Introduction

In this very practical and useful post, Stacey Johnson, Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese, Assistant Director of Technology and Teacher trainer at the Centre for Applied Language Studies at Vanderbilt University gives practical tips on how she has trained her EFL student teachers to create narrow reading texts using authentic resources. The whole process takes her trainees very little time to create texts and it results in highly patterned and effective resources. I like it, as it way less laborious than mine and much more time efficient. Well done, Stacey ! Here it is.

Stacey Johnson on creating narrow reading texts usin authentic resources

In my language teaching methods course for future EFL teachers, we always start with authentic texts as the backbone of our lesson plans. Authentic resources provide students with relevant, interesting target language content, and even more importantly, these resources are imbued with cultural and community knowledge inherent to their context. There are so many benefits to using authentic resources instead of constructed textbook materials! The big obstacle with using authentic resources, however, is that the teacher must create classroom activities that not only make good use of the resources, but also  provide enough structured, recycled language so that student acquire the structures in the authentic text.  Just one or two exposures to a new text is not going to result in students mastering the vocabulary and structures in that text.

So, in my methods course, teacher candidates learn to write lesson plans that use both authentic resources and Conti’s instructions for creating narrow readings. Once we have created lesson plans that include interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational tasks for an authentic resource, we then use part of that resource as a model for constructing narrow readings. For example, in a unit about employment, my methods class might decide that we are going to use a YouTube video as an authentic text, perhaps this one that gives advice to job-seekers about interviewing. Out of all the useful moments in that video, we might use the question “Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself?” and the answer to that question, “Well, I love coming home to watch EastEnders at the end of the day. That’s my highlight. I also like shopping, chilling with my friends, just having a laugh really.” Once language students have had the opportunity to process this question/answer in its original authentic context, the teacher should provide further opportunities to process versions of the exchange with some meaningful differences.

Creating narrow reading opportunities out of this exchange is fairly easy and takes less time than you might imagine. We have one example of how someone might answer that question in the original authentic text. Now we, as instructors, must imagine how others might answer the question. The idea is to keep the structures and patterns intact, and replace only a few content words or expressions with others that students are very likely to understand. A second job seeker might say the he loves coming home to his family at the end of the day. A third job seeker might say that she enjoys going out to watch a movie at the end of the week. We make small but meaningful changes to the text of our original authentic resource. Before you know it, instead of having just one example of authentic language, we have a handful of patterned examples that provide our students with rich sources of input. Now, we can ask our students to read the questions and answers from 3 or 4 job seekers, and answer questions such as, “Which job-seeker is the most active?” and “Which job-seeker probably has children?” or others that require students to process the new input alongside the original authentic text.

There are many ways to use authentic texts with language learners and an equal number of ways to make use of narrow reading and listening. In my experience and in my methods courses, I find that pairing the two is a particularly useful combination that provides students with the benefits of both patterned input and authentic language and culture

Concluding remarks

When Stacey contacting me with this idea I said to myself: ‘Why had I not thought about myself?’. It is as simple as it is ingenious. I tried it out myself and did not take me more than 15 minutes to put together a decent set of narrow reading texts for my students. Glad to have inspired and to have been inspired back. Cannot thank Stacey enough for this great idea and for taking the time to write her very articulate post.