A Comparative Study Of Authentic And Inauthentic Materials In The Training Of EFL Listening Ability

With the rapid development of the information age the world becomes smaller and smaller and the international communication becomes more and more frequent and important. China has carried out the policy of opening to the outside world and has just entered the WTO. Although Chinese English teaching has achieved great success, there exist some problems among which the phenomena of dumb-and-deaf English and time-consuming but low-efficiency seem to be the most obvious. The researcher analyzes the two main reasons for these problems: 1) Chinese English teaching has long been affected by the exam-oriented education, and 2) inappropriate teaching materials, particularly inappropriate listening materials have long been used in Chinese English teaching.It is well known that the ultimate goal of English teaching is to develop the communicative competence, so in the communication of real life listening may be one of the two most important skills (listening and speaking). In the past decades many specialists, material designers and researchers have been advocating that the use of authentic materials rather than inauthentic materials in listening training can meet the needs of real life communication in the world even at an early stage of English learning. However in recent years, this has aroused some controversy. Many EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers argue against it, but, so far, few have done empirical researches on it to affirm the usefulness of authentic materials in the training of EFL listening. The present researcher tries to use the methods of comparison, experiment, questionnaire, and interview to test the validity of the theory of authenticity in listening, particularly in EFL or college NEM (Non-English Major) listening.In the present study the researcher first carefully presents and reviews the contrastive arguments about the use of the authentic material in listening training, and then she raises two research issues. One is "Is the authentic listening material better than the inauthentic listening material in developing the true listening ability of Chinese students, particularly Chinese collegeNEM students?" The other is "Is the authentic listening material better than the inauthentic listening material in increasing the motivation and interest of Chinese students, particularly Chinese college NEM students and in activating the atmosphere of the class?"Then after reviewing the related literature, the researcher defines the three related terms to the present study: true listening ability, the authentic listening material and the inauthentic listening material. The true listening ability is not to understand or recognize every word the speaker says or reads aloud in the tape recording released in the classroom or to pass tests, but to understand appropriately real meaning of what the native speaker says in the real world through context. The listener should utilize the linguistic knowledge learned in the classroom and to activate background knowledge and relevant information to realize successful communication in real life and to deal with the real life communication appropriately. That is, he should understand the real speech with such features as false starts, hesitations, self-correction and repetitions, etc., and with different intonations and rhythms. The authentic listening material is unscripted, natural and spontaneous spoken language materials which are not specially provided for foreign language learners, such as interviews, lectures, dialogues, discussions and conversations; while the inauthentic listening material is scripted, written language read-aloud materials which are specially provided for foreign language learners, including many written texts for reading (e.g., newspapers, magazines, etc.), the classroom listening curriculum and the material for practice and tests, even including the script of a play and a film, which is usually written language read out by the actor and not authentic conversation, and news reports, which are also written language read aloud by t...