The Application of Authentic Listening Materials in EFL Classes

Fan Renshui?Li Panpan

Introduction

As the widely used of English in a wide range of areas around the world， more and more concerns about the practicability of receptive skills like listening and speaking was attached attention by learners and educators. In the meantime， the issue of whether authentic input material should be applied in English language teaching caused heated debate in recently decades.

The merits of using authentic material in teaching listening

The term authenticity of listening text was defined by specialists as “the language produced by native speakers for native speakers”（Gilmore， 2007， p.4）， “a real language produced by a real speaker for real audience and designed to convey a real message of some sort”（Morrow， 1985， p.13）. As these extracts generated naturally in everyday life， therefore they usually has not been graded for suit different levels of EFL students.

The using of authentic texts in teaching listening has a number of advantages for learners and teachers. Firstly， the language used in authentic texts is close to real life might interest learners. As the traditional listening material in textbook usually provide learners contrived， artificial taped dialogues or models， which created for some purpose like grammar or linguistic points， thus the excessive using of this sort of material may bore students， as listening to a foreign language in the same sound， rhyme， pitch and speed can be dull.

As the fundamental of speaking， listening to authentic passages can help learners grasp the way native speakers communicate. According to Nunan （1996）， most people keep the opinion that knowing well a second language means one has the ability to speak and write in that language， however， they ignored that without comprehensible input， learners are not be expected to produce genuine output of the target language. Therefore the authentic listening material plays a vital role in learning spoken language.

Another particularly worth mentioning advantage of authentic material of listening is the flexibility of up-to-date， which could help learners to be better listeners. The fixed textbook materials have some limitations that can be compensated by authentic ones. Firstly， the selected authentic material can be adjusted to suit for students from different background， proficiency levels and ages. Secondly， the modernization of authentic material provides the highly used language around the world from time to time， which fixed textbook material cannot. Finally， the authentic material exposed learners many varieties of different accent and dialects.

The demerits of using authentic material in teaching listening

Firstly， the careless chosen of authentic material can be extremely demotivating for students （Harmer， 2001）. As the authentic material are not designed for EFL students， they generally has not been graded and simplified to fit the learners level， therefore， it might be contains plenty of colloquial vocabularies that less likely to be familiarized by learners.

Secondly， the authentic listening texts pay less attention to grammatical structures or linguistic points than the textbook material. As the authentic texts are often extracted come from real life， thus it usually give exposure of natural communicative language to learners， rather than specific language focus.

Other than that， the authentic material chosen would be time-consuming and load off work for instructors. Choosing appropriate authentic material are not easy.Finding out the authentic material need to not only suit for the ongoing class program， but also have to both interesting and accessible is time-consuming.

Countermeasures for drawbacks

Although a several number of disadvantages were suggested by educators， the merits of authentic material are obviously far outweigh than demerits， and the countermeasures which aim to cope with the disadvantages were proposed continuously in recent years. For the problem of learners may daunted by failing to comprehend the rarely used words or phrases， Field （1998） pointed out the learners are not demotivated if they are told that not to expect to understand every single word in advance. Indeed， learners will get back the sense of achievement if they can extract information from an ungraded material. For students who have difficulty in adjusting authentic materials， Harmer （2001） suggested that it is better to pre-teach some features of authentic conversations to learners and ask them to try to transcribe them， or provide supporting on playing tapes more than once， or let learners control the tape recorder. Tips for dealing with difficult accents were also illustrated by Harmer （1998）， the teacher suppose to introduce characters of different accents to the learners， and encourage learners to guess the background and general meaning after the initial time of listening.

【作者簡介】Fan Renshui， Li Panpan， Zhengzhou University of Science and Technology.