Authentic

materials and
Reading skill
Universidad Nacional de
Loja AUTHENTIC
English Language Department MATERIALS
Richards (2001) holds that authentic
THESIS WORK
materials refer to the use in teaching of

TITLE: text, photographs, videos selection, and

IMPROVEMENT OF READING other teaching resource that were not

SKILL THROUGH THE specially prepared for educational

IMPLEMENTATION OF
purposes, but its use is worthy. Learners Bymes (2004), stated that in
AUTHENTIC MATERIALS
order students to develop
AMONG 2ND YEAR STUDENTS enjoy dealing with authentic materials communicative competence in
OF BACHILLERATO, AT reading, classroom and homework
since they enable them to interact with the
reading activities must resemble (or
“FERNANDO SUÁREZ PALACIO” be) real-life reading tasks that
real language and its use.
HIGH SCHOOL IN LOJA CITY, involve meaningful communication.
CARIGÁN NEIGHBORHOOD, Kinds of authentic materials: Facebook They must therefore be authentic.

DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR images, magazine excerpts, newspapers, 

2014-2015. Authentic materials help students to
menus of restaurants, etc.
develop this skill and engage learners
AUTHOR ERIKA LUCÍA because of the authenticity and content.
Students feel motivated and enjoy
GONZÁLEZ CARRIÓN
 learning to read with these resources.
2016

Results and discussion
Based on the findings of the research, results
show that implementing authentic materials as a
resource had a meaningful impact on improving
student’s reading skill. This improvement is revealed
in the findings of the pre and post test which were
applied to 2nd year students of bachillerato at
“Fernando Suárez Palacio” high school, those results
demonstrated that there was a significant change on
students’ performance while reading in the foreign
language.
The findings in the pre and post questionnaire, the
researcher field diary and the observation sheet, also
showed the positive impact that this resource caused
on students´ reading skill. The results were related
with the literature, which according to Berardo
(2006), the chances to have a contact with “real
language” or to know cultural information of
countries abroad is incremented if authentic materials
are used in teaching. The application of the
intervention based on authentic materials allowed
learners to achieve meaningful improvement on
reading. This improvement is reflected in the
significant increase of the students’ mean from the
pretest that was 4.24/10 and in the post-test mean,
which was 9.30/10.
The pretest indicated that most of the students had
problems in all aspects evaluated. However, in the
post-test after the intervention, the results showed
that students improved their knowledge in reading
skill in all its aspects in a considerable way, being
able to relate new words with sounds and pictures,
making short summaries, reading by pronouncing
properly and most of them lost their nervousness to
speak in public.
Conclusions and tips to use authentic
materials
The difficulties that limited the
improvement of reading skill of second
year students of bachillerato were
related to vocabulary, phonics,
phonemic awareness, comprehension
and fluency.
The implementation of authentic
materials as an innovative resource in
the classroom reduced the students'
limitations in the reading skill
meaningfully. Students participated
actively while the activities were
carried out. They read short lines by
understanding words, relating them,
summarizing texts and reading without
hesitating as at the beginning.
The use of authentic materials in the
classroom was effective; due to
students at the end of the intervention
plan were more comfortable while
reading in English.
TIPS: Teachers should apply
interesting materials and activities in
order to get students’ attention while
they are reading. The resources
implemented should be colorful, with
short lines, funny and not so difficult to
understand.