English Teaching

ELT365 · Day 158 — Why teachers use authentic texts

📚60-Day ELT Masterclass — This post is part of an ongoing series. View full index →

Idea — Authentic texts — unaltered real-world material — expose learners to natural speech rate, discourse patterns, and register. The challenge is choosing texts whose difficulty is appropriate to the task, not the text itself.

Example — A B1 class listens to a native-speaker podcast but answers one A2-level gist question. The text is authentic; the task is graded.

Try — Find one 60-second authentic audio clip on a topic your class finds motivating. Design a single gist question a B1 learner could answer on one listen.


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