Investigating Efl Learners’ And Teachers’ Attitudes Towards The Use Of Authentic Texts In Teaching Writing

Résumé: Abstract Authentic texts are important for the learning and teaching of second and foreign languages as they provide rich native contextual input and bridge the gap between student’s local educational environment and the target language environment with its social, cultural and linguistic details. Despite their significant role in increasing learners’ motivation to improve their language skills and proficiency particularly in the area of writing, authentic texts do not seem to be widely used at university. This fact raises many questions concerning the attitudes teachers and learners have towards the use of authentic texts in teaching and assessing writing. The present study is an attempt to unveil answers about EFL learners’ and teachers’ attitudes towards using authentic texts in teaching and assessing the writing skill. The study was conducted in the English department in M’sila University with 42 students from third year level and 9 teachers of written expression module from different levels. The research tools include quantitative and qualitative data elicited from teachers and students’ questionnaires and classroom observation. After the statistical analysis of the data gathered, the results revealed that both learners and teachers do have positive attitudes towards using authentic texts in teaching and assessing writing skill, which is a motivating finding to widen the implementation of such materials in writing classes. Teachers, however, claim to use authentic texts more in assessing writing than in teaching situations Based on the obtained findings, important implications are proposed for teachers, students, and the teaching of English language and writing skill in particular using authentic texts in order to raise awareness of the relevance of these materials in the EFL teaching context

Publié dans la revue: