Chapter 5 Discussion
5.3 Authentic Materials Make Learning More Interesting
國
立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
intercultural communication with other children from different countries, the seed of having an open-minded attitude to know other cultures—a healthy attitude that helps mold a cultured global citizen—has however germinated in his young mind. And with the emergence of more goals to learn English, it is reasonable to argue that Patrick would have heightened English learning motivation that may further sustain and support him in navigating through the journey of English learning.
All in all, the findings suggest that the emergence of a more integrative oriented motivation, to a discernible degree, has helped boost Patrick’s once negative learning attitude; the gain of the motivation in turn bestowed upon him the new purposes to learn English with more patience and willingness.
5.3 Authentic Materials Make Learning More Interesting
As noted before, prior to the IECT instruction, Patrick gave a rather negative feedback to the English materials he used in both school and cram school. Specifically, he pointed out that the material was boring because he “sings all the time.” Based on this response, it was first assumed that Patrick may simply have a lack of interest in the singing activity itself. During the IECT instruction, however, Patrick did not show resentment to singing; instead, the researcher later discovered that one of the activities he enjoyed the most was learning the song, “What Does the Fox Say.” To clear out what has caused such a difference, the researcher read through Patrick’s English textbooks used at his school for the third graders, and found that even though each unit was short, there were two songs to sing in each unit. The songs were mainly created to help students practice target sentence patterns, so the lyrics contain many repetitive sentences. For instance, the lyrics of one song wrote:
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
I have a ball. I have a ball. I have a ball. Now let’s go! Let’s go to the park!
Let’s go to the park.
For other units, some lyrics were so long that they covered the whole page with similar and repetitive sentence structures. Besides, regarding the tune and tempo of the songs, although they were usually light and rapid and may create a lively and cheerful mood for the listeners, they were highly identical. The high frequency of using these highly repetitive lyrics along with the comparatively similar tunes may therefore cause boredom in Patrick. On the contrary, for the song “What Does the Fox Say” which Patrick adored, despite the fact that it also contains repetitive and similar sentence structures, it is nevertheless a real-life popular electronic song with catchy tunes and funny video. Such being the case, it is fair to say that it is not singing itself that Patrick dislikes, but it is singing those songs which were purposely made for pedagogical purposes and were devoid of the genuine musical and artistic features that deprives him of the fun of singing and learning.
Patrick’s preference over this song, in fact, illustrates the point of how the use of authentic materials benefits and facilitates L2 learning. According to Nunan (1999), authentic materials refer to any forms of real-life spoken or written resources, such as videos, newspapers, magazines, music, and radio programs that are originally
produced and created for the use of native speakers and not for the use of teaching.
Similarly, Widdowson (1990) defined authentic materials as the materials designed for native speakers of the target language, and when they are adopted in the language classroom, they are used in a way similar to their original purposes. A number of researchers have studied the impact of using these different forms of authentic
‧ 國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
these genuine and unabridged materials can bring about profound effects on learners.
For example, Berardo (2006, p.64) identified the following advantages of adopting authentic materials in the foreign language classrooms: (1) they have a positive effect on student motivation (2) they provide authentic cultural information (3) they expose students to real language and (4) they relate more closely to students’ needs.
As in Patrick’s case, we can infer that certain strengths of the use of authentic materials may come into effect and reshape his learning attitude. First, the English learning experience became more motivating because those authentic materials adopted in each unit were more flexible compared to the textbooks; therefore, the contents could give Patrick a renewed sense of expectation every time he finished learning a new unit and make him look forward to discovering what lied ahead. Also, since some of the materials were related to popular culture, Patrick could feel
relevance to his everyday surroundings and could find connections with them. The indisputable outcome was that he became much more responsive and active during the learning process. Moreover, since the adopted authentic materials, such as the music videos, the storybooks, and the video clips were designed for the native speakers, they could make Patrick feel the learning process more “real” as well—he was learning the English from the real cultural products. As a consequence, all of the experiences conjured up a learning process more meaningful and more enjoyable for Patrick. It could also be assumed that the more the learners are exposed to the learning
environment with genuine cultural materials, the more naturally the language learning would become; a natural process that is much the same way as acquiring one’s own mother tongue.