Pecularities of use of authentic materials in efl classroom

Abstract

The article is devoted to a problem of using authentic materials in the process of foreign language teaching in general and at University of tourism in particular. The use of authentic materials is considered as one of the basic requirements of communicative approach, the specific aim of which is to make language learning process as close as possible to real life and real communication, as well as a necessary condition for the formation of cultural awareness and cross-cultural communicative competence, which is very important for tourism students. The article presents specific arguments of the necessity to include authentic foreign language content into the learning process, the specificity of which cannot be reproduced in any other "artificial" way. Moreover, peculiarities of use of authentic materials at University of tourism were investigated and discussed. It is concluded that althoughauthentic materials may contain complex grammatical structures and difficult vocabulary, they bringreal-life situations into classrooms and help teachers and students achieve their goals in the process of teaching and learning foreign languages.