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Selection and Grading ofAuthentic Material 2I7

teacher. This format enables the teacher to read at a normal speed, with
normal intonation and pronunciation, but without inflicting writer's
cramp on the students. The number of times the text is read should vary
with the proportion of blanks to the text as a whole, the relationship of
the students' ability to the difficulty of the text, etc., but it should not be
necessary for the teacher to repeat words or phrases or to emphasise
the target segments.
The only obvious disadvantage of the selective dictation technique is
that it requires more preparation on the part of the teacher than does
the selection of an ordinary dictation text. However, it seems to me that
the advantages to the students outlined above far outweigh this single
disadvantage.

APPENDIX
Example ofprepared text
(Double parentheses indicate deletions to be made in the text given to students)
(Doctor, looking at his patient) You ((don't)) look very cheerful today((,)) Mr. Liss.
I don't feel very well, doctor.
What seems ((to)) be the trouble?
Well, for ((one)) thing I haven't been sleeping ((so)) well. I feel a little tired. I ((also))
have some pain ((occasionally)).
You mean ((that)) you have insomnia. You ((know)) the best ((cure)) for insomnia,
don't you((?)) A good ((night's)) sleep. Have you ((tried)) drinking a little warm milk
and eating a few ((crackers)) before going to bed?
Six ((months)) ago you told me not ((to)) eat anything before I ((went)) to bed.
(Smiling) That just ((goes)) to show you what ((great)) progress medical ((science))
has made recently.

Selection and Grading of

Authentic Material for the
Reading Class
SUSAN M. MAINGAY

1. Authentic texts
THE question of what is a truly 'authentic' text is open to discussion.
For the purposes of this article, however, I will define an authentic text
as one which has not been specially prepared (written, simplified, or
adapted) for language-teaching purposes. The advantages of the use of
such authentic material in the L2 reading class have been widely dis-
cussed, and I should like to consider a question which is often asked
when this approach is advocated: 'Is there any way such material can
be graded to take account of different levels of reading ability?'
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218 Susan M. Maingay

2. Factors in grading
The use of authentic texts precludes any attempt at systematic grading
on a structural basis. The concept of grading, however, underlies both
the exploitation and the selection of texts.

2.1 Exploitation: grading of student activity

Although a beginners' and an advanced class might be required to
work on the same text, they would be asked to perform different
reading tasks. Beginners, for example, might first be asked to look at
titles, introductory and concluding paragraphs, and illustrations, and
then to give the general theme of a text. They might also be asked to
scan for a few salient facts or figures. Advanced students, on the
other hand, might be required to locate the key points of an
argument, to follow its complexities, and to comment on specific
details.
In this way students learn to get what they can from a text and not
to panic if they cannot understand everything. They can also observe
the progress of their reading ability as they begin to get more out of
the texts.
2.2 Selection: grading of text difficulty
While beginners can benefit from dealing occasionally with chal-
lenging texts, it is important from the point of view of motivation that
for the most part they encounter texts from which they can extract a
satisfying amount of information.
There are a great many factors contributing to the ease or diffi-
culty of comprehension of a text. A great deal has been written about
the establishment of reliable readability measures and discussion con-
tinues on this point. I propose to restrict myself here to a considera-
tion of some of the factors which influence comprehension at a supra-
linguistic level by virtue of their relationship to the more obvious
reading strategies, such as predicting the content, skimming for clues
as to the main idea, or scanning to locate specific information. Let us
look at these factors.
2.2.1 Assumed background knowledge
All writers, consciously or otherwise, have a particular group of
readers in mind. A writer, moreover, will presuppose in his readers
a certain area of background knowledge and will count on the use
of this knowledge in the comprehension of his text. The nature of
this knowledge varies with the intended readership. It may be very
general or highly specialised, scientific, mathematical, literary, etc.
The greater the reader's background knowledge, the more he will
be able to use strategies of prediction and guessing and the more
easily he will understand the text. It follows, of course, that readers
who lack the appropriate knowledge will have difficulty with a text.
The writer's assumptions about his reader's knowledge are
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Selection and Grading ofAuthentic Material 219

