One day, a former student of mine, Jenny, wanted to ask me about an article that her present ESL teacher had assigned. The article was an opinion piece from a popular American magazine. The first thing that I noticed was that she had covered it with little translations above many of the words, including some whose meaning could clearly be understood from the context.

As with any materials that we bring to our class, a decision needs to be made about how to use authentic ones like that magazine article in a pedagogically sound way.

During a discussion about what authentic reading materials are on a TESOL list serv, some members felt it had to be something that was published in a native-speaker source.  But the consensus was that it could be anything that was written without simplification for non-native speakers.

However we define it, many of us ESL teachers will find reasons for incorporating authentic materials into our lessons. For example,
• The articles are more current than in ESL books.
• The content is of high interest or counter-intuitive.
• The article is especially relevant to the students currently in our class.
• We can help students develop confidence that they can understand things they might want to or need to read outside our ESL classes.

Three techniques for making authentic materials user-friendly for ESL students.

I was in a waiting room reading a newspaper. One of the articles was an interesting and counter-intuitive article about how some “friends” can actually be bad for our mental and physical health. By the middle of the article, I thought, “You know, my ESL students would be interested in this.” Here are just the first two paragraphs:
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Some Friends, Indeed, Do More Harm Than Good
By MARY DUENWALD
New York Times, September 10, 2002

¹ Friends are supposed to be good for you. In recent years, scientific research has suggested that people who have strong friendships experience less stress, they recover more quickly from heart attacks, and they are likely to live longer than the friendless. They are even less susceptible to the common cold, studies show.

² But not all friends have such a salutary effect. Some lie, insult and betray. Some are overly needy. Some give too much advice. Psychologists and sociologists are now calling attention to the negative health effects of bad friends. 
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I ended up using this article over time for three different purposes.

1)  For confidence building.

I wanted students to develop confidence that they can understand authentic materials without needing to look up or translate, like Jenny did. For one class, I did this by having them read the first few paragraphs without a dictionary. Next, I asked them some true-false questions about the main ideas. Knowing the reading level of those students, I was able to choose ideas that I was sure they would be able to answer, even with their limited vocabulary.

For example, for the two paragraphs above about friends doing harm:

Directions: Answer True or False about the article.

1. Researchers believe that good friendships can be good for our health.
2. If we have good friends, we will probably feel a lot of stress.
3. An example of a good friend is someone who lies to us.
4. Bad friends can cause us to have bad health.
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2) For stimulating a discussion and as a writing prompt.

For two other classes, I wanted students to understand more than just the main ideas. For a Conversation class, there were several details that I thought would be interesting to discuss and to relate to their own experiences. And for a Writing class, I wanted to have them read something stimulating about the topic of friends before writing a paper on the topic.

Since the goal wasn’t to help them develop reading skills, it didn’t matter if the article was right at their reading level. At the same time, I knew they would probably unnecessarily struggle to try to understand this article. To resolve this, I adapted the article by revising some of the vocabulary and adjusting the sentence lengths.

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¹ Friends are supposed to be good for you. In recent years, scientific research has suggested suggests that people who have strong friendships experience less stress and they recover more quickly from heart attacks. and Also, they are likely to live longer than the friendless people who have no friends. They are even less susceptible to the common more likely to catch a cold. studies show.

² But not all friends have such a salutary effect a good effect on us. Some lie, insult and betray. Some are overly needy need our attention too much. Some give too much advice. Psychologists and sociologists are now calling giving attention to the negative health effects of bad friends.
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I was able to make this adaptation quite easily and quickly. (The Review function in Word is helpful for doing this.) And this new version was at a proper level for my students. For comparison, the original article was a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 8.1 and my adapted version was 5.6.

And best of all, my students were able to read the article without dictionaries and demonstrated that they had understood the main ideas through their ability to discuss and write about it.

3) For reading-skills development or in-depth discussion.

I wanted to use this article for my Reading class, but I knew it was much higher than the i+1 level that educators like Krashen say is optimal for improving reading skills. So I decide to write my own article using the information from this article in, what I hoped  would be, an engaging style. Also, I wrote it at proper level for my students.

Here are a couple of samples of what the first two paragraphs could look like:

Sample 1

¹ Kayo needed to make a decision. Should she continue her friendship with Mari or end it?

² Many people believe that friendships should last forever. However, in her article, “Some Friends, Indeed, Do More Harm Than Good,” Mary Duenwald discusses how friendships can become painful, and as a result, it is sometimes better to end it. This is especially true when the relationship starts to affect our emotional and physical health.
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Sample 2

¹ In an interesting article, “Some Friends, Indeed, Do More Harm Than Good,” Mary Duenwald explains how friendships can turn bad and the dangers these relationships can have on us.

² A common cause of a split up between friends is when one of them can no longer trust the other. This often happens when one shares personal information or secrets that the other doesn’t want other people to know.  For example, Ted told his friend Niko that he was planning to ask Sara out on a date, but he asked Niko not to tell anyone. He didn’t want anyone to know in case Sara turned him. Three hours later, Ted got a message from a co-worker. Jin: “Hey, I heard you’re hoping to go on a date with Sara. Good luck!”
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Although these take more time to produce than the first two, they carry a number of benefits for the teacher and students.

• The teacher is starting with high-interest content to draw from. We are not staring at a blank screen trying to think of something to write. Moreover, it’s a great opportunity for us teachers to use our writing creativity.
• We can customize the content to directly appeal to our students.
• We will probably have many occasions to reuse the article in future classes.

For samples of articles drawn from authentic materials, see

•  • 9th Free Reading Unit.  Surprising Research About How Friendships Are Made.
•  • Stimulating Small-Group Discussion Activity 2: Loneliness Might Not Be What You Think (Including Paraphrasing Exercises.)

David Kehe