How to Choose the Right Authentic Resources for Your Students
There are many important notes to consider when choosing the right authentic materials. Principal among them, @dr_dmd says, is to make sure it’s level appropriate. For novice learners, choose resources that are not too difficult, but with some new concepts included. Keep in mind Stephen Krashen’s Input +1 hypothesis, which involves including comprehensible material that students have learned in the past with small amounts of new material to create learning opportunities that strengthen past knowledge.

@SECottrell believes that the choice of the text is important, but that it’s first essential to choose the question or target concept. Questions are tailored to the level. For novice learners, some examples are “What’s his name?” and “What’s he like?”You’ll find many suggestions for authentic resources throughout this post.

Ideas to Implement Authentic Resources in Your Class
Once you’ve decided on the appropriate materials to share with your class, it’s important to know how to implement it effectively. Implementation varies with the nature of the resource — is it text, a video, a song or even just pictures?

Texts
Authentic texts are useful literacy- and fluency-building resources, but with novice learners you can’t just choose a resource and distribute it to students. @rrrrrrrrrrrrosa stresses that it’s important to activate background knowledge and engage in pre-reading activities to make meaning.

Reading and literacy strategies with authentic texts are essential. Once you’ve chosen a text, @klafrench suggests you highlight, underline or circle words to assist students with their comprehension and reading. Bring attention to both familiar and unfamiliar words, and feel free to attach sticky or margin notes with notations and tips, etc.

• Graphic organizers are also great tools to help kids decode the text.
• As are double-entry journals or charts. @klafrench uses these by having students write down a quote or other text on one side, then responding on the other.
• Guided reading with questions as students read is an effective strategy. @klafrench creates questions using familiar vocabulary. In this way, you can bring student attention to the key elements you’re targeting.
• @joellerudick is a proponent of re-reading texts. The first time, concentrate on comprehension. Later, focus on building fluency and language structures. Read more here.
• For students with reading difficulties, like many younger novice learners, @mmebrady advises letting kids read the text while listening to it at the same time. Great for pronunciation.

For authentic writing practice, @mmebrady suggests using customer service surveys. Grab a handful from your next trip overseas or off the Web, and let your kids describe their fictional meal experience. Several teachers mentioned other forms, as well, such as doctor’s forms.

Videos
Videos can be a great method to introduce new language, concepts or a topic, according to @klafrench. First ask your students to look for specific things or words in the video, such as past material, then focus on the new language. At times, you can ask students to draw the actions in the video or otherwise demonstrate comprehension.

• @msfrenchteach lets students listen to a video without watching the first time, so they concentrate on the audio component. Later they can listen and watch together.

@klafrench’s students love watching videos of products sold in both the US and abroad. Pick a product, find some authentic commercials for each on YouTube and ask students to compare the differences between the two. #Langchat recommends Nutella.

@cadamsf1 likes using the commercials from the Latin Grammy Awards, as kids can also make a great connection with the music. The different accents from different countries are both educating and a good listening challenge for students of any level. Try comparing with the commercials from major American cultural TV events such as the Super Bowl or our own Grammy Awards.

@SECottrell finds that the Latin Grammy Awards are great opportunities for practicing and learning about expressing gratitude, too. Eventually, someone ends up mentioning their family members for the added family practice.

Full films are great, but @dr_dmd admits it’s challenging to stay in the target language for all activities, especially for novice learners. Showing a short scene from a film and then discussing or describing it in the target language is a good project. He admits that full films have their place, however — perhaps as a reward for a long and intensive unit?

Cloze activities are fantastic with commercials, which can also be audio-based. Songs are great as well (discussed below), but commercials might match authentic speech a little more closely. Check out @SECottrell’s resources on commercial cloze activities. She suggests the difficulty is adjustable depending on the words that you drop from the files.