reflected in such ways as the use of specialised vocabulary, un-

explained references to specialised concepts, elliptical structures
which can be understood only in the light of a particular area of
information, word-play depending on particular connotations of a
word, and so on. Thus an article on heredity written by a bio-
chemist for his colleagues would be difficult for a layman to under-
stand, whereas a similar article written for The New Scientist
would explain more processes, concepts, and technical terms and
thus be easier for the layman.
All this may seem self-evident. Of course a popularised version
will be easier than a specialised article. But is this always the case
for a foreign learner? If he is a biochemist he will be familiar with
many of the ideas and terms of the learned article, and his own
background knowledge will be a facilitating factor in his com-
prehension of such a text. Another important consideration, more-
over, is the question of assumed cultural background. An article
for a layman is written for the layman of a particular culture and
may, therefore, be more difficult for the foreign learner. The pheno-
menon of a 'black hole', for example, has been described in one
account as a star disappearing 'like the grin of a Cheshire cat'.
This homely reference makes the concept clearer to all who have
read Lewis Carroll, but remains opaque, if not confusing, for a
foreigner. In the same way, magazines such as Time and
Newsweek provide some of the most difficult texts for the foreign
reader, for, though the subjects may be non-academic and of
general interest, they are full of references to things American.
2.2.2 Layout
A distinctive layout with clear paragraphing and helpful headings
will often, as is the intention, make a text more easily accessible to
the reader. Such explicit markers of formal organisation, more-
over, provide a ready-made framework for the 'global' or 'main
idea' approach to the text, and handy signposts for the student
who is asked to scan. (One should bear in mind, however, that a
plethora of paragraphs and sub-titles is not in itself an aid to com-
prehension. In some kinds of journalism, for example, paragraphs
are chopped and titles inserted according to the demands of space,
sensationalism, and editorial whim.)
Denser texts, with longer paragraphs and fewer headings, are
likely to require more detailed study; though more advanced
students who are acquainted with basic skimming and scanning
techniques can be asked to find their way quickly about such
pieces of writing.
2.2.3 Graphics
One might reasonably expect photographs, drawings, charts,
diagrams, etc., to aid in the comprehension of a text. In many
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220 Susan M. M aingay

cases they do: a photograph helps to set the scene, a diagram

restates information from the text in visual form, a chart rein-
forces an argument with statistics, a cartoon reveals the author's
point of view, and so on. They can be a valuable prompt for
supplying the background knowledge essential to the comprehen-
sion of the text.
It is worth looking twice, however, at the graphics accompany-
ing a text, for the role of visual elements is not always as straight-
forward as it may seem. Their presence may complicate rather
than clarify the meaning of a text. Charts and diagrams, for
example, may not restate information from the text, but present
totally new information. If they are complex they will be adding to,
rather than easing, the burden of comprehension. Or they may be
merely decorative, giving little direct help as to the content of the
written text. In such cases, where the visual elements are present
for an aesthetic purpose, they cannot be assumed to be in any
straight-forward explanatory relationship to the rest of the text.
In some extreme cases, visual elements may pull against the
meaning of a text. This occurs most often in journalism, where the
role of accompanying photographs and cartoons may be to
express editorial opinion rather than to elucidate a particular
journalist's text.
These are examples of a sophisticated but standard use of visual
elements, and the ability to understand an authentic text within its
context implies the ability to deal with such examples. Part of the
task involved in the selection and grading of texts for use with
foreign learners is to decide how much of this ability can be
assumed in the student's own reading habits in the mother-tongue
and how much must be introduced gradually through a study of
texts with more straight-forward use of graphics.

3. Practical hints for text selection

Finally, let us look at some of the steps a teacher might take when
selecting authentic material for classroom use.
3.1 Try to assess the difficulty of a text in terms of the factors men-
tioned above. Make full use of facilitating features by linking them
with appropriate, strategy-based activities.
3.2 Where these factor are a source of difficulty, adapt the class-
room methodology accordingly. Start, for example, by providing
necessary background knowledge; where possible, ask individual
students to share any relevant information they may have. Check
particular language items, such as culture-bound metaphors, which
pose problems because the readers lack the knowledge assumed by
the writer.
3.3 Consider what strategies are called for by a particular text. In
the early stages the teacher may wish to select texts because they
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More Than One Choice in Objective Testing 221

permit certain strategies. The final goal, however, is one of student

autonomy, that is, the ability to deal with a wide variety of written
language and to use appropriate reading strategies according to the
nature of the text and his own specific needs.

More Than One Choice in

Objective Testing
P. G. E. HOPKINS

DURING the past twenty years objective testing has become standard
practice in many English-language teaching institutions throughout the
world. Its numerous advantages, including specificity and ease of
marking, have given it favoured status over more traditional testing
methods. Perhaps because of this, the disadvantages of multiple-choice
questions have not often been voiced; neither have alternative testing
devices been sought.
The drawbacks of multiple-choice testing may be listed as follows.
Firstly, it continually presents the student with three or four wrong
statements or questions. This cannot but have the effect of negatively
reinforcing certain incorrect grammatical patterns he may know,
especially if, in the interests of a test-question 'bank', his teacher is
reluctant to go over each question in detail.
A second disadvantage of multiple-choice testing lies in its in-
flexibility. The tester is forced to find three or four distractors with suffi-
cient credibility to convince some students that they are correct. Such
distractors are often extremely difficult to make up, especially in com-
prehension questions. In that case, the harassed tester often has to
resort to the confusing device of asking students to select which is the
wrong choice out of four or more.
Another weakness of multiple-choice tests is that, although they test
specific items, a student who has half-learned a topic may find the right
answer simply by eliminating the choices he knows are wrong. This
does not mean, however, that the student would be able to produce the
correct form on his own. Thus the very nature of such tests may en-
courage students to be slipshod in their learning of syntactic detail.
A device that gets over these difficulties is one which was introduced
into science testing a few years ago-the multiple-completion question.
In this, four or five choices are given as usual, but students have to
determine whether each choice is right or wrong; it is not sufficient to
find a right answer by eliminating the three or four wrong choices. The
instruction for such questions is given as follows (it is probably best to