The advantages of using authentic texts in the language learning classroom

Authentic texts can be quick and easy to find
One of the main advantages for the teacher of using authentic texts is that it is possible to find interesting and relevant texts for your students from your own reading of the internet, newspapers, magazines etc. The chances that you will find a good text while reading through a textbook or graded reader for pleasure are much fewer! Unfortunately, finding an interesting text is only the first stage, and possibly not the most difficult or important one. The next stages are making sure the language in the text is as suitable as the topic and creating the tasks.
In order to make the most of a good text you have found by chance without that making it more difficult to prepare than just trawling through textbooks, there are several timesaving tips you can use. One is simply to share your texts and tasks with other teachers. This can be done informally or though a system such as a notice board or folders (arranged by when the materials were added, level, language focus and/ or topic area). The second (less than perfect but very time efficient) method is to build up a database of question types that are easily adapted to all kinds of texts such as “Does the writer have a positive or negative impression of what he or she is writing about?” or “Predict what the story is about from the headline/ picture(s) and read through to check”.
There are also ways of replicating the “lucky find” method of choosing good texts with texts that are already graded and have tasks. The easiest is to collect them in a similar way to that suggested above for authentic texts - putting any particularly interesting and/ or useful texts that you find when working your way through a textbook or exam practice book into files marked by ESP area, grammar point, length, country it is about etc.
Authentic texts can be up to date and topical
Or to put it another way, textbook readings can be based on texts that are out of date in terms of content, old fashioned in terms of attitude and/ or dated in look. Unfortunately, using a news story that is hot off the press and so of overwhelming interest to the students usually leads to all of the preparation work mentioned above with the chance that it will quickly become out of date when the news changes and so will have to be thrown away in a week or two despite all your hard work. By typing up your worksheet you can at least save yourself a bit of time with the preparation next time you use an authentic text, and sharing it with other teachers should hopefully prompt them to do the same and save you some preparation next time.
When it comes to trying to replicate that topical buzz in the classroom with graded texts for language learners, there are two options. One is to use simplified news stories that some TEFL and newspaper websites offer at (usually) weekly intervals. Another is again to keep graded texts filed in an easy to use way so you can at least use one on the same general topic as a recent news story (e.g. “immigration” or “Japanese/ Korean relations”), so you can use that as a lead in to a discussion or reading on what has happened recently.
It’s what students will have to cope with eventually
In my experience, many of the teachers who choose to use the sink-or-swim approach of challenging even lower level language learners with texts written for native speakers seem to be those who also take the similar but more common approach of throwing them into a communicative situation to cope with as best they can. The assumptions are the same in both cases – that they will have to do it eventually so they may as learn how to cope with it as soon as possible, that “real language” and “real communication” are best, and that you learn most by doing. There are some differences between communication and reading, though, as well as some possible false assumptions with both.
The difference between being thrown into a real-life speaking task and being thrown into an authentic text is that in dealing with an unsimplified text you are doing the equivalent of trying to cope with a native speaker making no adjustment for talking to a non-native speaker, a situation that is only likely to occur when listening in monologue situations such as aircraft safety announcements and university lectures. The possibly false assumption some people make about both situations is that students will need to be able to communicate with native speakers at all, as most communication in the world today is between two non-native speakers. As with communication, though, there are advantages to be had from occasionally giving students a more difficult text to challenge themselves and learn how to cope with.