Conf. univ. dr. NARCISA SCHWAR Z CANDID AT: Profesor: DIANA -MARIA MOLDOVAN Școala: GIMNAZIALĂ GAL ȘA, JUD. ARAD Arad 2015 1 UNIVERSITATEA DE VEST… [613492]

UNIVERSITATEA DE VEST VASILE GOLDI Ș, ARAD
DEPARTAMENTUL PENTRU PREGĂTIREA
PERSONALULUI
DIDACTIC

LUCRARE METODICO – ȘTIINȚIFICĂ
PENTRU OBȚINEREA GRADULUI
DIDACTIC I ÎN ÎNVĂȚĂMÂNT

COORDONATOR ȘTIINȚIFIC:
Conf. univ. dr. NARCISA SCHWAR Z

CANDID AT:
Profesor: DIANA -MARIA MOLDOVAN
Școala: GIMNAZIALĂ GAL ȘA, JUD. ARAD

Arad
2015

1 UNIVERSITATEA DE VEST VASILE GOLDI Ș, ARAD
DEPARTAMENTUL PENTRU PREGĂTIREA
PERSONALULUI
DIDACTIC

USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS IN TEACHING
ENGLISH

COORDONATOR ȘTIINȚ IFIC:
Conf . univ. dr. NARCISA SCHWARZ

CANDIDAT: [anonimizat]: DIANA -MARIA MOLDOVAN
Școala: GIMNAZIAL Ă GAL ȘA

Arad

2015

2 Table of Contents

Introduction…………………………………………….. …………………………………………………. P.5
Chapter I
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND………………………………………………………………… P.6
1. Reasons for learning a foreign language………………………………….. ………………… P.6
2. Approaches to teaching foreign languages…………………………………………………. P.8
2.1 The Grammar -Translation method…………………………………………………………… P.8
2.2 The Audio -Lingual approach………………………………………………………………….. P.8
2.3 The Communicative approach………………………………………………………………… P.10
2.4 The Post -Communicative turn………… ……………………………………………………… P.12
3. Teaching with authentic materials…………………………………………………………….. P.13
3.1 Authentic or genuine…………………………………………. ………………………………….. P.14
3.2 Classroom 's authenticity…………………………………………………………………………. P. 15
3.3 Classification of authentic materials……………………………………… …………………. P. 16
4. Advantages and disadvantages of using authentic materials………………………….. P. 16

Chapter II
AUTHENTIC MATERIALS AND LANGUAGE TEACHING………………………. . P.19
1. The question of motivation within using authentic materials…………………………. P.19
2. Characteristics of a good practice activity…………………………………………………… P.20
3. Authentic materials……………………………………………………………. ……………………. P.21
3.1 Sources of authentic materials…………………………………………………………………. P.22
3.2 Difficulty level…………………………………………………………………………… …………. P.23
3.3 Projects…………………………………………………………………………………………………. P.24
3.4 Short texts……………………………………………………………………………… …………….. P.26
3.5 Videos………………………………………………………………………………………………….. P.27
3.6 Reading and the use of films or TV…………………………………………………… ……… P.30
3.7 The Internet……………………………………………………………………………………………. P . 31
3.8 Pictures………………………………………………………………………………….. ……………… P.35
3.9 Simulation……………………………………………………………………………………………… P .36
3.10 Cultural aspect…………………………………………………………………….. ………………. P.38

Chapter III
THE TEACHING EXPLOITATION OF AUTHENTIC MATERIALS……………… P.39

3 Samples of lessons using authentic materials addressing the four skills………………. P.40

Chapter IV
ACTIVITIES DESIGNED TO USE AUTH ENTIC MATERIALS……………………. P.46
Didactic experiments ………………………………………………………………………………….. P.46

Conclusion……………………………………………………………….. ………………………………. P.72
Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………………….. P. 76
Bibliography…………………………………………………………….. ………………………………. P.81
Declaration…………………………………………………………………………………………………. P.85

––––––––––––––––-

4

Acknowledgements

I would like to give all my thanks to Associate Professor Narcisa Schwarz for the kind
guidance that she offered me as my supervisor. I appreciate her helpful advice, insightful
comments and most of all her enormous patience.

5 INTRODUCTION
I think it all started from the question How can I as a teacher motivate my students to learn
English ?. Even before graduating from university I found myself borrowing and buying many
English newspapers and magazines, always collecting articles that I thought my future pupils
would find interesting too.
English is, of course, a language, and as such is concerned primarily with
communication. But there is a lot more to it than that. Much of our daily life is spent
communicating with ot hers, either in writing or through the spoken word. Every time you
pick up a newspaper, magazine or book you are receiving a communication – a message from
the writer. The same is true of the spoken messages on the radio or television, on the
telephone and , of course, in face -to-face conversations.
I would also like to point out that the transition from home to school, whether it
occurs at a preschool or in kindergarten or grade one, marks an important turning point in
terms of language development. At ho me, children develop both their physical and
conversational skills in unstructured circumstances. Learning, although it is spontaneous and
unstructured, is nevertheless steady and involving for the children.
Choosing materials has always been a difficult task, as there are many aspects to be
aware of before choosing specific material for the student s. For example, if the level is
appropriate, the activities meaningful, the material helpful for the students to reach the stated
objectives, etc. However, ther e are other elements that are also important , but not commonly
represented in textbooks. For example, the point that readings should resemble the real use of
the language since pupils will eventually be exposed to authentic texts outside of the
classroom, among others.
Therefore , I decided to look closely at one of the alternative ways, the use of authentic
materials. I think that they are underestimated. I believe that if they were used more, English
teaching would be not only more effective, but also more interesting.
In the first part of my thesis, I am going to explore literature dealing with usage of
authentic materials and with some other important components that should be included in
teaching language which are somehow connected with authenticity.
In the second part of this work, I am going to describe my teaching project. I created it
for trying to implement authentic materials into teaching at secondary level.
Reading, writing, listening and speaking are all skills interrelated in a language
learni ng environment and they are essential for educational success. It is my opinion that if
pupils are given the opportunity to make choices and decisions about what they do, they will
be more motivated to engage with learning activities.

6 CHAPTER I
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1. REASONS FOR LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
I suppose all around the world, pupils of all ages are learning to speak English, but their
reasons can differ greatly. As Jeremy Harmer1 points out, for many years a distinction has
been made between people (or pupils) who study English as a a foreign language and those
who study it as a second or other language. It has been suggested that students of EFL
(English as a Foreign Language) tend to be learning so that they can use English when
travelling or to communicate with other people, from whatever country, who also speak
English. ESL (English as a Second Language) students, on the other hand, usually live in the
target language community. These speakers may need to learn the particular language vari ety
of that community. They may need to combine their learning of English with knowledge of
how to do things in the target language community, such as going to the bank, renting a flat,
doing shopping in a market, etc. The English they learn, therefore, ma y differ from that
studied by EFL students, whose needs are not so specific to a particular time and place.
However, since people use English in a global context, for international
communication, especially with the internet, it means that many EFL studen ts now live in a
global target language community, which means that they might be thought of as ESL
students. Partly as a result of this, nowadays the term ESOL (English for Speakers of Other
Languages) is used to describe both situations.
In fact, althou gh they may not be able to express themselves in English very well, the
ESL students one meets for the first time (especially very young learners) are, in fact,
experienced language users. Linguistically and conginitively, they are as well -developed as
their English speaking counterparts, but this development has taken place in another language
and culture. Professors Mary Ashworth and Patricia Wakefield enumerated some facts about
language that are important to keep in mind2:
 Language is a human universal. All cultural groups have a language system that
their members master in order to communicate with each other;
 Language is systematic . Every language has its own characteristic way of
combining sounds, words and sentences;
 No language is wholly regular . Exceptions to the rule are found in all languages;

1 Harmer, Jeremy. How to Teach English. Pearson Education Limited :2007, pag. 12 -13
2 Ashworth, Mary. Wakefield, Patricia. Growing up with English . Office of English Language Programs:2006,
pag.4 -5

7  All languages enable speakers to create new utterances. However, these
utterances must conform to the rules established over the centuries by speakers
of a particular language;
 Language is both creative and functional ; a speaker of any language can both
create and comprehend an infinite number of utterances based on a finite
number of rules. These utterances can cover a multitude of functions, such as
requesting, refusing, promising, warning, denying, agreein g, disagreeing and
expressing emotions.
 Languages change . For example, new words can be created to meet the
scientific and technological demands of the modern world.
 Human beings have an innate capacity to learn language. All children, unless
they are seve rely neurologically impaired, are capable of learning a language.
 Language can be non -verbal as well as verbal . Facial expressions, gestures and
other body movements may convey messages, the meanings of which are
culturally specific.
 Language and culture a re closely related. Customs, traditions, values, stories,
religion, history and other manifestations of culture are transmitted to a large
extent through language.
 Language and thought are closely related . Children and adults use language to
share their t houghts and to expand and clarify concepts.
I think that, although there are many similarities between the way first and second languages
are acquired, there are also important differences that we cannot ignore. All children are
highly motivated to learn language. Surrounded by love and attention, encouraged and
complimented for all their vocal efforts, they continually make every attempt to
communicate. Children learning a second language, however, my not feel the same urgency
to communicate in English as their English -speaking counterparts. They can already make
themselves understood in their home language. Their initial efforts to speak English at school
may be met not with praise and encouragement, but with misunderstanding and ridicule. In
addition, they may hear English only at school, never at home, so that their exposure to
comprehensible input is limited.

2. APPROACHES TO TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES
It is important to start by reminding the approaches to teaching foreign languages, which have
gone hand in hand with the face of society, the basic pedagogical concepts of the age and the

8 characteristic needs of the students3. Several successive generations of approaches can be
distinguished:
 The grammar – translation method approach;
 The audio -lingual approach;
 The communicative approach; and
 The post -communicative turn.

2.1 THE GRAMMAR -TRANSLATION METHOD
The grammar -translation method seems to be one of the oldest methods used by teachers all
over the world and, as the name suggests, it relies on the acquisition of language by learning
vocabulary and grammar rules with translation as the main operational technique. When I
started learning English, in my first years as a secondary school pupil, it was the method
favoured by my teacher, so there woul d be a model reading of a text by the teacher, followed by
the pupils reading with correction from the teacher, the deductive presentation of grammar (the
rule was explained, then illustrated on the blackboard), translation of the text into the the mother
tongue and reading comprehension questions to check or facilitate understanding by the pupils.
I think this approach has obvious strong points, but we cannot focus on a method which,
almost completely, considers listening and speaking of secondary importa nce.
The grammar -translation method was the generally accepted method for teaching foreign
languages up until the 1950s. But much before that time, people began to realise that their
knowledge of the foreign language was not operational and failed them wh en they needed it
most.4

2.2 THE AUDIO -LINGUAL APPROACH
As it became obvious that pupils needed to be equipped with a different kind of knowledge of
the foreign language, one that should serve them as a useful tool in the real world, the language
teachers of the second quarter of the 20th century set out to develop a new type of approach to
teaching foreign languages. The basic character of the new teaching models was audio -lingual5.
Many of our pupils want to be able to understand what people are saying to them in
English, either face to face, on TV or on the radio, on CDs or on other recorded media. It is
worth remembering that successful spoken communication depends not just on our ability to
speak, but also on the effectiveness of the way we listen6. Consequently, the audio -lingual

3 Vizental, Adriana. Strategie s of Teaching and Testing . Ed. Orizonturi Universitare: 2003, pag.21
4 Vizental, Adriana. Strategies of Teaching and Testing . Ed. Orizonturi Universitare:2003, pag.23
5 Vizental, Adriana. Strategies of Teaching and Testing . Ed. Orizonturi Universitare:2003 , pag.24
6 Harmer, Jeremy. How to Teach English . Pearson Education Limited: 2007, pag.133

9 teacher has a new image: he/she is no longer rigid and critical, but friendly and supportive;
he/she no longer sits/stands in front of the class, but moves among the pupils and participates in
their activities. In addition, i n order to encourage the pupils in their attempts to speak the
language, the teacher is less critical in the way that he/she tries to smile and praise the pupil for
the least of their success in any activity.
There are some basic ideas on which this metho d relies:
 The teacher and the learners will use only the target language;
 There needs to be a contextual presentation of vocabulary and grammar;
 Habit formation is very important.
The main supporter of the audio -lingual method was J. Skinner, who considere d that foreign
language learning is a process of habit formation through acquisition of specific language skills.
If language is introduced in the form of patterns and structures, mistakes are avoided and good
habits are formed. It was proved that a well -drilled pattern turns automatically into a linguistic
habit. Skinner suggested that the patterns should be taught in a series of small steps: stimulus –
response -reinforcement.
I have personally experienced this kind of approach by using chunks of language. By
definition, a chunk is a string of words that we can find in our memory as a ready -made unit7.
Knowing lots of chunks contributes to fluent speaking and writing because we can just pluck the
out of our memories whole, without having to mentally construc t them word by word.
Consistent with the opinion that students should not be coerced and made to do a lot of
work, an audio -lingual class aims at teaching little, but well. The typical text is the situational
dialogue, generally preceded by a short descrip tive passage. The initial passage introduces the
situation, basic vocabulary and grammatical structures, while the situational dialogue presents a
typical conversation for the given situation. The texts are short enough to be drilled until the
pattern is m emorised and becomes habitual. By providing pupils with a large number of such
situational dialogues, the audio -linguists believed that they could equip them with proper tool to
cope with all kind of real life situations.
In the case of learning vocabulary , it was insisted that it should be taught in context, as
should be taught grammar. Therefore, grammar must be taught contextually with the help of
visuals (possibly funny) and patterns.
It is largely believed that the audio -lingual approach brought about considerable
improvements to the teaching of foreign languages, in the way it was directed towards real life
usage, in the way the teacher -pupil relationship was approached. However, pupils did not seem

7 Lindstromberg, Seth and Boers, Frank. T eaching Chunks of Language . Helbling Languages: 2008, pag.8

10 to actually interact and make up their own dialogues and gradually this kind of language
learning became inappropriate for the needs of the modern man.

