The incidence of using authentic material in teaching vocabulary to students who are attending 10th grade at saint patrick school in Quito-Ecuador from september to december 2012

Abstract

In part one, it has been found that learning a foreign language is one of the main purposes while you are attending high school, and there are many different circumstances that difficult learners to acquire a second language. In part two, it has been studied that using authentic material has advantages and disadvantages, so it is important to choose the correct material according to students¿ level.

In part three the technique for collecting data was a diagnostic test, an achievement test and a questionnaire.

In part four, the main objective was to prove the hypothesis. In short, authentic material helped students to increase their vocabulary skill and confidence using the language.

In part five, being able to work with 10th grade students and discovering that their English level is intermediate motivated me to use authentic material in the class, so their vocabulary skill would be improved. It was not difficult to work with authentic material because the school is subscribed to The Miami Herald international edition in Ecuador and the newspaper is delivered to the school every day. In addition, working with ¿Friends¿ which is a well-known and famous sitcom was not difficult because you can find all the episodes of this show in the Internet or at any DVD store.

For instance, learners realized many diverse activities such as recognized function words from articles from the newspaper, wrote their own comics, prepared recipes, created role plays, and different listening activities. Moreover, using authentic material is one of the mainstays of an imaginative and motivating higher level course, but rarely features at levels lower than intermediate.