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.
Common Sense Teaching ESL 