills through authentic materials. Also, through the use of the internet in language classrooms, students acquire proper information as they undertake tasks since there is a reliable source of information at their disposal with various language interactive software's or websites.

Nonetheless, the use of internet in the language classroom comes with limitations as well. For instance, students may hugely rely on the internet as some may opt to copy-paste information which could result in plagiarism, thus leading to poor writing and reading language skills (Sharma & Barrett, 2007). Often, the complex vocabularies could quickly push the students into neglecting the reading material due to difficulties in comprehending the reading.