2.3 THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH
From the 1970s the new approach to language teaching was the communicative approach,
which had some teaching models, such as the functional -notional approach, the total -physical
response, the co mpetency -based approach, etc. The major characteristic of the functional –
notional approach to language teaching is a sensitivity to the individual needs of students. Based
on the idea th at the ability to use real, appropriate language to communicate with others is the
primary goal of most foreign language learning, the design of a functional -notional curriculum
contributes to the goal of communication and interaction from the first day of study. Major
emphasis is placed on the communicative purposes of a speech act.
Originally developed by James Asher, an American professor of psychology8, in the
1960s, Total Physical Response (TPR) is based on the theory that the memory is enhanced
through association with physical movement. It is also closely associated with theories of
mother tongue language acquisition in very young children, where they respond physically to
parental commands, such as "Pick it up" and "Put it down". TPR as an approach to teaching a
second language is based, first and foremost, on listening and this is linked to physical actions
which are designed to reinforce comprehension of particular basic items. In the primary classes,
it is one of the methods I tend to use most of the time, combined with songs and rhymes.
Since it has become one of the most favoured approach by teachers worldwide, it is
important to highlight that the communicative approach to foreign language teaching relies on
premises9, such as:
 the ultimate aim of foreign language teaching is to develop the communicative
competence;
 developing language skills is more important than teaching content;
 communication has a social purpose, so students need a purpose for producing language;
 students ' freedom and creat ivity are encouraged in producing language;
 meaning becomes more important than form and fluency of language is as important as
linguistic accuracy, while errors are perceived as a natural part of learning and , as long
as the speaker manages to get his/he r message through, the teacher should not interfere
to correct mistakes;
 communicative teaching grants primacy to oral skills;

8 http://www.onestopenglish.com/support/methodology/teaching -approaches/teaching -approaches -total-
physical -response/146503.article
9 Vizental, Adriana. Strategies of Teaching and Testing . Editura Orizonturi Universitare:2003, pag.30 -35

11  improvised, spontaneous practice is more efficient than mechanical repetition;
 communication is basically interactive, therefore communicative techniques, such as
simulation, role -play, debate, are efficient classroom procedures for language learning;
 language must be learned with the help of authentic material, therefore the teacher will
use linguistic material similar to the one l earners may actually come across later on;
Hence, the major difference between traditional and communicative teaching resides in the
different attitude towards the ultimate aim of the educational process. Traditional language
teaching is based on content, focusing on information and quantitative acquisition, on learning
with emphasis on the accuracy of the language produced. Communicative teaching is based on
skills, focusing on formation by developing abilities. It is also reflected in the textbooks, where
one can find lessons or units of similar difficulty, built around a unifying idea or language
function. The typical text in the communicative approach is the authentic material, coming form
a wide range of discourses of native speakers.
It is believed tha t the communicative teacher ’s aim is to develop students ’ productive
skills, so the texts only provide a framework for the activities that follow. Since great emphasis
is placed on interaction, the students will be given the opportunity to practice the lin guistic
material in tasks that simulate real -world communicative interactions.
Professor Vizental has summarised the strengths and weaknesses of the three generations
of approaches to teaching as follows10:
Weaknesses Strengths
Grammar –
Translation
Meth od – language learning is rather boring;
– extensive use of mother tongue;
– focus on grammar, on reading and
writing; oral skills neglected;
– little or no communication, therefore
inability to create communicative
competence. – gives learners access to E nglish
Literature and culture and develops their
mind through foreign language learning;
Builds the grammar, reading, vocabulary
and translation skills necessary to pass
tests and exams.
Audio -lingual
Approach – does not lead to long -term
communicative co mpetence;
– emphasis on surface forms, not on
deep structures;
– disregard for affective and
interpersonal factors. – quick success, immediate rsults;
– Focus on ability to think in the foreign
language;
– Habit formation through pattern
practice repetitio n and drilling;

10 Vizental, Adriana. Strategies of Teaching and Testing. Editura Orizonturi Universit are:2003, pag. 38

12 Communicative
Language
Teaching – acquisition of bad linguistic habits
due to too little concern with grammar
– too little learning is achieved;
– focus on the learning process,
disregard for the content of learning;
– focus on oral comm unication; – focus on communicative competence,
on meaning and fluency, rather than on
form and accuracy;
– exploring pedagogical means for real –
life communication in the classroom;

2.4 THE POST – COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH
The needs of the language lear ners and language teaching technology changed along with the
digital revolution that emerged in the late 20th century. It is clear that the strengths and
weaknesses of the previous approaches have been analysed by teachers and the new approaches
view langu age as:
 Task -oriented: language learning must focus on meaning and authentic activities; the
learners must be taught to use the language to construct and negotiate meaning;
 Content -oriented: language learning is successful if the content of learning is com patible
with the learner's world knowledge and personal experience;
 Collaborative: learning is achieved through social interaction;
 Cognitive: language learning or awareness must go hand in hand with cultural
awareness, that is the student must be taught t o differentiate between his/her mother
tongue patterns and those of the target culture;
 They encourage learner autonomy: the learner must be aware of the processes and
strategies of language learning and he/she must control his/her own learning and
constru ct his/her own knowledge.
Obviously, while relying basically on the principles and techniques of communicative teaching,
post-communicative teachers have tried to use and adapt the strategies and procedures of the
more traditional approaches to their own r equirements. For example, beginners, who need
acquisition of language, may benefit from the techniques of the audio -lingual methods,
situational dialogues, grammar drills, repetition and memorisation, all lead to good linguistic
habits.
Communicative acti vities can be set at all levels, the students will be forced to develop
the text and interact with one another, express thoughts and feelings, negotiate meanings. By
using authentic material, setting up real -world like situations, activating the students' personal
experience and involving them emotionally, the teacher creates a positive atmosphere that
facilitates learning. The value of writing is also rediscovered, because writing tasks can now be

13 task-based: students must fill in a form or fill out an ap plication form, order a product from a
catalogue, find information on the internet, etc.

3. TEACHING WITH AUTHENTIC MATERIALS
In language teaching, there are many approaches and methods leading to students’ foreign
language acquisition. These approaches are meant to prepare students to be able to use a
foreign or second language accurately and properly. For this purpose a variety of sources of
the target language is used. Among the other sources, it is recommended to use the authentic
materials in order to pr ovide students with the benefits they can get from being exposed to the
language in such materials11.
There are many references to authentic materials and their definitions in the ELT
literature. Sometimes, these definitions differ from each other in the ve ry basis , but mostly
they coincide . For better understanding of the term “authentic material“ several definitions
and their authors are to be mentioned. First is one of the most common definitions of
authentic materials coming from Harmer , who defines auth entic texts as “materials which are
designed for native speakers; they are real texts; designed not for language students, but for
the speakers of the language”12. Peacock adds his opinion when he describes authentic
materials as "materials that have been produced to fulfill some social purpose in the language
community"13. They can then be used in the classroom without being changed in any way for
EFL students. What we understand that is common in these definitions is “exposure to real
language and its use in its own community” 14.
We can sum it up by saying that using authentic materials simply means using
examples of language produced by native speakers for some real purpose of their own rather
than using language produced and designed solely for the class room. Anybody who takes into
the classroom a newspaper article, an advertisement, a pop song, a strip cartoon, or even a bus
ticket, is using authentic materials. Teachers have always introduced such realia into their
classrooms, and always will. The quest ion really is whether it is helpful to their students .
Nunan thinks that a rule of thumb for authenticity here is any material, which has not
been specifically produced for the purposes of language teaching15. Based on these
definitions, we can find the r eal meaning of authentic materials: they are real language;

11 Oura, G. K. Authentic task -based materials: bringing the real world into the classroom :2012 Retrieved
from: http://www.esoluk.co.uk/calling/pdf/Authentic_Task_Based_Materials.pdf
12 Harmer, Jeremy. The Practice of English Language Teach ing. Longman: 1991
13 Peacock, Martin. The Effect of Authentic Materials on the Motivation of EFL Learners . Retrieved from ELT
Journal, Volume 51/April 1997
14 Widdowson, H.G. Teaching Language as Communication. Oxford University Press:1990
15 Nunan, D. Desig ning Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge University Press:1989

14 produced for the native speakers; designed without the teaching purposes. In this sense, there
is a large amount of authentic materials in our life such as newspaper and magazine articles,
TV and radio broadcast, daily conversations, meetings, documents, speech, and films. One of
the most useful is the Internet. Whereas newspapers and other materials date very quickly, the
Internet is continuously updated, more visually stimulating as well as inter active.

3.1 Authentic or Genuine
Alejandro G. Martinez, a publishing consultant and the coordinator of academic services for
Cambridge University Press in the Spanish Speaking America and an author of many articles
concerning language teaching, mentions t he point of view of Henry G. Widdowson, an
authority in the field of applied linguistics and language teaching. Widdowson points out the
difference between the terms «authentic» and «genuine material». He explains that authentic
materials are those designe d for native speakers of English that have not been changed in any
way, whereas the genuine materials are intended for foreign language learners and therefore
adapted to meet the current specific needs when used in English language classes. Being
aware of the difference, Widdowson considers the choice of materials used in class: “It has
been traditionally supposed that the language presented to learners should be simplified in
some way for easy access and acquisition.
Nowadays there are recommendations tha t the language presented should be
authentic”16. According to researches there have been established four types of authenticity.
First, we have authenticity of the texts, which we may use as input data for our learners.
Second is the authenticity of the lear ners’ own interpretation of such texts, third is the
authenticity of the tasks conducive to language learning and fourth is the authenticity of the
actual social situation of the language classroom .
On these four examples David Taylor from the University o f Leeds bases a debate
about authenticity17. He reminds that complaints about in-authenticity or artificiality often
seem to ignore all these different types of authenticity, assuming that there is some sort of
global and absolute notion of authenticity whi ch can only exist if all the above types of
authenticity are simultaneously present. But authenticity is clearly a relative matter and
different aspects of it can be present in different degrees. Taylor further questions the realness
used in textbooks. For example , the question Who is this? is very rarely used in a realistic
situation. Moreover, wanting to know who a person is immediately after being told his name
is also unnatural.

16 Widdowson, H.G. Teaching Language as Communication . Oxford University Press:1990, pag 169
17Taylor, D. Inauthentic Authenticity or Authentic Inauthenticity? :1994 Retrieved from:
http://www.zait.uni -bremen.de/wwwgast/tesl_ej/ej02/a.1.html

15 Generally, the dialogues in textbooks are very artificial, because if the teacher and the pupils
were in a real situation then the teacher would know the answers to his questions and would
therefore not ask them. The questions that he asks are therefore not genuine questions.

3.2 Classroom’s Authenticity
Taylor also evokes to t ake into consideration the great variety that characterizes language use,
different contexts, purposes, topics, participants, and so forth, it is not at all clear how we
might go about distinguishing real life from non -real life language use in any meaning ful
way, so these attempts to characterize authenticity in terms of real life performance are
problematic.
But more than that , the classroom creates its own authenticity. Classroom language
is a real use of language, and we cannot just dismiss the classroo m setting and all that takes
place in it as being by definition artificial. Furthermore, Taylor also indicates that learners, in
their capacity as knowers and users of language, are quite capable of extrapolating from the
classroom situation, and that cons equently we need not be worried about the so -called
artificiality of the classroom situation. He suggests that we need to remember that the
language classroom is there to promote language learning. If we take activities where it is
said that there is genui ne communication, for example information gap type exercises, they
are authentic in one sense, in that genuine communication takes place, but the whole thing is
still contrived, in the sense that it is aimed at language learning. This does not matter becau se
the learners have the sense to know what is going on and they are used to the classroom
situation and to the kind of activities that go on there. They can distinguish between skill –
getting and skill -using, as we have already noted (and even recognize th at these can go on
simultaneously), they can create their own authenticity in the classroom.
Widdowson adds to this by making the point about the essential artificiality of
pedagogy itself: "For the whole point of pedagogy is that it is a way of short -circuiting the
slow process of natural discovery and can make arrangements for learning to happen more
easily and more efficiently than it does in natural surroundings. That is what schools are for,
whatever subject we are dealing with. Pedagogy is bound to b e a contrivance: that is precisely
its purpose. If what went on in classrooms exactly replicated the conditions of the world
outside, there would be no point in pedagogy at all"18.

3.3 Classification of Authentic Materials
If authentic materials are to be introduced in language teaching, they need to be classified

18 Widdowson, H.G. Teaching Language as Communication . Oxford University Press:1990, pag 163

16 first in order to meet objectives of the lesson. The teachers should be aware of the different
types of such materials , since some of them are suitable for the teaching of reading or
listening , which are receptive skills , whereas some of them are more suitable and effective for
the teaching of speaking or writing, which are the productive skills. Some of them are
suitable for teaching and developing grammatical structures or vocabulary. The authent ic
materials can be classified as follows , according to one classification19:
1. Authentic Listening/ Viewing Materials – such as TV commercials, quiz shows,
cartoons, movies, professionally audio -taped short stories and songs, documentaries, or sales
pitch es.
2. Authentic Visual Materials – such as slides, photographs, paintings, wordless street
signs, pictures from magazines, postcard pictures, or wordless picture books.
3. Authentic Printed Materials – such as newspaper articles, movie advertisements,
astrology columns, sports reports, advice columns, lyrics to songs, restaurant menus, street
signs, cereal boxes, tourist information brochures, university catalogues, telephone books,
TVguides, comic books, pins with messages, or bus schedules.
4. Realia (“R eal world“ objects) used in EFL/ ESL classrooms – such as coins and
currency, folded paper, wall clocks, phones, Halloween masks, dolls, and puppets, to name a
few. (Real ia are often used to illustrate points very visually or for role -play).

4. ADVANTAGE S AND DISADVANTAGES OF USING AUTHENTIC MATERIALS
Advantages of using authentic materials
As I have mentioned before, using authentic materials, if exploited appropriately, may
provide students with several important benefits in different fields of study: l inguistics
(practice of grammatical structures, phonology helping with pronunciation) semantics
(extension of the range of vocabulary, practicing of how meaning is inferred from words and
concepts), pragmatics (practicing of how meaning is inferred from co ntext) and cultural
studies (life and culture in English speaking countries) .
Students are exposed to real life situations with real life discourse. Those real life
situations are unsolicited, spontaneous, natural and covering a wide spectrum of levels of
formality and genres. Such materials can be used several times under different circumstances,
each time practicing various aspects of language. Using such materials may positively
motivate students in further studying. And last but not least, exposing stud ents to real life
language can shorten the distance between the learners and the target language used in reality .

19 Lingzhu, J. And Yuanyuan, Z. The use of authentic materials in teaching EFL
Listening :2010 Retrieved fr om: http://www.hltmag.co.uk/aug10/mart03.htm

17 Flowerdew and Peacock present another three arguments in favour of authentic
materials. They claim that non -authentic texts cannot represent real-world language use, that
simplified materials often lose some meaning and the real -world situations the learners will
face are best prepared for with authentic texts.20
David Heitler, author of exhaustive article Teaching with Authentic Materials21,
names as an advantage the fact, that authentic materials bring learners into direct contact with
the reality and with real English, that is, English as it is used by people to communicate with
other people and it can be a great motivator. Secondly, he adds th at authentic materials drawn
from periodicals are always up -to-date and constantly being updated. They not only practice
English, they also update our learners so that, at the end of their English lessons, they are
better informed. Also, the English langua ge itself is constantly developing and changing, so
working with up -to-date materials not only mean s that the content of the material is up -to-
date, it also means the language itself is up -to date.
It would be really beneficial if the school could have a s ubscription to a British
periodical, or create a library with newspapers, magazines, leaflets, brochures and other
materials donated by different people.
Authentic materials can produce a sense of achievement, for example , a brochure on
England given to students to plan a visit. Author A. G. Martinez states that “reading texts are
ideal to teach/practice mini-skills such as scanning, for example students are given a news
article and asked to look for specific information (amounts, percentages, etc.), basi c students
listen to news reports and they are asked to identify the names of countries, famous people,
etc. (ability to detect key words)”22.
Another point of view on the advantages of using authentic materials is to divide them
into three main groups: exp osing students to real language, stimulating and increasing
students motivation and accumulating students` knowledge .
The most important aspect of choosing those materials is to provide students with a
natural language. Authentic materials include a wide v ariety of text types and language styles,
from a very formal style, such as legal documents, to less formal, such as newspaper articles,
to colloquial language, such as comic books. Such styles are sometimes very difficult to find
in traditional teaching m aterials.
Concerning the grammatical structures, the sentences in written authentic materials are

20 Flowerdew, J. and Peacock, M. Research perspectives on English for academic purposes. Cambridge
University Press :2001
21 Heitler, D. Teaching with Authentic Materials. Pearson Longman Education :2004. Retrieved f rom:
http://www.pearsonlongman.com/intelligent_business/images/teachers_resourse/Pdf4.pdf
22 Martinez, A. G. Authentic materials: an overview :2002, pag. 165 Retrieved from
http://members.shaw.ca/elliottsite/pdfs/AuthenticMaterialsAn Overview.pdf

18 very well -formed with few if any mistakes, which gives the students a possibility of acquiring
language structures in a natural way. Furthermore, appropriate materials can always be found
for all levels. Authentic materials can be used for practicing a large variety of skills.

