«simulated authentic material». This ma-
terial is specially prepared for students of English; however, it
attempts to reproduce the authentic written or spoken Eng-
lish.
The authors of this material roughly-tune the language
and content to suit their students» needs, but they do not
sacrifice the feel of the language. Their simulated authen-
ticity will be helpful to students who are practicing reading.
What is being suggested, therefore, is that material designed
to foster the acquisition of receptive skills must at least sim-
ulate authenticity. The need for language control at lower
levels must not be used as an excuse for extreme artificiality.
In modern methodology, it seems to be a must to use au-
thentic material in the English language lesson. It is impor-
tant to realize that we, as teachers, must make our own se-
lection from coursebooks although writers and publishers
would argue that the material they include in their books is
the best for learners of English as it has been prepared and
designed by specialists. Thus, apart from following a course-
book, teachers should feel like introducing certain novelties,
since they know not only their students and their level of pro-
ficiency, but also their needs, their weaknesses and strong
points. As a result, they are perfectly able of selecting the
most appropriate material to be used in class.
Presently, the use of magazines and newspapers in Eng-
lish lessons is widely acknowledged, since they provide stim-
ulating texts full of cultural information to students who have
a wide range of interests. According to Doff (1988: 170),
once the appropriate text has been selected, students usually
get interested in reading, listening and watching, since they
regard English texts and programmes not merely as a tool to
learn a language, but also as a source of information.
Valdeón (1995: 234) suggests that «once we have tried
to establish a new classification of the material used in the
teaching of English, or any other languages for the matter»,
we should «focus on authentic material and the various pro-
cesses that it can undergo to be adapted to suit the needs of
our students». That adaptation of given material responds to
the need of individualizing it to focus on one or various as-
pects of the language. However, some authors, focusing their
attention on the communicative trend, have rejected any al-
teration to the authentic material, without considering that
the priorities of teachers and students may vary and change.
Once we have mentioned the main reasons for the adap-
tation of authentic written material, we will deal with the dif-
ferent