Authentic Materials In Teaching English As A Foreign Language



Authentic Materials In Teaching English As A Foreign Language

Introduction

Research on Authentic Materials In Teaching English as foreign language teaching (English as foreign language teaching) has been widely acknowledged from a disciplinary to an interdisciplinary field of inquiry in English as foreign language studies and applied linguistics for around half a century. English as foreign language teaching deceptively exists elsewhere in English as foreign language education as well as in composition studies (Belcher, Diane, and Hirvela, Alan, 2001). However, historically, the field of English as foreign language teaching has only a short history as disciplinary area due to its consolidation in the realm of English as foreign language (ESL) around the 1960s. Thus, the value of teaching teaching in English to non-native speakers focused little attention on English as foreign language education. For the past twenty five-years or so, empirical research on English as foreign language teaching has flourished. The journal also has provided progressive development of the English as foreign language teaching field since 1992. Still today, English as foreign language teaching researchers critically discuss numerous issues in a wide range of books and journals in English as foreign language language education. Especially, annotated bibliographies (e.g., Silva, Brice, and Reichelt, 1999; Tannacito, 1995) encourage researchers to increase their historical understanding of the English as foreign language teaching field and to make assumptions about broadened analyses. The general purpose of this paper is to reflect on how the discipline of English as foreign language teaching has expanded and to examine the empirical English as foreign language teaching inquiries chronologically. This paper begins with the context of English as foreign language teaching in North America from the 1940s (Belcher, Diane, and Braine, George, 1995). Afterwards, the prevalent research issues: contrastive rhetoric and process approach which were notably argued in the English as foreign language teaching field at each particular time are discussed (Atkinson, Dwight 2003). Finally, I will demonstrate the implications as well as the future prospects of English as foreign language teaching studies. This inquiry finds that English as foreign language teaching requires abundant studies covering a great deal of ground with disciplinary intellectual views pedagogically and methodologically. The disciplinary practices in the ESL/EFL settings as the field of English as foreign language teaching have still been traced through its various stages of development within English as foreign language studies and applied linguistics.

Brief Overview

Few studies of English as foreign language teaching were investigated in English as foreign language studies during the 1950s. Teaching English to foreign students was not regarded seriously as significant matter in this age. According to Matsuda (2003), mainly Spanish-speaking learners rather than foreign students received education in ESL classrooms in the 1940s. Leki (1992) also mentioned that education provided the Spanish speakers with an opportunity to be inculcated with naturalistic as well as dogmatic ideas or beliefs and independence, prioritizing the political issue over language teaching. Because of the sociopolitical facet in early ESL education, ESL ...