Disadvantages of using authentic materials
To present the authentic materials also from the opposite point of view, we should name the
disadvantages as well. Obviously, using authentic materials can be risky if the methodology
is not carefully chosen because it is not always easy to use journals, magazines, documents
from companies and other real sources, on a daily basis, especially with beginners. This may
be due, among other things, to the difficulties presented by the language. In fact, such
material will often have to be edited (and sometimes even discarded), in order for there to be
a suitable match between learner and material lear ned.
Any one authentic text may not be authentic for a specific class, just because a text is
authentic does not mean it is relevant, and authentic texts are often too difficult linguistically.
Preparing authentic materials for use in the classroom can be very time consuming.
Some authentic materials may be too culturally biased and therefore unnecessarily
difficult to be understood outside the language community. Also there are many headlines,
adverts, signs, and so on that can require good knowledge of t he cultural background. Same
might be applied to the vocabulary in general, which might not be relevant to the student’s
immediate needs.
While working with the written materials, too many structures are mixed and so lower
levels might have a hard time dec oding the texts. Some confusion could be also caused by too
many different accents while working with authentic audio materials.
Another reason for avoiding such materials may be the teachers’ uncertainty about
finding appropriate authentic materials that will fit the needs of the lesson.
It has been suggested that, unless one has a clear purpose in mind as well as a personal
approach that permits the adaptation of most authentic materials, using them in the classroom
might prove not to be effective. Likewi se, a teacher needs to incorporate authentic texts that
are locally meaningful.

19
CHAPTER II
AUTHENTIC MATERIALS AND LANGUAGE TEACHING

1. The Question of Motivation within Using Authentic Materials
Perhaps the most important reason for using the aut hentic materials is the students' motivation
and interest. One of the powerful arguments for learning a new language is to get closer to its
speakers, to understand them better and take part in their lives, in other words the integrative
motivation.
Authe ntic materials utilize this motivation very strongly “by their ordinariness and
flavour of everyday life; they seem exotic and exciting, the very stuff of strange foreign
life”23. For students who have this motivation, authentic materials are a highly effec tive way
of bringing the target culture closer; this is as near to participation as they will get without
actually living in the country. The content of the materials may not matter very much and it
may not even worry them whether they understand it or not , provided it keeps their interest in
the foreign culture alive.
Therefore, learner’s interest should always be taken into consideration when selecting
authentic materials. As Lingzhu, J. And Yuanyuan, Z. put it: “An applied linguist once said
that it’s no good trying to get your students fascinated by a text on the latest art movies if they
are all fans of action films. You might as well save your time and energy and just use the
textbook , since some of them are nicely designed for communicative activities . So it’s
necessary for teachers to know students’ likes and dislikes on listening materials and it’s wise
for them to make a survey among students before the selection”24.
Finally, in accordance with learning for global understanding, the topics taught at
school should always relate to the real world outside the class. The objective of each subject
should be the accumulation of students’ knowledge, their connection between each other and
the connection between the school and the real world. Using authentic materials can extend
the students’ knowledge in different fields of human life, such as culture, environment or
fashion. It provides useful information concerning communication and understanding across
cultures, it may help to facilitate cultural adaptatio n or it may help them to true up their world
knowledge as a whole. In general, it keeps student s informed about what is happening in the
world .

23 Cook, V. Using Authentic Materials in the Classroom . 1981 Retrieved from
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Papers/AuthMat81.htm
24 Lingzhu, J. And Yuanyuan, Z. The use o f authentic materials in teaching EFL Listening : 2010 Retrieved
from: http://www.hltmag.co.uk/aug10/mart03.htm

20 To sum up, bringing authentic materials into the classroom can be motivating for the
students, as it adds a real -life element to the student’s learning experience .
Authentic materials are significant since they may increase students’ motivation for
learning and make the learners be exposed to the “real” language.
However, as teachers we should always remember to bea r in mind the task, not the
material. This means that, for example, instead of asking a beginner student to read a full –
page article that’s over their heads, we should ask them to read the headline and guess what
the article will be about .

2. Characterist ics of a Good Practice Activity
Penny Ur summarised some characteristics for activities which need to be kept in mind when
the teacher designs those activities focusing on any of the four language learning skills25, as
follows:
 Validity . The activity should activate learners primarily in the skill or system it claims to
practice. Many speaking activities, for example, have students listening to the teacher
more than speaking;
 Pre-learning. Learners should have a good preliminary grasp of the language they ar e
required to practice. If they are asked to do a practice activity based on something they
have not yet begun to learn, they will either not be able to do it at all, or they will
produce unsuccessful responses;
 Volume/Amount – think of a container and fil ling it: the more language the learners
actually engage with during the activity, the more practice in it they will get. Time when
learners are not engaging is time wasted. And there are many reasons for learners not to
be engaging, from the fact that noth ing is demanded of them at that moment, because
they are using their mother tongue, to the fact that they are occupied with classroom
management or some other distraction;
 Success -orientation . It is important for teachers to select, design and administer p ractice
activities in such a way that learners are likely to succeed in doing the task. Repeated
successful performance results in effective automatisation of the language and
reinforcement of learners' self image as successful language learners. But we sh ould bear
in mind that success does not mean perfection. A class may engage successfully with
language practice in groups where some mistakes do occur. This may be preferable to
teacher monitored whole -class practice where accuracy is sought after, because it
provides more volume and opportunities for active participation by most of the class;

25 Ur, Penny. A Course in Language Teaching . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1996.

21  Heterogeneity. A good practice activity provides opportunities for the different levels
within a class to practice. If you invite response only at one level of knowle dge, a large
proportion of your class will not benefit. It is important to provide weak learners with
sample response and provide more advanced learners the opportunity to expand, by
using, for example more complex ore interesting statements;
 Teacher assis tance. The main function of the teacher, after planning and giving
instructions for the activity, is to help the learners do it successfully. Assisting students
increases their chances of success and the effectiveness of the activity. Forms of such
assista nce may be allowing time to think, making answers easier through giving hints or
guiding questions, confirming beginnings of responses to encourage continuations, and in
groups, moving around the class to be available for the above or to answer questions. The
teacher' s message needs to be: I want you to succeed and I am doing my best to see that
you do so.
 Interest. The practice might be boring if it is only concerned about getting the answer
right or if there is a lot of repetition. Interest can come from other aspects, such as an
interesting topic, the need to convey meaningful information, making it game -like, using
attractive materials, appealing to learners' feelings or their intellect.

3. Authentic Materials
Authentic Materials: An Overview by Alejandr o G. Martinez deals with the term authentic
materials itself and with advantages and disadvantages of their use as well as possible sources
of them.
Authentic materials: “Sometimes called “authentic” or “contextualized”, real -life
materials are those that a student encounters in everyday life but that weren’t created for
educational purposes. They include newspapers, magazines, and Web sites, as well as
driver’s manuals, utility bills, pill bottles, and clothing labels.”26
Martinez mentions Widdowson’s diffe rentiation between authentic and genuine
materials. Authentic materials are materials created for native speaker of the language and use
in a class in its original form and design. In other words, they are not changed in any way.
Whereas genuine materials are authentic materials adapted for a class, e. g. jumbled
paragraphs, cut out headlines etc. Martinez listed following pluses and minuses:
Advantages:
– Students are exposed to real language

26 Martinez , Alejandro. Authentic Materials: An Overview [online]. Mexico City: 2002. Available at
<www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/ authenticmaterials .html>

22 – There is factual acquisition from most of them
– Textbooks do not in clude inaccurate language
– Authentic materials may be inspirational for some students
– One piece of text may be used for various activities and tasks
– There is a wide choice of styles, genres and formality in authentic texts
– They can motivate students to read for pleasure

Disadvantages:
– Authentic texts may be difficult to understand because of a culture gap
– The vocabulary may be not exactly what the students need
– They are rather difficult for beginners
– Preparation of the texts and activities is often demandin g and time consuming
– There are many various accents and dialects in listenings
– The materials become outdated quickly (news)

3.1 Sources of authentic materials
Newspapers, menus, magazines, the Internet, TV programs, movies, CDs, songs, brochures,
comics, literature (novels, poems and short stories), catalogues, leaflets, tickets, postcards,
bills, receipts, wrappings, recipes, business cards, labels, stamps, etc. Here are some of the
titles that I have used for my students:
The Spectator – mostly for the cartoons and for the Books and Arts Reviews, also available
online at www.spectator.co.uk .
Time magazine -issues of this magazine are available at local newsagents ' and also online at
www.time.com
Newsweek magazine – http://europe.newsweek.com/
The Daily Telegraph – printed issues or available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
– the Internet
– library
There is usually an English department in every city or school library. There can be found not
only books, but also magazines and music.
– a foreign country
When visiting an English speaking country, one should think about the great opportunity to
get authentic materials.

23

3.2 Difficulty level
On British Council web pages, there are described some aspects of using authentic materials.
One of them is the difficulty level of such materials. The trick is to set the task according to
the level of the students, not to choose the material according to the students’ level .
However, for lower levels are suitable leaflets, menus, timetables, video and audio
advertisements, short reports, short news. The tasks should be rather simple and vocabulary
should b e introduced in advance. Excessive materials for intermediate levels can be longer
articles and news or reports, whole TV programmes. The vocabulary should be pre -taught,
too. With advanced students, any authentic material can be used. Pre -teaching is not
necessary, but it is good to have some explanations and definitions prepared.
Claire Kramsch had a different view on authentic materials. In her book Context and
Culture in Language Teaching , she devoted one chapter to authentic texts and contexts. She
agrees with Widdowson’s definition: “It is probably better to consider authenticity not as a
quality residing in instances of language but as a quality which is bestowed upon them,
created by the response of the receiver. Authenticity in this view is a functi on of the
interaction between the reader/hearer and the text which incorporates the intentions of the
writer/speaker… Authenticity has to do with appropriate response.”27
As an example, she mentions a German menu, which would not be authentic text if it
was used in an English lesson to practice reading prices or learning adjective endings. It
would be an authentic piece of text if it was used as a German menu.
Next she claims that cultural competence does not include the obligation to behave
according to con ventions of given speech community and that we should not want our student
to behave like somebody else or plagiarize behavioural patterns. Behaving like someone else
is not a guarantee that the community that speaks the language will accept the person.

3.3 Projects
In Introduction to Project Work (1992) by Tom Hutchinson, specifics of project working are
described. A project is a result of hard work, because the authors have to find information for
their project, get pictures or draw some, make a draft c ontaining their ideas, then put
everything together and complete the text, the result of which is a presentation.

27 Kramsch, Claire. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford University Press, 1996. p. 178

24 “A project is an extended piece of work on a particular topic where the content and the
presentation are determined principally by the learne rs.”28
The teacher can provide the topic, but the authors decide themselves what exactly are they
going to write and how will they present it.
Because a project is a creative task, it is also personal. The reason for doing project
work are based on the fact that there is a strong communicative aspect, which enables the
students to use the language in something real, not in an artificial exercise. Principal elements
of communicative approach are a concern for motivation, a concern for relevance and a
concern for educational values. Motivation is a crucial key for successful learning. Project
work is especially useful for developing positive motivation.
As mentioned above, projects are personal. The students write about their lives, their
families, their citie s or their researches into topics that interest them. Because of such
personal approach, both sense of the project and its presentation are important for students.
Projects are not simulations. They are real. Projects are also very operative. It is actuall y a
play. The learners have to collect information, draw pictures, maps or charts, cut out pictures,
carry out interviews and surveys and make recordings. It is claimed that projects develop
children’s whole personality:
– intellectual skills (describing, dr awing, imagination, reading, planning)
– physical / motor skills (colouring, painting, folding, cutting etc.)
– social skills (sharing, cooperation, making decisions, appreciating individual
contributions)
– learner independence (making responsible choices, gett ing information, evaluating
results)
According to Hutchinson, project work enables all students to produce a worthwhile product.
Therefore it is highly suitable for mixed ability classes and for students with special
educational needs.
The brighter studen ts can work faster while at the same time, the slower students can
work in their own pace and produce something they can be proud of. They can use more
visual aid to compensate their language imperfection. More advantages of projects according
to Hutchinso n are:
– the project focus is on all aspects of children’s life, not only on their linguistic
competences. Therefore they can easily relate what they know from their lives to
concrete problems.

28 Hutchinson, Tom. Introduction to Project Work. Oxford University Press, 1992. p. 10

25 – projects encourage students to be responsible for their work and their learning.
– projects allow students with different competences cooperate when working out the
project. It is a kind of solution for mixed – ability classes.
– personal involvement is high, which support students’ motivation for further learning.
Hutchin son asserts that projects are good for integration of foreign languages into
learner’s communicative competence. “ It encourages the use of a wide range of
communicative skills, enables learners to exploit other spheres of knowledge, and provides
opportunit ies for them to write about things that are important in their own lives.”29 The
language used in projects is more relevant to students´ needs. They can rehearse use of
language, which would be the most useful for them in real life.
There is a big culture p art in project work. The learner can not only mention their own
culture, but also explore into foreign cultures and compare them with each other.
Project work supports independent work, cooperation, imagination and self -discipline. These
are some of the ba sic aims in the most curricula. Project work obviously encourages using
knowledge gained in other subjects such as Geography, History, Civics, ICT, etc.
There are also some disadvantages in project working. Firstly, there may be more
noise in the classroom when the students are working out their projects. However,
Hutchinson claims that there is not really a problem of noise, but a problem of control. The
teacher has to be able to manage the class during such an alternative way of work as well as
during com mon teaching. There will always be some noise, because the students need to
discuss some thing with their classmates and need to borrow some tools or books. But it is a
natural noise, which is comparable with noise made during common teaching: teacher’s
strong voice or whole class repeating after the teacher can be even noisier.
Secondly, time management is definitely a thing to consider. If a project is a group
work, most of it must be done at school. But students can work outside the class, too. They
can have some partial or individual tasks to work out.
Lastly, the teacher has to decide whether he prefers the students to speak only English
all the time or whether they can use their mother tongue, too. Hutchinson says that is does not
matter when they use mother tongue. We should rather consider its merits than to see it as a
problem. The product will be English anyway, so we can allow the learners to use their
mother tongue during working it out.
For teachers, project work has a wide use. It is a flexible methodology, which can be
applied on every level except of complete beginners. It is suitable for all ages.

29 Hutchinson, Tom. Introduction to Project Work. Oxford University Press, 1992. p. 12

26 The teacher should choose the topic according to the age of his students, their
interests, level of English, available sources and the amount of tim e which can be devoted to
the project .

3.4 Short texts
Why short texts? There are many advantages in using short, rather than long, texts:
 Students can read them relatively rapidly and they can get on with the activities with a
minimum of delay;
 A larger number and range of texts can be offered in the limited time available;
 When they are carefully chosen, they use relatively simple language but often contain
mature and complex ideas. This offers one way round the problem of students who have
a modest lev el of language competence in English combined with cognitive and affective
maturity in their own language.
 Their very concision demands interpretation and expansion, if they are to be fully
understood. This work in interpreting texts can focus both on the thinking and the feeling
sides of the students ' personality. Students are encouraged to relate the text to their own
lives and previous experience. Minimal input leads to maximal output.
Types of short texts which can be used in classrooms, according to th e level of the students.
a) Haiku . A haiku is a Japanese verse -form based on syllables. It usually has three lines of 5,
7 and 5 syllables each. The object of a haiku is to capture the special quality of particular
experiences in a very concrete way. Students could start from a haiku and expand it to full
sentences, add adjectives to the nouns in it or write whole descriptions based on it. I have
chosen two examples of haiku, but many more are available online and in print:
"In A Station of the Metro"
by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

"Summer night"
by Peggy Willis Lyles
summer night
we turn out all the lights
to hear the rain.

