USE OF AUTHENTIC TEXTS IN GERMAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

The main purpose of foreign language courses is to develop the communicative competence of the students. Great attention should be paid to the equal development of the four basic language skills. As it is known, in daily life communication, no language skills are superior to each other. For this, written or verbal authentic texts should be used as priority in all foreign language courses. Which texts can be also considered as authentic texts? Texts that reflect the target culture as multi-faceted are called authentic texts; in other words, the authentic texts are not created for foreign language teaching. In this sense, foreign language teachers have a great responsibility. It is the first responsibility of the teacher to find authentic texts appropriate to the foreign language level of the student. The authentic texts are well suited for the development of each language skill. These texts, which include the daily spoken language, are extremely useful for the development of each language skills. Therefore, they can be used easily in all foreign language courses. In this study, online newspaper texts as authentic texts which have an important place in foreign language teaching and which can be easily accessed thanks to technological developments are discussed. Newspaper texts contain universal vocabulary as they refer to universal issues. The students who are familiar with these subjects from their daily life can use their prior knowledges to understand the text. In this study, some explanations have been made on how these texts can be used in foreign language courses. These texts can be examined in nine different sections in the lessons, and the teacher can shape these sections themselves. These texts are also known to be very useful in terms of the development of the vocabulary.

Keywords

foreign language teaching, language skills, authentic texts, newspaper texts, communication.