CONTRIBUTION OF AUTHENTIC MATERIAL TO IMPROVE READING COMPREHENSION IN ENGLISH FOREIGN LANGUAGE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS.

Abstract

t Authentic material is an English teaching resource, even if had not been designed for classrooms, it contributes with learning, giving context to students’ previous experiences, linking them to the comprehension of the topic. Authentic material can be posters, webpages, advertisements, in which students interact to find comprehension and meaning to it. The following research describe two groups of students of an English class, to improve the comprehension of English as a foreign language, for a semester, twice a month, students had reading activities in which, the control group used adapted texts, and the other group read authentic texts, according to the topic they had studied up to that point. Both groups were tested to measure their level of proficiency at the beginning and the end of the semester. Even though the low grades students had, statistics presented an important improvement the group exposed to authentic material in the second test.