27 b) Jokes. The British style of humour is not universally understood or apprec iated. However,
it can be a fun activity to use jokes in classroom. They can be turned into short stories, they
can be compared to jokes from the students own culture.
Example: "A lady dining in a high -class restaurant called the head waiter over and
asked him indignantly: What is this fly doing in my soup? The waiter took out his spectacles
and carefully scrutinised the contents of her soup bowl. I am not 100 per cent certain
Madam, he said, but it appears to be drowning ."

3.5 Videos.
Why use video s?
First of all, it is a big motivation. Students become interested faster when experiencing the
language in a lively and amusing was, i. e. through pictures, in this case moving pictures
(films, documents, broadcasting etc.). In combination with sounds, video i nterprets the
language in a comprehensive and realistic way.
Secondly, video often makes students more communicative in target language.
Thirdly, non – verbal aspects of communication are presented, too. Robert Merabian, the
American psychologist, said tha t 80 percent of human communication is non -verbal. Our
expressions, gestures, posture and clothing is equal to what we say. We can see those aspects
in motion on a video. Moreover, the teacher can freeze any moment he wants to and discuss it
with the stud ents.
Finally, cross -cultural comparison is an indivisible feature of authentic materials.
Observing differences in culture is essential for understanding other nations. Awareness of
cultural background is important in learning a language. Therefore it is essential to highlight
cultural habits, too.
When to use video
Stempleski and Tomalin say that video can be used at any level. It can be used as a
supplementary material time to time, e. g. one a week, or it can be a part of every lesson if the
course is b ased on it. Because video is a highly motivating devise, it is useful for beginners
and elementary levels as the good motivation at the beginning is crucial.
Usage of video depends, of course, on sources, technical equipment and amount of
time, which can be devoted to it.
Active viewing
The students should be actively involved when watching. They should know in advance what
are they going to watch before they get some tasks connected with watching. Active watching
is especially important in watching recip es.

28 Vocabulary
Revision of vocabulary – students’ vocabulary can be exercised and reviewed with the help of
short videos.
Building vocabulary – new vocabulary or lexical units can be introduced and acquired from a
certain sequence .
Grammar
Revision of gra mmar – grammar already known to students can be revised and reinforced.
Grammar presentation – certain grammatical structures are presented and fixed.
Pronunciation
Sounds, stress and intonation exercises are really helpful with the use of videos.
Listenin g / speaking skills
Viewing understanding – comprehension of visual component ;
Listening – focus on spoken utterances ;
Oral re -telling – saying the story orally ;
Speaking – spoken presentation to the topic of the sequence ;
Discussion – discussing the topic in a group and preparing for public speaking activities.
Reading and writing
Reading – reading activities connected with the video sequence ;
Taking notes – taking notes during watching ;
Writing – summary writing or creative writing starting from a video.
Cross – cultural matters
Cultural apprehension – cultural concerns introduced by video presentations;
Cross – cultural comparison – comparing learner’s native culture with culture of the country
of whose language they are learning .
There are two types of v ideo material – educative video and authentic video.
Educative materials are CDs and DVDs which come together with textbook s or which ha ve
been created for educati onal purposes. Authentic video is material primarily intended for
native speakers, e. g. TV p rogrammes, broadcasting, news, advertisements or films.
Suggestions for lesson planning
It is important to prepare the lesson plan and the material thoroughly. It might be time –
consuming, but once it is done, it can be used again next year in other class and other teachers
can use it, too.
The teacher should consider the needs of his /her students. When selecting a sequence,
the teacher should choose a suitable part, which the students will be interested in. They

29 usually do not consider a video to be an educational material. It is rather entertain ing for
them. If it were a boring sequence for them, they would not be willing to learn through it.
The length should be adequate to the length of the lesson, to the level of the students
and their age. The shor test sequence may be about thirty seconds long.
It should be possible to use the sequence for more than one activity. Otherwise , it may
be waste of time. The teacher has to consider his students ’ skills carefully. The level of
language in the sequence sho uld be neither too low nor too high for them. However, it is not a
crucial parameter when choosing a sequence. The teacher can still provide the transcript and
the video will provide the context, which is a basic clue to understand it.
Next s/he should con sider whether there are the relevant language items that s/he
intends to present to the students. If the intention is a revision of vocabulary, it is necessary
that the sequence should contain it.
The teacher is recommended by the authors to use transcrip ts with the video itself as
well. S/ he should use it not only in the lesson, but also during the preparation, because it will
show him what language is used. The video itself will show behaviour and context. The video
and the script complement each other.
Once the teacher has chosen a sequence, he may need to prepare some worksheets.
S/he may need and overhead projector presentation, extra activities, transcripts of dialogues,
commentaries etc.
Some basic techniques for using video presentations in the cl assroom are:
1. Sound off / vision on (silent viewing)
This technique can be used to imitate the language activity about happening on the screen or
to concentrate on language production through guessing or prediction tasks.
2. Sound on / vision off
The pup ils can guess the characters, setting, conditions and make predictions.
3. Pause / freeze – frame control
– With sound on, the teacher can pause the starting point of every exchange and ask the
pupils to predict words or utterances.
– With sound on, the teache r can pause important moments in the plot and ask the
pupils questions about the situation. They can comment on previous actions and predict
following ones, too.
– The teacher can pause shots of characters’ faces and the pupils can comment on their
facial ex pressions, their feelings, thoughts etc.
4. Sound and vision on (listening and viewing comprehension)
– the pupils get worksheets beforehand and have to fill it in during viewing ;

30 – the pupils get worksheet after the viewing and have to fill in the correct ans wers or
answer questions etc. ;
– the pupils are looking for rhymes / something in a certain colour/something
beginning with a certain letter in the sequence ;
– the pupils are told what are they going to watch and are asked to guess what they will
see / hear. After viewing, they can compare their guesses ;
– the pupils are given the transcript and are asked to mark the direct speech .
5. Jumbling sequences
The pupils watch pieces of a sequence in jumbled order and should decide what is the correct
order.
6. Split viewing
One half of the pupils see the sequence without sound, the other half can only hear the sound
without pictures. Various activities can follow.

3.6 Reading and use of film and TV
In teacher’s resource material Penguin Readers Teacher’s Guide to Usi ng Film an TV by
Carolyn Walker, there is a lot of useful information about reading, using video in teaching
and combining those two methods30.
The learners can experience the spoken language in action through watching video.
They can see the settings as we ll as the movements, body language and the characters’
appearances. They can watch the importance of gestures, facial expressions and eye contact
in communication. It can be a good background to cross -cultural comparison, too. In
comparison with pictures, that are very often use in language teaching, video has the main
advantage in extension of movement and time.
TV and films are not intended as teaching materials. It means that it is a good source
of authentic material. However, it is important to remember that there might appear language
difficulties. Students should be aware of active watching, i. e. they are not supposed to relax
during watching, but actively respond. There are a lot of activities that can be done before,
during or after watching.
Techni cal equipment
– the teacher should familiarize himself /herself with the equipment. S/he should know how to
use the controls.
– before the class, the teacher should have enough time to set the equipment. S/he has to
check whether everything is switched on a nd working correctly.

30 Walker, Carolyn. Penguin Readers Teacher’s Guide to Using Film an TV . Pearson Education Limited:1999

31 – s/he should play the cassette / DVD to check the sound and picture.
– check whether the sound is audible at the back of the room.
– the teacher should ensure that everybody will be able to see the screen and that there are no
lights reflecting on the screen.
– the teacher should find a good place – where he /she will be during watching , so that he /she
can control both video and students.

3.7 The Internet
The book How to Use the Internet in ELT by Dede Teeler and Peta Gray is a very u seful
handbook for teachers who would like to learn how to use the Internet, where to find
information and materials for their lessons and how to manage the computer, too31.
The authors claim that it is not possible to say how many people use the Internet. But
definitely, some of them are teachers and they seem to be using it almost for everything:
updating language skills, searching for materials, learning about computer technology,
keeping in touch with other teachers and friends, teaching, working on proj ects and another
activities, or just enjoying themselves.
According to them, the Internet is probably the biggest library in the world. It is still
changing and therefore it is not possible to make an index for it. But there are another ways
how to search in it – the gateways.
The gateways sites are common web sites. There are listed links to other web sites or
documents. They are regularly updated.

Using the Internet for distance -learning
Teeler and Gray mention some good tips how to use the Internet not only as an individual,
but also in a group. As mentioned above, the teacher can keep in touch with colleagues and
friends, either through email or through chat (conversation in real time) or discussions and
forums. The Internet can be also used for distan t learning. There are several courses on -line,
which one can attend. The teacher can become a learner and extend his /her knowledge; or can
be a leader and lead an on -line course for his students.
Suggestions for further resources
– information for research: thanks to the Internet, planning and working out a research
have become quicker and more amusing. You can search in a database and find out
not only information for your research, but also another researches.

31 Teele r, Deede and Gray ,Peta. How to Use the Internet in ELT . Pearson Longman:2000

32 – practical ideas for classroom use: you can fin d both materials on various topic and
grammar materials such as theory, exercises, games etc. You just have to know how
to adapt it for your students .
– publishers: you can find the offers of various publishers on -line as well as some
teaching tips and list of upcoming seminars and conferences.
– dictionaries and encyclopedias : a lot of books are now available in an electronic
version on -line. You can even download some of them into your computer or you can
have a link on your desktop.
– bilateral or multilater al educational projects funded by the European Commission.

Why use the Internet for materials ?
One of the advantages is topicality – of course a lot of materials are old, but there are new
ones added monthly, weekly or daily. The teacher does not have to buy the publications and
can download them from the Internet or print them straight from the web page. Other one is
adaptability – the teacher cannot change the textbook he is working with, but he /she can find
suitable materials on the Internet and modify them if needed. Of course, the teacher can also
use older issues of the publications if the topic is up -to-date. For example, in my examples of
lessons I have used an article from a 2014 issue of Newsweek Magazine.
There are some disadvantages, too. Firstl y, a lot of school s still do not have facilities
and students cannot access the Internet easily, not even during lessons. The teacher can, of
course, print papers for students, but it is not possible to include active working on -line into a
lesson plan. Secondly, t he teacher has to be aware of the fact that most of the materials on the
Internet have not been produced for learners of English. The authors of most of the materials
are native speakers, who often tend to use idiomatic expressions and sometimes t here are
grammatical mistakes, too.

Internet based activities
Before we decide to use an Internet -based activity in our lesson, we should consider
following points:
– What do you suppose the students to get from this activity?
– Why is it better to do this ac tivity on the Internet rather than through another media?
– How long will the activity be? (is it part of a lesson, one lesson, a few lessons, a
month, whole year)
– Will the students communicate with someone? Who with? (each other, another class,
another scho ol, foreign school, native speakers, some organizations or companies)

33 – Can you use this activity only with one class or can you adapt it for other classes and
grades?
The teacher should look in the course book s/he uses and consider whether the activity wil l be
challenging for his /her students or useless and boring. S/he has to set some criteria for
choosing appropriate websites.
In the publication The Internet and Young Learners , the author Gordon Lewis suggests
following learning purposes32: pure communica tion, searching for information and producing
content. He says that for on -line communication, e -mails and chats are the most useful. Chat
is a talk on -line, in real time. It means that two people have to be connected at the same
moment, which might be dif ficult, especially when communicating with foreign people. Such
communication requires prompt answering, which may be a difficult task for beginners. E –
mail has an advantage – pupils can write it in advance and then send it. It is similar to a letter,
but it can be sent immediately and the answer comes sooner, too. Formulating an e -mail is a
good homework task.
Searching for information requires a web browser. It is essential to offer to students a
list of web pages already approved. Otherwise they may get lost in information mass.
When the students become familiar with the Internet, they might want to produce their
own web page. It can be a class web page with children’s portfolios or a blog of the
classroom moderated by the teacher. A course class work c an be presented there as well.
Lewis gives tips for criteria when choosing a web site to work with. The web site
should have interesting graphics and should not be complicated. Nice colours and pictures or
animations will catch children’s eyes. The navigat ion should be clear, too. The best
navigation is an iconic one, i. e. there are pictures to click on instead of words. The teacher
should check in advance whether the site is quick to be loaded. He strongly recommend s that
we should check what is hidden be hind the web site. There are a lot of innocent looking web
pages, which finally turn out to be advertising something or being a religious or erotic sites.
As far as safety is concerned, Lewis warns against some potential dangers. The
teacher has to keep ey e on the children all the time. They cannot give their personal
information, such as the address or telephone number to anyone. The teacher should check
the e -mails before they are sent away and they should used only e -mail addresses already
approved. The teacher should also check every unknown e -mail that comes. The teacher and
the child’s parents must approve all the materials published on web.

3.8 Pictures

32 Lewis, Gordon. The Internet and Young Learners . Oxford University Press: 2004

34 The book Pictures for Language Learning by Andrew Wright is a very useful source for
teachers, who want to use pictures in teaching33.
As Wright suggests , pictures in teaching are especially suitable for learners with
special needs. They are also very useful when introducing new topic. The teacher can thanks
to them provoke the students to express them selves emotionally. Pictures can be used with as
well beginners as advanced students of all ages. There is usually minimal preparation and low
costs.
It is important to expose students to various stimuli so that they can develop their
skills broadly. Accor ding to Wright, teacher’s resources must include pictures. We are not
exposed only to spoken language, but we perceive a lot of context visually. Students have to
learn to predict, induce and deduce. Pictures play a key role in motivating students and
contribute to interest and awareness of context.
As teachers, we should consider some aspects before preparing the lesson.
– Demand of preparation: if the preparation is difficult in relation to what the outcome
should be, then it is no t worth doing i t;
– Class or ganization: if the class organization would be difficult, it is no use to do it ;
– Interest: the activity should be interesting for students and the teacher, too ;
– Meaningfulness and authenticity: the language should be authentic to the activity.
There should be some outcome, so that the student can reflect on their work and see,
whether they use the language correctly or not ;
– Amount of language: there should be sufficient amount of language in the activity,
otherwise it is no t a useful task.
Through pictures, various language skills can be practised: structures (tenses, transitive /
intransitive verbs, interrogative etc.); vocabulary (topic -based vocabulary, opposites,
adjectives etc.); functions (making request, describing things, expressing likes and dislike s
etc.); situations (describing the situation, situation dialogues, role play etc.); skills (listening,
reading, writing, speaking). It should be clear to the students what are they going to do and
why are they going to do it. They should have the language to be able to do it.
Wright claims that pictures can motivate students in such a way that they want to pay
attention and be included. Pictures bring the world or a street scene or other environments to
the classroom. Describing pictures can be objective o r subjective (This is a train. / I like
travelling by train.) Pictures can stimulate and provide material to be discussed in a
conversation or discussion.

33 Wright, Andrew. Pictures for Language Learning . Cambridge University Press:1994

35 What kind of pictures can be used? Wright recommends pictures of one person or of several
people, pe ople in action, places, from history, with a lot of information, the news, fantasies,
maps and symbols, pairs of pictures, pictures and texts, sequences of pictures, related
pictures, single stimulation pictures, ambiguous pictures, bizzare pictures, expla natory
pictures and student and teacher drawings.

3.9 Simulations
The book Simulation in Language Teaching by Ken Jones is a useful handbook for teachers,
who are planning to use simulations in teaching.
“A simulation is and event. It is not taught. The students become participants and shape the
event. They have roles, functions, duties and responsibilities – as ecologist, king, manager,
explorer, reporter, survivor, administrator – within a structures situation involving problem
solving and decision maki ng.”34
The teacher’s role in simulation is a controller. S/he introduces the simulation and
then observes and assess. S/he does not interfere. It is a good position for monitoring the
language, communicative skills and behaviour of the students.
There is no pretense in simulations – it is a reality of function in a simulated
environment. Simulations and language are inseparable. Spoken language, written language
or both can be used.
The language in simulations has two main characteristics – it is functional and
cohesive. It has certain functions because the participants have their role and their problems
to solve, jobs to do, tasks to fulfill . Therefore they have to choose appropriate language to
achieve what they want to. It is a matter of the students to s uit the language to the situation.
Because there are usually a lot of opportunities for interaction, action and reaction in
simulations, the other participants can deal with their colleague’s inappropriate use of
language. Although two participants start w ith opposite view, the situation brings them
together. Because of the structure, the language is cohesive.

Motivation for simulations
Motivation is an integral part of simulations. It is one of the most important and interesting
reasons for using simulat ion in teaching. The functions, duties and responsibilities given to
the participants arise motives. The intensity of motivation depends on the quality of
simulation. If the simulation is good, well prepared, stimulative and provocative, there is

34 Jones, Ken. Simulations in Teaching. Cambri dge University Press, 1990. p. 12

36 likely to be strong emotional component, which leads to motivation. The motivation may be
strengthened by the participants’ appreciation of being powerful, responsible for decision –
making. They “own” the simulation. Motivation can help to break down shyness, differ ences
of sex, race, colour or status.

Jones mentions that simulation is a good event for students to get know to each other and for
a teacher get to know the students. A good simulation can be an icebreaker and can provide
an interesting experience, which is good for social relations.
Ice-breaking may be needed not only at beginnings, but also always when a frosty
situation occurs. Routine can be one of the reasons. Not all the simulations are good for
breaking ice. A suitable simulation for that must be f ully participatory, must not have any
passive or part – roles and should involve a lot of interaction among the students . Simulations
also can help to break down cultural or ethnical prejudices.

Benefits of simulations:
– appease students’ demand of realism in learning language ;
– increase of motivation, students’ one as well as teachers’ ;
– typical teacher – student relationship breakdown (students are responsible for
reaching their goals themselves) ;
– cross -cultural comparison and identification ;
– reduction of s tress (it is one of the crucial points in successful language learning) .
Authentic texts are a valuable source for self -instructed learners. They allow the learner to
meet his needs accurately and economically. They can choose texts they suit the best to t heir
requirements. Frequent problem of second language learners is that they do not understand
the context. Using authentic text can help them to minimize this deficiency.
Learning must always be an individual and personal act. Normally the teacher is
responsible for the set up, organization and managing lessons. At least some responsibilities
should be shared with learners, e. g. setting goals, choosing materials or evaluating progress.

3.10 Cultural aspect
Second language learning is connected with seco nd culture learning. A language is a mean of
communication among members of a culture. It is the most evident expression of the culture.
When learning a second language, there can be three different contexts:
a) learning a foreign language within the culture of this language,

37 b) learning a foreign language within learner’s own culture if the foreign language is
accepted as a lingua franca in this environment,
c) learning a foreign language in one’s own culture with some opportunities to use
the language within the environment of one’s own culture. (e. g. learning English
in Romania )
Each of these types involves different degrees of acculturation, the process of adapting
to a new culture. In learning a foreign language in native culture, degree of acculturation of a
learner is influenced by cultural and sociopolitical status of the language and motivation of
the learner.
Social distance is proximity of two cultures that individuals come into contact with.
The word ‘distance’ is used in abstract sense here. It should e xpress diversity of two cultures.
“At the base of intercultural understanding is a recognition of the way in which two cultures
resemble one another as well as the ways on which they differ. Resemblances usually surface
through an examination of the differ ences.”35
Comparisons of a language and its culture open great views for teachers and present
basis for understanding a person from other environments. New insights into second language
teaching approaches are found there, too. It is obvious that no one can learn everything about
cultures; what is more, no one knows everything about his own culture. Sweeping universal
aspects of cultures may be helpful, but one cannot expect all the people to fir the generality.
There are usually some native culture habits t ransferred into learning the second
culture and therefore we can expect some misunderstandings . For example, members of a
culture expect their culture patter n and behaviour to be the correct one and patterns of other
cultures to be the wrong one s. It does not mean that it is a wrong one, but a different one.
Language cannot be translated word by word. There are idiomatic expressions in
almost every language. The intonation carries the meaning, however, there are different
patterns of intonation in different languages. Loudness is a characteristic of a language, too.
Meaning is conveyed by body language and gestures well, but not all the movements mean
the same in different cultures. The language uses different elements and expressions for
description of phys ical world. There are also some taboo topics in every language. We should
know what can we say and what cannot we say on what occasion. Addressing people is also
different. We should know whether to use first name or second name and titles.
Good textbooks usually provide texts and activities which bear in mind cultural
differences and expose students to situations which help them learn and adapt to the

35 Valdes , Joyce Merrill. Culture Bound. Cambridge University Press, 1992. p. 49

38 differences. Therefore, some guidelines can be followed if we, as teachers, have the
possibility to choose the textbook that we are going to use in class :
1. A new book should be examined carefully to check whether it provides sufficient
cultural point of view ;
2. The teacher should make a list of cultural aspects in each lesson and check whether
they are positive o r negative ;
3. The teacher should look in detail at the exercises and consider whether they will
support his intercultural activities ;
4. The teacher should check whether the vocabulary, examples, grammar structures etc.
are placed on some meaningful cultural ba ckground ;
5. Check whether the pictures and photographs are culturally related ;
6. Examine dialogues for cultural context ;
7. Re-examine textbooks that may be culturally biased. Check whether they are
objective.
If the teacher thinks that the content of the textboo k is not presented in a creative and suitable
manner, s/he has the possibility to add, adapt and replace information and content.

39

Chapter III
THE TEACHING EXPLITATION OF AUTHENTIC MATERIALS

The activities I have described in the f ollowing part can be used for students at different
levels.
1. If you were a sailboat -activity based on song lyrics, used for practicing
listening skills
Song lyrics can be a wonderful source of help in teaching a motivating lesson to students. I
have tau ght second conditional using Katie Melua 's song If you were a sailboat.
Lesson Aims:
1. to introduce second type conditional
2. to make the students recognize and use the 2nd type conditional
3. to improve the students’ listening skill
Skills : speaking, reading, w riting, listening

Activity 1: (speaking, reading)
Aims: make the students remember the type 2 conditional
Procedure: the students are asked to look at the computer screen, to see the theory and the
examples, while listening to the teacher’s explanations
Interaction: T -Ss
Timing: 10 minutes

Activity 2: (listening and writing )
Aims:
To make the students identify and isolate conditional sentences
Procedure: the teacher asks the students to match the if-clause in the lyrics of the song “If you
were a sailboat ”, sung by Katie Melua, with the name of the picture and then the main clause
( see Appendix 1).
Interaction: T -Ss, Ss -Ss

40 Timing:10 minutes

Activity 3: (speaking)
Aims: to make the students use the type 2 conditional
Procedure: the students are asked to imagine hypothetical situations on the model of the ones
described in the song
Interaction: Ss -Ss, Ss -T
Timing: 10 minutes

Activity 4: (writing)
Aims: to work with the new vocabulary found in the lyrics of the song
Procedure: Students are asked to explai n some expressions and words( taken from the song)
in their own words
Interaction: Ss -Ss, Ss -T
Timing: 15 minutes

Homework : Research on the internet to f ind other songs in which you can hear conditional
structures and bring them to school.

2. Priming wit h Chinese whispers – short activity used for practicing
listening skills and followed by improving speaking and writing skills.
As I have mentioned earlier in my paper, chunks are strings of words that we can find in our
memory as a ready -made unit, so kno wing lots of chunks contributes to fluent speaking and
writing. It is suggested that chunks that are appropriate for beginner and elementary classes
tend to occur in authentic speech and writing so often that learners may well be able to pick
them up on th eir own36
Level: elementary/intermediate
Time: 10 -15 minutes
Materials: Slips of paper on which are written chunks from the lyrics of a song, a recording of
the song is also needed.
Preaparation
1. Choose four multi -word bits of from the song that you are go ing to play. Each bit should
be, or should contain, a common chunk. For example, from the Roy Orbison song Pretty

36 Boers, Frank and Lindstromberg, Seth. Teaching Chunks of Language. Heibling Languages:2008

41 Woman, the teacher could choose: Pretty woman, walking down the street; You look as lovely
as can be; Don't make me cry; I'll treat you right. The teacher can choose one additional
chunk in case there are groups of five.
2. Write each of the four bits of song on a different slip of paper. Then, we have a set for a
group of four students. You should make more sets of slips for as many groups as you will
have.
Pretty woman, walking down the street

Don't make me cry

You look as lovely as can be

I'll treat you right

The class will be told that:
a) in a minute they should divide up into standing groups of four or, if necessary, five.
b) Everyone is gi ven a slip of paper bearing a phrase or a sentence which they should try to
memorise. Circulate and answer questions about meaning and pronunciation.
c) No student may show their slip to anyone else until the activity is finished.
2. Then, explain how Chinese W hisper works, also that in other languages, like in Romanian,
it may be called the Broken Telephone. That is, in their groups, one student whispers the
phrase to the person standing next to them on one side, who then whispers the phrase to the
person stand ing next to them, who whispers it to the last person, who then must say what
phrase s/he thinks s/he heard. The person who started off the chain of whispering tells and
shows the others the phrase on the slip of paper. Every group member takes a turn whisp ering
their phrase.
3. Begin the activity. While it is in progress, write the words of the song title on the board, all
jumbled up.
4. Ask the early finishers to try to solve the anagrammed title.
5. When everyone has finished, ask students from a group near the b oard to write up the
phrases. Make sure everyone knows what they mean, and draw their attention to the
commonest word combinations, by underlining them like this: Pretty woman, walk ing down
the street .
6. The final step is listening to the recorded song.

42 Obse rvation . I have used this activity with 6th graders and it worked rather chaotically
because there were too many groups, so I think that it should be done with half of the class,
so there can be fewer groups of four.

3. Things that smell – activity relate d to the topic of smells focusing on
speaking and listening
Level: Pre -intermediate and advanced
Time: 50 minutes
Materials: copies of handouts (Appendices 2 and 3)
Preparation: Find and bring in class a few things with strong but pleasant smells, such as
samples of herbs (e.g. rosemary, mint, lavender, bay leaf, etc.), spices, pieces of fragrant
soap, bits of perfumed paper, throat lozenges and other things you wish to include.
1. It is a necessary step to elicit names of herbs and spices. You should also a sk what parts of
a plant each one tends to come from. Explain and discuss that herbs tend to consist of the
softer or finer parts of plants such as leaves and flowers, whereas spices tend to consist of
harder, coarser parts, such as seeds and bark, which m ay be ground into a powder.
2. Form pairs of As and Bs. Tell the Bs to close their eyes.
3. Give each student A a sample of one of your smelly materials.
4. Ask the As to pass their sample under the nose of their partner who, only in whispers,
should try to guess w hat it is.
5. After a while, see who knows what the sample is and write the word for it on the board.
6. Repeat with the other samples, alternating between As and Bs.
7. Form pairs and give each partner a different section of the List of Things that Smell. At
pre-intermediate level, 15 items per student is about right. At advanced level you can divide
the whole list between partners. Also, give each partner a copy of the Responses Sheet.
8. Ask students, in their pairs, to take turns reading the expressions on the lis ts out loud. Add
that when one partner reads out an expression, the other partner/partners must respond in
some way, according to their feeling about the smell in question. They may use the possible
responses sheet in the examples as a guide.
9. Ask early fin ishers to come to the board and, from memory, write up smelly things that
they remember from the list.
Observation. This is an extremely fun to do activity, but make sure that students write down
the words that they do not know, so they can use them throu ghout the activity. You can also
introduce a few figurative uses of smell vocabulary. For example: There is something fishy
about her behaviour. Fishy = smelly = suspicious

43

4. Milestones. Reading activity based on an article taken from Time Magazine ,
issue of July 14th 2014, pag.14

Level: advanced
Time: 50 minutes
Materials: copies of the article (Appendix 4)
Preparation: Find and bring in class different objects like: a small pan, a tennis racket, a string
musical instrument and other objects from diffe rent materials.
1. Elicit names of materials, based on the objects you have brought, but also based on the
surrounding objects.
2. Form groups of three or four students who have the article in front of themselves.
3. Ask the to read silently and at the end of the silent reading ask which word is new and
rather unusual ( you should agree on the word kevlar).
4. Prepare some follow up questions, such as:
 Where is the article taken from?
 Who is the woman in the article?
 What did she discover?
 What is kevlar famous for?
 Can you name other lifesaving inventions?
4. The students then take turns to read the article aloud
5. The homework assignment could be: Look up five inventors and their inventions that have
changed the world/ Look up information about Stephanie Kwolek and prepa re a presentation
for the class.

5. Questionnaires with multiple choice answers – activity for practicing guided
speaking
One aim of this activity is to get students talking about themselves. Another is to rehearse
chunks that are included within a set o f scripted questions and/or a set of recommended
answers. Teachers could use expressions of frequency, time of day, actions, chunks which
can begin a question.
Level: upper -elementary – pre-intermediate
Time: 20 to 40 minutes
Materials: a class set of each of the two handouts (Appendix 5)

44 Procedure:
1. Hand out sheet 1 and check for understanding. It would be advisable to write down the
new words.
2. Write some questions on the board, such as: When do you sleep?/When do you brush your
teeth?/ When do you go shopp ing?
3. Ask three students each to ask you one of the questions. Answer them using expressions in
sheet 1.
4. Form A -B pairs and give student A in each pair a copy of the top half of sheet 2, and ask
the As to interview the Bs by asking those questions. Add that :
 The Bs, after they answer, should ask: And you?
 the Bs should try to use the answers on sheet 1.
 The As should, in general, not show the questions to their partners.
5. When the as have asked all their questions, give the Bs the bottom half of sheet 2 so t hat
they can now interview the As. The reason that the Bs get new questions is so that the As can
also have the experience of answering unexpected questions.
6. When the interviews are finished, ask everyone to hide their copies of sheet 1. In pairs,
they sh ould write down all the expressions they remember from sheet 1 (all the time and
frequency expressions)
Observation. It is a very useful activity, but again it can get quite noisy in a large classrooms.

45

Chapter IV
ACTIVITIES DESIGNED TO U SE AUTHENTIC MATERIALS

Didactic experiments
I decided to create some projects for students at secondary level. The classes involved were:
the 5th grade, the 6th grade and the 8th grade. The projects are not strictly intended for certain
grades; they can b e used with younger children as well as with older ones according to their
skills, level of English and interests and they can be adapted according to specific needs.
These projects have various features, which I would like to highlight.
Firstly, they sho uld mediate knowledge through an interesting topic and alternative
way of teaching.
Secondly, they should present useful facts and teach skills such as cooperation,
communication, searching for information, selecting sources, giving presentation etc.
Thirdly, I would like to show how important and useful is using authentic materials in
foreign language teaching. Those materials are very interesting for the students – they are
catchy, original and do not resemble other activities they have encountered .
Lastly, they meet cross -curricular topics, namely multicultural education, media
education and education to thinking in European and global context.
I believe that a complex project can give children more than simple learning from a
textbook since there are a lot of activities and many things to do condensed in relatively short
time that is devoted to the project. The time given depends on the schedule possibilities and
pupils’ skills.
Optimally, there should be time for introduction, motivation and pre -teachi ng
vocabulary before the project itself starts. There is also a demand for suitable facilities and
materials such as maps, the Internet connection, video / DVD player, CD player, data
projector etc .

