At the beginning of my teaching career, I would search for reading materials for my students that was “at their level”. For my first year students, it had to be present tense and/or some text with a gerund. The vocabulary was simple and pretty low level. For my second year students, perhaps they could do some past tense but really, not many other verb tenses. The material I would find was prepared by teachers or textbook companies for Spanish learners. It was never authentic material. I just figured, my students would be able to authentic text until they had enough vocabulary and grammar. This would be more about their fourth year of Spanish.
It wasn’t until I attended an amazing session at ACTFL 2015 that I began to rethink using authentic material much sooner in the language learning process. The presenter Laura Terrill (https://lauraterrill.wikispaces.com/Presentations) talked about the need to use authentic material from day one, year one. She mentioned how when we pick reading material for our children or other little ones we know, we don’t say “oh not this book, it has conditional tense and my two year old doesn’t know that yet”. Instead, we pick reading material that is interesting and engaging. Why not also apply this to our Spanish students. If we want to mimic true language acquisition, then we should mimic how little ones learn their first language.
Exposing our students to authentic material in the target language is necessary right away! If we want them to use the langauge effectively, then they have to see it used in real life situations by native speakers. It also shows them that the langauge they are learning is used in real life situations every day and about topics that your students are exposed too also! Not the text created for students by textbook companies which are never as interesting or as stimulating as authentic texts. Also, exposing them to authentic text will aid them in the future when dealing with genuine conversations. That being said, authentic texts can be news articles, tweets, funny comics, infographics, magazines, menus, health PSAs....the list is endless! Lastly, authentic text or audios expose students to culture and idioms in a very natural way.
This led me to another thought, why wait until years down the line to introduce authentic Spanish audio to my students. Shouldn’t I expose them to as much authentic Spanish audio from day one? Would exposure to native speakers in authentic audio follow the input hypothesis and the idea that our student’s brain’s our sponges ready to soak up knowledge.
So, I began looking for authentic material to expose my students to weekly. This wasn’t an easy tasks. How do we find authentic written and audio material that is engaging? I began compiling a list of good resources and have included a link to two different Pinterest boards I have put together! Each week, I’d recommend that you include some short of authentic material that is engaging to your students and consider something relative to what is happening right now! They will be able to connect much better to it and will feel less intimidated by the exposure to the target language.
Authentic Text: https://www.pinterest.com/diosestrella/spanish-reading-resources/
Authentic Audio: https://www.pinterest.com/diosestrella/spanish-audio-resources/
How do we use authentic material to engage students at lower levels? Here are some strategies:
Headlines: The students come up with a headline for what they have read/listened to, pick 5 key words or phrases, draw an image that represents what it is about and they can even write a logo for it. Have the kids do some or all of these steps.
Five Words: Have them come up with the five words they were able to comprehend and then have them write a brief summary in English about what they think the material was about.
Front load: Preview the writing, info graphic, audio (etc.) ahead of time and introduce the vocab through actions and images. Repeat the vocab several times with actions to the class, have them practice the vocab and actions in partners, act out the vocab to the class, play games with the vocab…etc. Then, when they are exposed to the authentic text, they are set up to understand some of the key points.
What I see: Have them make a list of images, places, actions (etc.) from the authentic texts. These words will come from their word bank, even though it may be small, that doesn’t matter! A novice mid student makes lists of vocab! It is a normal part of second language acquisition.
What’s my Question: All the students have the same text or have watched the same audio sample. Each student then writes a question on an index card, throws them in the middle of the room (or turns them into you), gets a new card, and has to answer the question. For lower levels, yes or no questions are fine.
Gallery Walk: Have images that support the authentic material and post them around the room. Then, have students walk around doing a gallery walk, which his silent. They will write vocab or short phrases on the sheets of paper with the images using vocab from their word banks to describe them. I’ve also had students sit in groups of four, each student has a different colored marker, and they write vocab or short phrases for about two minutes. Then we pass the sheets with the images to another group, and begin again.
I hope that these strategies encourage you to also start using authentic text right away with your students. I do want to add one more thought, I will often have to remind my lower level students that they will NOT understand every word and will NOT fully comprehend what is happening, and that is ok! I explain the task at hand, one of the strategies from above, and that the TASK is what I am asking them to do based on their level of proficiency. That helps them feel more confident and less overwhelmed. I also point at that as time goes one, they will understand more and more. We even talk about their progression towards higher proficiency as the years go on!
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