Images
The 3-2-1 strategy, shared by @joellerudick with credit to @RichardSmithAIM, requires students look at a picture, writing three things they see, two things they think and one question. It can also be used with videos easily, and with a little modification could work with texts and other authentic resources. Great way to show comprehension and create a speaking exercise.

In French, @dr_dmd loves to teach art history and appreciation, so paintings are often used in his class. They’re great prompts for skits, poems and short group presentations or stories. @klafrench had exciting results by showing students a French painting and asked them to create stories around it.

Another idea that combines authentic text: try finding the family tree of the royal family in Spain for Spanish family-themed units. Descriptive vocabulary works very well with the pictures, too (@profeguerita).

Songs and other audio
Songs are great audio resources, as well as text. If you’re musically inclined, they can also be excellent speaking activities that really get students engaged, especially for young learners. For an example of a Spanish song for beginners, check out this post by @SECottrell.

Songs are perfect for cloze activities. @karacjacobs likes to use cloze songs with cognates as the missing words; great authentic resource and activity for novice learners.

Tools to Share in Class
Once you’ve selected authentic materials that you’re certain your students will love and be motivated to explore (Nutella’s YouTube channel or recipe page, anyone?), how do you share it with them in class?

• @mmebrady uses the class Wikispaces home page, and @mllegcohen likes to ask students to share authentic resources on the class wiki as well.
• @SECottrell and @karacjacobs will take advantage of class iPads and iPod Touches when possible, but mostly uses projectors.
• @SraSpanglish usually uses Edmodo links, but if there are enough resources she’ll make a glog using Glogster.
• @lesliedavison uses Jog the Web to create Web books for students and to channel them towards specific sites.
• @profesorM uses a Smart Board in class; Edmodo and computer labs for reading projects online.

Useful Teacher-Suggested Sources
@erindebell puts it best: there are too many authentic materials out there NOT to use them. All the same, some authentic resources might be not be age- or level-appropriate. Where can you find resources that your students will both be interested in and capable to absorb?

Several teachers suggest advertising. There are many forms of advertising available, too: containers, television, radio, print, online, travel brochures, catalogs, phone books, etc. — advertising is everywhere in our modern times.

@cadamsf1 likes using the website El Corte Ingles, a Spanish-language department store, for vocabulary and groups — they also have an iPad app.

Loogares is a great spot for novice Spanish learners focusing on reviews of places in Chile. Review places like this with lots of opinions are good for creating questions for students, @SECottrell suggests.

• See @SECottrell’s full list of Spanish-language corporate sites on Delicious.

Several might be too advanced for novice learners, but recordings of historical speeches can be great listening or cloze activities. Check out this list of Che Guevara speeches — but preview before showing to kids.

A Spanish real-estate site shared by @sonrisadelcampo: http://espanol.era.com/. @mmebrady follows @maisons_avenir on Twitter for French real estate.

@FrenchAmis shared http://www.ina.fr/ for French video and audio, especially commercials and other ads.

@profesorM recommends http://seat.es, the SEAT car company, for car vocabulary in Spanish.

@spanishplans shared @alenord’s authentic resources wiki, full of great ideas and materials.

For teachers whose schools block YouTube and other video-sharing sites, @spanishplans recommends saving the clip as a movie file, putting it on a flash drive and bringing it to school for easy sharing! Check out http://mediaconverter.org/ for more information.

Thanks again to everyone who showed up and participated in the discussion on Thursday — it’s amazing what you all contribute to the profession each and every week! If you have any comments on our topic or ideas that you think your colleagues would find useful, please feel free to leave your thoughts below.

Don’t forget to join us next week for #langchat on Thursday night at 8 EST. If you have anything you’d like to see addressed, make yourself heard through our voting early next week (monitor the #langchat hashtag for more info).

#LangChat is an independent group of world-language education professionals who come together every week via Twitter to share ideas and discuss pressing issues in the world of education. Check out the #LangChat wiki for more information about our goals and the team behind it all here. These weekly discussion summaries are sponsored by Calico Spanish as a service to the world-language community.