TRAVELLING ABROAD

46 Level: 8th grade (13 – 14 year-old students)
Nowadays, thousands of people are travelling abroad every day. Young people and students
get a lot of opportunities to visit foreign countries, meet new people and new cultures, which
is crucial for their social development and general awareness. Thi s is one of many other
reasons why they want to learn foreign languages , particularly English . I think that it is
important to draw student s’ attention to this fact, show them, how important English classes
are, because the language can open doors for them . It is true that, sadly, sometimes not even
this argument can motivate some students.
Motivation is very important in any kind of learning. The more complicated subject to
learn, the stronger the motivation should be. I believe that motivating through per sonal
experience and catchy materials is highly efficient.
I prepared a project about travelling for four groups of students. They were asked to
suggest a route in Great Britain and Ireland, visiting interesting places on their way, giving
reasons why to v isit a certain place and what is interesting there.
The first group was to suggest a route in Ireland, the second one a route in Great
Britain, travelling only on routes and highways, the third one a route in Great Britain,
travelling only on railways and the fourth one route in Great Britain using only waterways.
The week for virtual realization of this journey was set the first week in June 2014.
They were supposed to find a flight ticket on the Internet, note departure times too, public
transport in fo reign country and accommodation. I pointed out not to forget about food,
entrance tickets and another extra costs. Finally, they were supposed to present their proposal
to their classmates.
I provided the pupils with a lot of materials that I brought over from Ireland and Great
Britain and some books and travel guides about those countries written in Romanian and
English . These included: various leaflets, postcards and magazines brought from Ireland and
Great Britain, county Wiltshire, and books, namely Beautiful Ireland, Salisbury, Trowbridge,
Stonehenge, Irish Tales and Sagas, Celtic Inspirations, The Celtic Image, National
Geographic Traveller -Marea Britanie and Orasele lumii, pas cu pas, Londra. Beautiful
Ireland is a picture book, 90% there are photogr aphs of nature, people and cities. Salisbury is
a city guide, with lots of pictures, too. Trowbridge is a city guide as well, including
interesting historical facts. Stonehenge is a book about ancient monument, rather for people
interested in history and s uch heritage sites. Irish Tales and Sagas by Ulick O’Connor is a
book of Irish legends. It is completed by beautiful drawings and contains legends such as St
Patrick, Cuchulain, Children of Lir and others. Celtic Inspirations and The Celtic Image are
books about the Celts and their culture. They are very interesting and nicely graphically

47 worked out. The two books in Romanian are detailed travel guides with hundreds of pictures,
photos and descriptions. As they are travel guides, they are designed to help t ourist to plan
their journey and give them important information. Therefore I chose those books , although
they are written in Romanian .
Another source of information I asked the pupils to work with was the Internet, atlas
of the world and any other books i n libraries they visit.
I wanted the pupils to learn not only how to cooperate with other people (group work),
but primarily to learn to plan a journey, to look up information on the Internet, plan finances
and choose best options out of many presented in advertisements and on the Internet. These
are skills they will probably use in their future lives.

Expected problems
I expected the students to tell me that they did not have the Internet at home and could not
look the information up. I also thought that they would have difficulties to work in groups –
arguing, division of work etc.
I expected the pupils not to like the presentation. I think that students are capable of working
out a task, write a piece of work, but they are not used to presenting in fron t of the class, not
mentioning public.

Expected outcome
I expected the groups to present their routes on wall charts, showing lots of pictures and
describing not only the routes, but also mainly the sites and places that are worth stopping on.
I expected almost mistake -free speech because they had enough time for preparation and
consultation with their classmates and the teacher. I expected the presentations to be vivid,
colourful and interesting.
I hoped the pupils would like the topic because travelling is one of the most frequent hobbies
among young people. The authentic materials should have support them and show them that
it is not impossible to visit a foreign country for some time, although it may look like that to
them.
In my lesson plans, there ar e also “organizational parts”, which take about two minutes and
they are dedicated to administrative work and organi sational instructions for pupils.

Lesson plan no.1
1. Organi sational part
(3 minutes)

48 2. Introductory questions
– Do you like travelling?
– How ofte n do you travel abroad?
– Who with?
– Have you ever been to any English speaking country? Which one? When?
– Do you know in which countries is English the official language?
(5 minutes)
3. Motivation part
– Displaying the supporting materials on a desk. Student s come to see them.
(5-10 minutes)
4. Introduction of the project
– We are going to talk about travelling and we will virtually travel to Ireland and
Great Britain. … etc.
– Setting the rules and requirements
– Division into groups
5. Working in groups, discussing the way of working out the task, division of work
among pupils, asking the teacher questions or for help. Using materials displayed and
atlases of the world.
(the rest of the lesson)
Homework: to look some information up on the Internet

The first lesson
I went ac cording to my lesson plan. I asked children the introductory questions. They
cooperated well. I found out that they travel mostly to Greece and Romania for holiday. No
student has ever been to Great Britain, but they would all love to go some day.
Then I d isplayed my materials on a table and invited the children to come there and
see them. They were surprisingly interested and spent on them about 10 minutes.
After that, I told them about my project and explained what were they going to do. I let them
divid e into groups as they wished.
In the rest of the time, they were supposed to start working on the project. I helped them with
choosing materials useful for their tasks.
In the end, I asked them to look some information up on the Internet at home. As I sup posed,
there were huge protests. They argued against my task that they did not have the Internet
connection at home. I told them to visit a library and use some books then.

49 Presentation
Before the second lesson, I asked the Geography teacher for atlases o f the world in which
there are detailed maps of Ireland and Great Britain. We also had a map of Great Britain on
the wall and some handouts with maps of Great Britain.
I asked the students to listen to carefully, follow the presentations and note down the routes
that the other groups proposed in three different colours into the maps they had got. Although
the task was set as individual work, they still had an opportunity to chat and copy from their
partners.

Assessment
I assessed attitude (A) , speaking (S ), content (C) and overall presentation (P) .
Attitude : goodwill, activity during work, effort, contribution to teamwork, cooperation with
classmates within the group and with other groups, working with materials (literally
manipulation with materials – children sometimes ten d to damage things which are not
theirs), attitude to the teacher .
Speaking : distribution of speech among pupils, accuracy and fluency, fillers, speech power,
pace.
Content : choice of information, sequence of information
Presentation : overall presentation, mainly number of pictures and another materials used,
posture of the pupils regarding their listeners, movements, body tal, gestures + speaking and
content
I did not have any scale set before the lesson. I had some expectations accordin g to the
School Educational framework. I compared the groups among them .

The first presentation – Ireland
There were four girls in this group. They started working on their presentation the first lesson
and seemed to be really interested. They did not ne ed any help from me. I only showed them
which postcards and pictures they should use. They also worked very well in the second
lesson.
The presentation was not finally as good as I supposed it to be judging from their hard work.
One of the girls started to describe the route, but spoke slowly with a lot of mistakes. She
used a map that she found in a magazine from Ireland, but it was too small for whole class to
see it, although it was A4 format. Time to time, another girl helped her with a few words and
some pictures. Then, the third girl described the financial part, but she had serious difficulties
with numerals. I checked their notes in their notebooks. They were well worked out. The

50 fourth girl did not say a word during their presentation and the answer for on my question
why was that she was too shy and that she had helped with the preparation.
I liked the way the girls worked on their presentation, but I did not like the way they
spoke. It was obvious that they had not tried it in advance and did not think about the
numerals at all. Also the division of speech was not optimal. I wanted them all to speak.

They made mistake such as: *It cost / * in first May / *we come in the plane / * it’s costing.

The second presentation –Great Britain – roads
There were three people in the group. The boy who started speaking seemed livelier and his
speech was faster and louder than the first group’s one. He did not make almost any mistakes.
They showed pictures from a book during their presentation. There was not mu ch hesitation,
which I definitely cannot say about the first group. The second boy took the speech over later
and spoke about the budget. The numerals were correct. The girl did not say anything and
gave me the explanation that she had helped with the prep aration more than the boys. But
again, I wanted them all to speak, so it was their minus. Apart from that , this presentation was
nice.

The third presentation – Great Britain – waterways
This group was the worst one. It was my fault that those not really e xcellent pupils met in one
group . There were two girls and three boys. They were disturbing since the first minute I
entered the classroom and their distracted behaviour was affecting the whole class, especially
during the presentations.
I watched them du ring the lessons more that the other groups, because I soon realized that
they were not working very well. All the time I came to their desks, they pretended to be
highly concentrated on the work and even asked me some questions concerning the project.
The third lesson, before their presentation, they were chatting so loudly that I had to
ask one boy to change his place.
Their presentation was really poor. Each of them said about two sentences and none of
them was correct. They seemed to be there for the first time and never see the project before.
The girls were giggling and hiding their faces behind sheets of paper. They spoke with lots of
mistakes. They only used one leaflet, which I told them to use, because there was a map of
water canal in the south of England. They showed it to the class, but did not explain what was
in the picture and why it was important for their journey.

51 The cause of this failure was that there were not very good pupils in the group. Next
time, I would mix high ability pupils wit h low ability ones. If I happened not to have this
information, which was actually this case, I would check them more during the work and did
not give them so much responsibility as I did. I only checked that they were working, but next
time I would like t o see some results after every lesson and would check taking notes during
the lessons, too. I would also try to motivate them more in case I have more time. The
motivation was sufficient for high ability and average ability students, but obviously not for
those low ability ones. Maybe it would be essential to motivate them individually. It is,
however, complicated in such a big group of pupils.

The fourth group – Great Britain – railways
There were three girls in the group. Their presentation was very nic e. They used their own
materials – English magazines and a map, which seemed to be printed from the Internet. They
showed a lot of pictures. Their speech was nice and grammatically and lexically correct.
I saw them working hard and silently since the firs t lesson.

Final assessment
1st group A: 1 C: 1 S: 3/4 P: 2/3
2nd group A: 2 C: 1 S: 2 P: 2
3rd group A: 4/5 C: 3/4 S: 4/5 P: 4
4th group A: 1 C: 1+ S: 1 P: 1

I chose the best group and compared the others with it. The best group worked adequatel y
according to their School Educational Framework. The pupils asked me to tell them the
grades they got, they were not interested in the mistakes they made.
First I told them grades they got for their attitude. I praised the first group for hard
work sinc e the beginning and reminded the second group that they did not work in the first
lesson. The third group started arguing with me, which made me angry, because not only it
was rude, but also it was unfair to the other groups.
Then I assessed content and co mmended the fourth group for bringing and using their
own materials.
In the end of this experiment my conclusion was that we certainly need to work more
using projects because our students are not very much used to doing their own research, they

52 seem to w ait for ready -made information. I would like to improve my students ' sense of
entrepreneurship.

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
6th grade (11 – 12 year – old students )
Roald Dahl, one of the most famous British novelists, is definitely worth being intro duced to
children. His most popular books for children are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
Matilda, The Witches and James and the Giant Peach , but he wrote many more. These are
lovely, funny and readable stories, catching not only children’s attention. I chose the story
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , because it was turned into a film in 1995, and also
because it is part of the books to be studied in the 6th grade.
I did not work with the book, but the film instead. I chose the film instead of the
book, because if I wanted to work with almost the whole story, we would not manage to read
the book in such a short time. We probably would not manage to read even extracts, because
the pupils in the sixth class are eleven or twelve years old and some of th em are really slow
readers. What is more, I do not expect children to read a lot nowadays. They do not like
reading. It does not mean that I agree with this attitude, I think they should read. But they do
not and in my opinion a good film can motivate them to read. I killed two birds with one
stone – I managed to fit in the time given and I tried to motivate the pupils to read through
amusing activit ies.
Expected problems
I expected the pupils not to be willing to dance as Oompa – Loompas, because they migh t
feel ashamed. (Oompa – Loompas are small people , Willi Wonka’s workers, who are about
30 – 40 cm tall and come from Oompaland. They can be seen everywhere in the factory.
They l ike singing and dancing, usually when a child makes something bad).
I also ex pected them not to understand the movie very well as I played it in English with
English subtitles. I thought that they would be noisy during watching and that they would
welcomed my lessons with playing a film as a nice pause from learning.

The first les son plan
1. Organi sational part
(2 minutes)
2. Introducing Roald Dahl
Do you know Roald Dahl? Have you ever heard about him?
Have you read any book by him?

53 Have you seen any movie? (Charlie and the Chocolate factory, Matilda)
Brief biography.
(5 minutes)
3. Watchi ng a part of video
(25 minutes)
First 25 minutes from the film. There is introduced Willy Wonka and his factory, Charlie
and his family. The competition with golden tickets starts. Four spoil ed children find
golden tickets; Charlie finds the golden ticket, too. They are preparing for the visit of the
factory.
4. Questionnaire
(10 minutes)
– Is Charlie’s family rich or poor?
– How many grandparents does Charlie have?
– Do they have a nice house? What is their house made of?
– What do they eat every day?
– How many childr en are going to visit the factory?
– Where are they from?
– Can you remember their names?
– Are the children nice?
– Choose one child and describe him / her. (character)
5. Checking the answers
(5 minutes)
6. Organi sational part
(2 minutes)

The first lesson
I started the first lesson with questions about the author. I mentioned above that I think
children do not real a lot nowadays, which is widely known. But it does not apply on 100% of
children. Some are on the contrary interested in reading a lot. I tried to ask abo ut Roald Dahl
and his books. All the children said that they had heard about him and two of them even
named some more stories by him. Children knew Matilda when I asked them. They had
probably already read some stories in Romanian .
The crucial point on the lesson was the movie, because without watching it the pupils
would not have been able to fill in the questionnaire. I managed to play the whole part of it
that I had planned, but it finished the moment the bell was ringing. So I asked the pupils to

54 comple te the papers (the questionnaire) for homework. Children loved the lesson, not only
because they did not have to learn and work with textbook, but also because they liked the
story a lot.

The second lesson plan
1. Organi sational part
(2 minutes)
2. Watching ne xt part of the movie
(20 minutes)
The visit of the factory. Naughty children are punished for their bad behaviour.
Introduction of Oompa – Loompas.
– using DVD extras – dancing
– reading and translation of a song
“Augustus Gloop! Augustus Gloop!
The great big greedy nincompoop!
How long could we allow this beast
To gorge and guzzle, feed and feast
On everything he wanted to?
Great Scott! It simply wouldn’t do!
However long this pig might live,
We’re positive he’d never give
Even the smallest bit of fun
Or happ iness to anyone.
So what we do in cases such
As this, we use the gentle touch,
And carefully we take the brat
And turn him into something that
Will give great pleasure to us all –
A doll, for instance, or a ball,
Or marbles or a rocking horse.
– learning danc ing and singing
(20 minutes)
3. Organizational part, homework (Write a prediction of about 6 sentences. What will
happen next in the movie? How will the story end?)
(3 minutes)

55
The second lesson
We had to move from one classroom to another again. As a resul t, I had to omit some
activities because of lack of time. First, I checked the homework. Only a few pupils did it in
their notebooks , but other pupils were able to answer the questions, too. Then we watched
next part of the movie and finally we did the act ivity with pictures and learned to dance. I was
surprised how they liked dancing. Unfortunately, we only had about 7 minutes for this
activity, then the bell rang and there was no space for any feedback. It was caused by time
loss, which happened because o f moving. If we had not had to move, I would have had
enough time to fulfill my plan.
I felt a little disappointed after those two lessons, because the class was nice and I
could have done much more with them if I had had time. The introduction was poor a nd there
was not time for any feedback, which was a big mistake. The pupils did not learn much,
because everything had to be done in hurry. I would have liked them to make some notes in
their notebooks and spend some time on revision exercises. We did not have time to do any
exercises or activities based on the film practicing vocabulary or grammar. If there was
enough time, we could do some of them spontaneously and the pupils would not even
recognise that they were not watching the film and playing, but l earning.
At least the pupils had two lively lessons and tried different way of work. They liked
the lessons and it is one of the most important things in teaching.

The third lesson plan
1. Organi sational part
(2 minutes)
2. Checking homework, discussion
(5 – 10 minutes)
3. Watching next part of the movie + the end
(20 minutes)
4. Playing with pictures – every pupil gets a picture (copied from the book Charlie and
the Chocolate factory) and their task is to stand in a row in chronological order and
say which scene is i n the picture.
(5 minutes)
5. Discussion
– Did you like the movie? Why / why not?
– Who was your favourite character?

56 – What was nice / was not nice about the children?
– Would you like to such a factory? Why / why not?
– Would you like to read the book now? (+ motivat ing pupils to read – the book
is much better, because the content is more dense, there are pictures, you can
read in your pace, you can read some parts again and again etc.)
(13 – 18 minutes)
6. Organizational part
(1 minute)
In conclusion, watching videos is really entertaining, but it takes a longer time to prepare and
the teacher needs to divide the activity over several classes.

COOKING
Level: 8th grade (14 – 15 year -old student s)
Food is one of the crucial needs for human beings next to the air and wate r. Every person eats
some food since the day one. Food is a phenomenon. Thousand of books about food have
been written; a lot of people dedicated their life to cooking. People love food and its
preparation might be lots of fun!
Therefore I decided to prep are a project about cooking. Boys are generally less
interested in this topic. That is why I chose to introduce a famous British cook Jamie Oliver.
He is young and he may be more of an inspiration for boys. Girls may adore him as a
handsome guy.
I used a DVD . I chose a recipe for pork chops and traditional Irish champ. The criteria
for choosing the recipe were the kind of food prepared – I wanted something traditional or
typical British or Irish meal; length and language. I played it in English with Roman ian
subtitles, because the two Englishmen were speaking quickly and with such an accent, which
I supposed not to be understood easily by the pupils. The video was 20 minutes long. I did
not play the whole episode, because it would be too long. At the begin ning of the episode,
Jamie is coming to a restaurant to visit his friend who works as a chef. Then they go together
to Jamie’s home on a motorbike. There is an introductory song playing on background. It is a
kind of pop music. I hoped that this modern ima ge of the film would motivate the pupils and
show them that cooking is a job not only for their mothers and grandmothers.
I decided to make a simple simulation with the pupils. I chose five different recipes
from book Jamie’ Dinners, which was published in 2004. Pupils got the recipes and therefore
were divided into five groups. They were supposed to prepare a presentation together: to
pretend cooking, describing the process and trying to introduce or teach new vocabulary to

57 their classmates. They were supp osed to become cooks and possibly teachers. They did not
have to learn the recipes by heart – they could read them. I suggested using pictures or notes
with words during the show. I chose recipes for tomato soup, thai watermelon salad, farfalle
with carbon ara and spring peas, summer tray -baked salmon and bakewell tart. I brought the
original book with me so that the pupils can have a look at it, see it in colours and see the
photos of Jamie, his family, pictures of his restaurant, the fifteen boys and food and meals,
too.

Expected problems
I supposed pupils not to understand the listening very well. That is the reason why I decided
to play Romanian subtitles. Jamie and his Irish friend speak together quite quickly, because
the material is not made to be a study material, but a show for British people. Their accent is
strong. One has to be quite focused and know English quite well in order to understand
everything. However, some parts are clear even for pre -intermediate students.
I expected boys not to be i nterested in cooking. My prediction was correct with a little detail
missing – the girls were not interested, either.
I expected the pupils to know basic vocabulary connected with cooking: ingredients,
food, some basic verbs such as grate, stir, pour etc. , tools such as pan, pot, oven etc. Some
pupils did not know much and had to look everything up in dictionaries. Some pupils were
good and did not need my help or dictionaries so much, but there were only a few of them.
My lesson suddenly happened to be us ing grammar -translation method, although it
was not my intention, and ten ded to be boring in some groups, where there were not any good
students and they had to translate the text word by word with dictionaries. I tried to help
them, but I did not want to translate the text for them, so my advice was rather sporadic.

The first lesson plan
1. Organi sational part
(2 minutes)
2. Introductory questions
What do you thing we are going to talk about? → miming
Do you like cooking?
Can you cook?
Is it a good / interest ing job to be a cook?
Do you know any famous cook?

58 Etc.
(3 minutes)
3. Introducing Jamie Oliver
Jamie Oliver is a young Englishman who established a restaurant called Fifteen in London.
Every year, he hires fifteen young people living in streets and provides one-year-education
course. They become cooks. He has published a few cookery books; the latest is called Jamie
at home . (They can have a look at the book – I have the English original.) He also has a
popular TV show. He is married and has two small childr en.
(2 minutes)
4. Brainstorming – cooking
(3 minutes)
5. What do you like to eat? What would you like to be able to cook?
6. Watching DVD, filling in the questionnaire
(20 minutes)
7. Checking the answers (with partner, then with teacher)
(3 minutes)
8. Explaining the p roject task, showing the scene with pictures, division into groups,
distributing recipes.
(10 minutes)
9. Organi sational part (2 minutes)
Homework: translate the recipes so that you know new vocabulary and you can understand
the procedure of preparation.
The first lesson
I tried to motivate the pupils and describe Jamie Oliver in the best way, but m ost of them
said they did not like cooking and did not know any cook. Generally, the response was
negative all over. Nevertheless, I played the DVD hoping that t hey might get interested. I
asked them to fill in the questionnaires, but soon I re alised that they would not be able to.
They seemed not to listen to the video at all and I think they only read the subtitles. At the
moment they read the answer they needed , they started to listen to the English, but it was
already gone. The result was sad. What is more, they were not happy with the recipes I gave
them. I was disappointed after the first lesson with this class.
The second lesson plan
1. Organizational part
(2 minutes)

59 2. Working out the presentation in groups (drawing pictures, division of roles among
pupils, asking questions the teacher etc.)
(40 minutes)
3. Organizational part
(3 minutes)

The second lesson
The second lesson was much better than the first one. The pupils seemed more interested in
the topic or were at least somehow reconciled with it. However, only one group had
translated the recipe at home, the rest pull them out of their bags, some of them badly
creased. Some pupils did not even bring it, but thos e were exceptions. I brought dictionaries
to the class and distributed them among children. They started translating. Some pupils
divided the work among themselves within the group, which means that some of them
translated and some were drawing pictures fo r presentation and helping with the translation if
they understood something from the recipe. I was monitoring all the time and helping student
with difficulties. I was s urprise d when I found that they had to look up in the dictionaries
words like a pot, a slice or even a peanut .
At the end of the lesson, I asked the pupils to divide the rest of work among them and finish it
before the next lesson, when the presentation would take place. I meant to finish the
translation and prepare the presentation, draw p ictures or another way how to present the
recipe.

The third lesson plan
1. Organi sational part
(2 minutes)
2. Presentations of the groups
(42 minutes)
3. Organi sational part
(1 minute)

The third lesson
The first group presented the recipe for farfalle with carbon ara and spring peas. Two pupils
from the group were chosen to present it. They had nice pictures of the ingredients and one of
them showed the picture during the other one read the recipe. After this introduction, one of
the pupils continued reading, but t he show stopped. It was obvious the he read it for the fi rst

60 time loud. I could not understand him very well because he did not pronounce correctly. I
stopped him in a while because it was no use listening to him. I am sure that neither his
classmates coul d understand him, because if they did not know basic words, they definitely
could not understand the more difficult ones.

The second group was supposed to present thai watermelon salad. When I asked them to
come in front of the class and start, they did not move. It took me a second to understand that
they were not prepared. I did not know why, because they had translated the whole recipe the
previous lesson. I asked them to come and read the recipe at least, but they had left it at
home. I was disappoint ed and angry. I told them to rewrite the translation of the recipe at
home and bring it to school the next lesson.
The next group presented the recipe for tomato soup. There were only two girls in the
group, but they did very well. They had prepared some pictures and showed not only the
ingredients, but also pretended cooking.
The fourth group showed us how to prepare salmon. I knew that those boys had
translat ed the recipe the previous lesson and did not manage to prepare any pictures. So I
brought some plastic food from home and lent them a pan and a spatula too. Their
presentation was nice and humorous and everybody liked it. However, they were not good at
reading and I stopped them after short time. But their attitude was good.
The last group spoke a bout bakewell tart. I really liked their pictures – they were A4
format papers folded in half so that they made “roof” and could stand. Pupils could see all the
pictures displayed. They read the recipe well.
At the end of the lesson, we still had some time left because of the one group, which
did not do the presentation. I asked the pupils to take a piece of paper and write al l the words
connected with food and cooking they could remember from the last three lessons. I was
positively surprised with the resu lt. I left them of about five minutes and some of them asked
me for extra time, they still knew some words they wanted to write down. Some pupils did
very well, they managed to write down a lot of words and add translation, too. The maximum
number was twen ty-four and all the words were translated. Two children wrote twenty -two
words, one of them with translation. I monitored the class during writing because I wanted
them to sign their papers and not to copy from their recipes. They surprised me with words
such as sea salt, fresh mint, gas stove, extra virgin oil, smoky bacon, tablespoon or large pan .
In the last five minutes we played a game called “The alphabet game.” Children were
asked to say words connected with cooking and food in alphabetical order, i. e. a word
beginning with a, then b etc. Who ever knew one could stand up and write it on the board.

61 They were quite creative and used some words they could remember from their recipes, e. g.
farfalle or gas.

POSTCROSSING – a bridge over times and cultur es
This is an experiment I started in 2014 in a 5th grade class and it is about exchanging
postcards. This is an ongoing process because students from different classes are still joining.
I decided to encourage the natural sense of curiosity and in Septemb er we started the
Postcrossing project.
What is postcrossing? A school / class account could be registered and used to allow
children to send postcards (under adult supervision) to people around the world. In the
beginning only a ten students joined becaus e not all of them have access to the internet at
home or master computer skills.
As postcards are sent or received, their destination / location of origin could be
identified in atlases / Google Maps / Google Earth. It might also be a good opportunity to find
out more about that place, and the history / culture of the people living there.
Some wonderful classroom displays could be created, using the postcards and information
about the places they are from. The only possible disadvantage is that it is a r ather costly
activity, given that students have to buy the postcards and the stamps.
I first created an account for myself and I brought every postcard I received into the
classroom. How this project helps students improve their language?
 Students are moti vated to write English correctly;
 They prepare presentations about themselves;
 They learn about different countries and places in the world;
 They can make their own cards, and thus use different skills.
At the end of the school year 2014 -2015 we created th e classroom display which can be seen
in Appendix 6

Assessment of the activities
To get some feedback, I asked all the pupils participating in the projects to fill in
questionnaires for the school year 2014 -2015.
TRAVELLING ABROAD
GENERAL QUESTIONS
What do you prefer ?:

62 a) learning from a textbook
b) learning from another materials such as books, movies, leaflets, magazines
Have you ever done a project in your English class? ……………………..

→ If yes, how many times? ……………………….

→ Was it easy or difficult for you? … …………………

→ what was the most difficult part of the project?
a) preparation – searching for information
b) working out the presentation – cooperation with your classmates, summarizing the
information, choosing information etc.
c) presentation – speaking, standing in front of the class

TRAVELLING PROJECT QUESTIONS
Did you like the project about travelling to England and Ireland? yes or why not?
………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Circle the statements you agree with:
– I learned new things
– I didn’t learn any new things

– I liked working with materials such as leaflets, books, maps
– I didn’t like working with materials which were different to my
textbook

– I liked working with the Internet
– I didn’t like working with the Internet

– I liked presenting the results orally in front of the class
– I didn’t like presenting the results orally in front of the class

– The whole task was rather easy for me
– The whole task was not easy nor difficult for me
– The whole task was difficult for me

63
– I was intere sted in the topic
– I wasn’t interested in the topic

– It was better that working with textbook
– It wasn’t better than working with textbook

– I wish we had more time for this project
– There was enough time for this project

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
GEN ERAL QUESTIONS
What do you prefer ?:
c) learning from a textbook
d) learning from another materials such as books, movies, leaflets, magazines
Do you use additional materials in English language lessons? (books, magazines, songs etc.)
If yes, what materials?
………… ……………………………………………………………………………..
Did you know the story before we watched it at school?
Did you ?:
e) understand spoken English in the movie
f) understand the subtitles in the movie
g) didn’t understand at all, watched the pictures only .
Did you learn anything new o r not?
Did you like dancing like Oompa – Loompas?
a) Yes, I did.
b) Yes, I did. I like when I can move in lessons.
c) No, I did not.
d) I don’t care.
Would you like to read the book now? Why?
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Do you wish we had more time for workin g with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory o r was it
enough?

COOKING

64 GENERAL QUESTIONS
What do you prefer ?:
a) learning from a textbook
b) learning from another materials such as books, movies, leaflets, magazines

Do you ever listen to spoken English?
a. no, not at all
b. yes, at school, listening activities in my textbook
c. yes, on TV, in movies (video DVD) etc.
Have you ever done a project in English class? ……………………..
→ If yes, how many times? ……………………….
→ Was it easy or difficult for you? ……………………
→ what was the most difficult part of the project?
d) preparation – searching for information
e) working out the presentation – cooperation with your classmates, summarizing the
information, choosing information etc.
f) presentation – speaking, standing in front of the class

Had you heard about Jamie Oliver before we spoke about him at school?

Do you like him?
Did you like the video we watched?
d. yes, I did, it was interesting
e. yes, I did, but I didn’t understand it
f. no, I didn’t, it was silly
g. no, I didn’t, I don’t like cooking
h. other: …………………………………………………………………………
Circle the statement you agree with:
– I learned some new things
– I didn’t learn anything new

– I liked presenting the results orally in front of the class
– I didn’t like presenting the results orally in front of the class

– I was interested in the topic

65 – I wasn’t interested in the topic

– It was better that working with textbook
– It wasn’t better than working with textbook

– The whole task was rather easy for me
– The whole task was not easy nor difficult for me
– The w hole task was difficult for me

– I wish we had more time for this project
– There was enough time for this project

I did not ask the pupils to fill in the questionnaires immediately after our lessons, but I left
some time for them to settle down . I was a fraid that some pupils, especially the low
achievers , might have judged the lesson too emotionally immediately after and might have
tried to be completely negative . I also assumed some students needed to think about the
lessons at home and maybe discuss them with friends, classmates of teachers.
I helped them with translation, too. I told them that I would accept answers in Romanian ,
because I appreciated the information more than knowledge in this case.

Results
Travelling
I got 18 completed questionnair es. I found out that two thirds of the pupils prefer working
with supplementary materials to working with textbooks. All of them had done a project at
school before and two thirds found it easy.
The next question dealt with how demanding a project is . Ele ven students out of eighteen
found the presentation itself the most difficult part of the project. Five of them did not like
working out the presentation and two of them preparation.
The next part was about my project. Seven students did not like it. Two o f those said that they
did not like doing projects, another two wrote * It is bor ing. Eleven students liked it.
Eleven students think that they learned some new things; seven did not learn anything new.
Fourteen students liked working with additional mate rials, four did not. All the students liked
working with the Internet, although part of them told me in the lesson that they did not have
the Internet at home and therefore could not have done the homework. Only two students
liked presenting the project in front of the class, the rest did not. That is what I had expected.

66 They were able to work with materials I gave them very well; they chose the needed or the
most important information and made notes in their notebooks. But they did not like speaking
and b eing watched by their classmates and the teacher. Two pupils found the whole task
rather difficult, one student easy, and the rest think that it was adequate. Two thirds of the
student s were not interested in the topic, but the same number of them think th at it was better
than working with a textbook. Half of the class thinks that there was enough time for the
project and the other half thinks there should have been more time for it.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
I got sixteen completed questionnaires, which means that all the pupils who did the project
filled it in. Seven students prefer learning from a textbook to learning from supplementary
materials. It is a huge difference between them and higher grades, where almost all the pupils
answered that ad ditional materials are better . Most of the students wrote that they seldom like
to use additional material. Fifteen pupils had known the story; it was new only for one
student . Most of the students said that they had understood both spoken English and sub titles.
I wanted them to choose one answer only, but they circled both of them. I think they wanted
to say that they had been listening and reading the subtitles and therefore had understood.
Seven students think they learned something new, nine of them di d not learn anything. Five
students do not think anything special about dancing, they did not care, but the rest liked it
and some of them mentioned that they like moving in lessons. Ten students do not even think
about reading the book, because they do no t like reading. Four of them would like to read it
and two would like to read it in Romanian . Fifteen students wish to have more time for this
project, but I am afraid that they only liked watching the film. If we did more grammar and
exercises, they proba bly would not have liked it so much.

Cooking
I got 17 filled questionnaires. Fifteen students prefer learning from different materials than
textbooks according to them. Eleven students meet spoken English on TV, in movies etc, six
of them only at school i n listening exercises from their textbooks. There was no student who
would not come in contact with spoken English at all. All the students had experience with
making a project, but they could not remember the exact number. One student wrote *I don’t
no. O ne half (nine) found it easy, the rest difficult. The next question about the most difficult
part of the project was not so one -sided as in other classes. Whereas students in other classes
unambiguously did not like presentation itself, it was different he re. Five students did not like

67 preparation, four of them working out the presentation and eight of them the presentation
itself .
Twelve students had heard about Jamie Oliver. Fourteen do not like him. Most of the students
liked the video I played for them , but they did not understand it. Four students though it was
silly. Only one student said it was interesting.

One half of the class thinks that they learned something new and the same number of students
was interested in the topic. Thirteen students did not like presenting in front of the class.
Fourteen students think it was better than working with a textbook and twelve did no t find the
task to be neither easy nor difficult. Nine students wish to have more time for this project.
I also inquired the 30 students from all the classes of different levels of English to
answer some more general questions about authentic materials and how they felt about using
them with the teacher in the classroom.
Question no.1: Do you enjoy working with authentic materials at your English lessons?

To the first question “Do you enjoy working with authentic materials at your English
lessons?” 12 respondents answered that they quite enjoy it, 10 respondents admitted they
don’t enjoy it, only 6 students said that they do enjo y working with authentic materials and
the last 2 chose the option of not really enjoying it.
Question no.2: For what purpose do you think teachers use them? (Choose one purpose,
which is the most important).

68

In the second question, “For what purpose d o you think teachers use them? (Choose one
purpose which is the most important)” respondents were supposed to choose one option
which is the most appropriate for them. The same number of 12 respondents said that they
think teachers use the authentic materi als to expose students to new vocabulary and
grammatical structures and to avoid working with textbook. Three students answered that
they think they use them when they want to increase variety and spontaneity in class, only
two students think they are used when they want to expose their students to “real language”
and one student said there is another purpose, without specification.
Question no.3: Do you find authentic material effective?

To the third question “ Do you find them effective?” 13 of the aske d student s replied that they
definitely find them effective, same amount find them quite effective and only four do not
find them really effective. None of the respondents would choose the option of not finding
them effective at all.
Question no.4: What is the greatest benefit of using authentic materials in your opinion?

69

To the question “What is the greatest benefit of using authentic materials in your opinion?”
majority of respondents, 11 students , replied that the greatest benefit to them is the wide
choice of authentic materials. Six students find beneficial the ir exposure to the “real
language”, three think that the contact with Anglophone culture brings the greatest benefit
and finally ten respondents think there is another great benefit of using the authentic
materials.
Question no.5: Which authentic material from the following list do you find the most suitable
for secondary classrooms?

In the question “Which authentic material from the following list do you find the most
suitable for secondary cl assrooms?” the respondents were supposed to choose one material
from the offered variety, which they personally find the most appropriate. The m ajority of the
asked students picked the newspaper articles, specifically 13 of them. The second highest
number of respondents said that the Internet websites are the most suitable to them. Four

70 students think books are suitable, two think magazines are more suitable, another two chose
films as most suitable and finally, songs were chosen by two students as the most suitable
authentic material.
Question no.6: Do you find working with authentic materials difficult for you?

In the question “Do you find working with authentic materials difficult for you?” a high
number of 18 respondents believe that authentic material s are very difficult for them to work
with. One third of the respondents think that it is quite difficult for them . Only two students
find authentic materials not so difficult for them . The result of this question surprised me a
little because I could see that students generally enjoy the classes in which we use a variety of
materials. On the other hand, it is more difficult to organise activities and they do tend to be
more demanding on the students.
Question no.7: From the list, pick the most challenging one for you : magazines, Internet
websites, songs, films, travel brochures, radio recordings, newspaper articles, books, other.

In the question 7. the students were asked to pick the most challenging authentic material
from a variety of resources. The hig hest number of student s, specifically 15 people, think
that radio recordings are the most challenging ones. Films are being seen as the most
challenging authentic material by ten respondents. The last option, which was chosen by five

71 student s, is songs.
Question no.8: Do you find preparing for the lessons with the use of authentic materials
difficult for you, as students ?

Question 8 asked the respondents whether they find preparing for the lessons with the use of
authentic materials difficult. From thos e who do find it difficult, 14 student s said that they
find it only quite difficult and eight student s find it very difficult. The rest of the respondents
don’t find it difficult, from those six student s don’t find it so difficult and two student s even
don’t find it difficult at all.
Question no.9: Do you and your classmates enjoy working with authentic materials?

This question tried to reveal if the students like to work with such materials. From the number
of 30 respondents, 17 said that they and their classmates enjoy working with authentic
materials and ten said that they quite enjoy it. Three students don’t especially enjoy it.

Question no.10: What authentic materials from the following would you enjoy working with

72 the most: magazines, Internet websi tes, songs, films, travel brochures, radio recordings,
newspapers, books, other.

In the final question, students were asked to pick the authentic material which they enjoy
working with the most. Most of the respondents, 16 students , chose the option “Int ernet
websites”. Eight students enjoy working with films the most. Songs are preferred by students
according to five of them and books according to one.

CONCLUSION
The focus of my thesis has been to look at the use of authentic materials in the learning –
teaching experience and to show how different resources can be used to develop both
productive and receptive skills , as well as how it can contribute to the mastering of the
language systems. Authentic materials give an opportunity to use the foreign lang uage in a
natural and motivating way by helping students to develop their language skills in order to
become competent users of the language.
The theoretical background chapter indicates that there are many types of authentic
materials from which teachers can choose the most suitable ones. Nowadays, the media as the
Internet offer an infinite range of resources for foreign language teaching. The points of view
towards using authentic materials in English teaching differ though, as can be seen in the
possibl e disadvantages section.
If students are to develop a functional proficiency in the language and to use the
language in a communicative manner in the real world, they must begin to encounter the
language of that world in the classroom. That is, they need a mple opportunities to see and
hear the language used as the primary medium of communication among native speakers.

73 Also, they need opportunities to practice using the language to cope with everyday situations
they might encounter outside the classroom. It is not always comfortable for the teacher to
prepare and adapt the material for the classroom, nor is it always easy for the students to
understand and react to all kinds of material provided.
The use of authentic materials in the classroom has been discus sed, with the student
benefiting from the exposure to real language being used in a real context. Other aspects
which proved positive when using authentic materials were that they are highly motivating,
giving a sense of achievement when understood and enc ourage further reading. They also
reflect the changes in the use of language, there is a wide variety of text types, they are also
very versatile (they can be used in different ways to promote different skills) and can be used
more than once as well as be updated. Anything can be used as authentic material but for
developing all four skills -reading , writing, listening and speaking, one of the most useful
remains the Internet, with large amounts of varied material being easily accessible.
One of the main re ason for using authentic materials in the classroom is once outside
the “safe” , controlled language learning environment, the learner will not encounter the
artificial language of the classroom but the real world and language how it is really used. The
role of the teacher is not to delude the language learner , but to prepare him, giving the
awareness and necessary skills so as to understand how the language is actually used. Having
made a distinction between authentic and non -authentic material and evaluate d the use of
them in the classroom, it is worth taking into consideration Davies who wrote:
“It is not that a text is understood because it is authentic but that it is authentic because it is
understood. …Everything the learner understands is authentic for him.”37
I would recommend using authentic materials and modern alternative teaching
approaches and methods to all the language teachers. It is important to have good class
management skills and be able to inspire the student s. The positive results will def initely
delight both teachers and their students.

37 Davies, A. Simple, simplified and simplificati on: what is authentic? .Longman:1984

74

Appendix 1

75

76

77 Appendix 2
Handout fortheactivity Things that smell
1.Freshly baked bread
2.Hand lotion
3.Theaironafrosty morning
4.Anoutdoor barbecue
5.Anocean beach
6.AChinese restaurant
7.Acamp fire
8.AChristmas tree
9.Thewater ofafresh mountain stream
10.Burning feathers orhair
11.Boxes ofapples
12.Breath thatsmells ofgarlic
13.Adairy farm orcow shed
14.Adeep, dark forest
15.Freshly mown grass
16.Newly fallen snow
17.Chicken frying inapan
18.Garden soilwhen youhave justturned itover with aspade
19.Anewbook
20.Crushed orange peel
21.Ahaybarn
22.Laundry ontheclothes lineonahotsummer day
23.Burning incense
24.When itrains insummer after along hotdryperiod
25.Afast-food restaurant specialising inhamburgers
26.Burning ubbish
27.Arainforest
28.AnIndian restaurant
29.Thick seafog
30.Acarthatsmells ofcigarette smoke
31.Theinside ofaseashell
32.Burning leaves
33.Horse stables

78 2
Appendix 3
Handout with possible responses fortheactivity Things that smell
PositiveGood.
Mmm!
Ilikethat.
Ijustlove that!
NegativeIdon't likethat atall.
Ihate that!
Ugh!Yuk! Ick!
Disgusting!
Revolting!
NeutralNothing.
Zero.
That does nothing forme.
Nothing oneway ortheother.
Memories andAssociations Ah,that reminds meof(when)………
Iassociate that with……….
Adapted from Teaching Chunks ofLanguage

79 Appendix 4

80 Appendix 5
Handout forthequestionnaire.
Sheet 1:Replies
Allthetime. (Early) inthemorning. Intheafternoon.
During theday. Intheevening. (Late) atnight.
Inthe(winter). Now andthen. (Almost) never.
Whenever (I)can. Never, ifIcanhelp it. (Once)……..a day.
Every day. Every (two) days. Could yousaythatagain?
Whenever (I)need to.It
varies.Whenever (I)feellikeit. That isadifficult question.
Replace theword inbrackets whenever suitable.
Sheet 2:Questions
1.When doyouhave breakfast?
2.When doyougotobed?
3.When doyouhave ashower orbath?
4.When doyoucomb orbrush your hair?
5.When does your heart beat?
6.When doyoudream?
7.When doyoudream about being here inclass?
8.When didyouhave breakfast yesterday?
9.When doyoueatbananas?
10.When does thesuncome up?
11.When arechildren inschool?
12.Whn doyouhave teeth inyour mouth?
13.When isthemoon full?
14.When areyougoing togohome today?
15.When doyoueatchicken?
16.When doyouseethestars?
17.When doyouhave fingers?
18.When istheweather thecoldest?
19.When doyoucook?
20.When doyouread anewspaper?
21.When doyouspeak Chinese?
22.When doyouwork?
23.When doyouthink ofthefuture?

81 Appen dix 6
Postcrossing – a bridge over times and cultures

82 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashworth, M. and Wakefield, P. Growing up with English . Office of English Language
Programs, 2006
Boers, F. and Lindstromberg S. Teaching Chunks of Language. Helbling La nguages, 2008
Davies, A. Simple, simplified and simplification: what is authentic? . Longman, 1984
Flowerdew, J and Peacock, M. Research perspectives on English for Academic Purposes .
Cambridge University Press, 2001
Hutchinson,Tom. Introduction to Project Work . Oxford University Press, 1992
Harmer, J. How to Teach English . Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2007
Harmer, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching . Longman Press, 1991
Jones, K. Simulations in Teaching. Cambridge University Press, 1990
Kramsc h, C. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford University Press, 1996
Lewis, G. The Internet and Young Learners . Oxford University Press, 2004
Maley, A. Short and Sweet. Short Texts and how to Use Them . Vol1 and 2. Penguin English,
1995
Nunan, D. Designing Tasks for Communicative Classrooms . Cambridge University Press,
1995
Teeler, Dede; Gray, Peta. How to Use the Internet in ELT. Pearson Education Limited, 2000.
Ur, P. A Course in Language Teaching . Cambridge University Press, 1996
Valdes, Joyce Me rrill. Culture Bound. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Vizental, Adriana. Strategies of Teaching and Testing . Timisoara: Editura Orizonturi
Universitare, 2003
Walker, Carolyn. Penguin Readers Teacher’s Guide to Using Film and TV. Penguin
Longman Publishin g, 1999.
Widdowson, H.G. Teaching Language as Communication . Oxford University Press: 1990
Wright, Andrew. Pictures for Language Learning. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Internet sources:
Cook, V. Using Authentic Materials in the Classroom : 1981
Heitl er, D. Teaching with Authentic Materials:an overview: 2002
Lingzhu, J and Yuanyuan, Z. The Use of Authentic Materials in Teaching English Foreign
Language.Listening: 2010
Martinez, A. Authentic Materials: An Overview: Mexico City: 2002

83 Oura, G.K. Authentic task-based materials: bringing the real world into the classroom: 2012
Peacock, M. The Effect of Authentic Materials on the Motivation of EFL Learners. ELT
Journal, vol 51: April 1997
Taylor, D. Inauthentic Authenticity or Authentic Inauthenticity?: 1999
www.onestopenglish.com
www.longman.com
www.teachingenglish.com
www.elgazette.com

84 DECLARATIE

Subsemnata Moldovan Diana – Maria , profesor de limba engleză la Școala Gimnazială
Galsa, judetul Arad, candidat pentru susținerea probelor de obținere a gradului didactic I în
învățământ, declar pe propria răspundere că:
– lucrarea a fost elaborată personal și îmi aparține în întregime;
– nu au fost folosite alte surse decât cele indicate în bibliografie;
– nu au fost preluate texte, date sau elemente de grafică din alte lucrări sau din alte surse
fără a fi citate și fără a fi precizată sursa preluării ;
– lucrarea nu a mai fost folosită în alte contexte de examen sau de concurs.

Arad, Moldovan Diana -Maria
25.08.2015

85