What different types of resources are there?

So Marie Therese, when people talk about English language teaching resources, what are they referring to? OK, so we’ll divide it up into categories because there are different categories relating to resources. First of all, we talk about published materials. So published materials means things like coursebooks, e-books, supplementary material. So like materials that have listening exercises in them or reading exercises. Or maybe a book that has grammar exercises, that would be supplementary materials. Coursebook materials would be books that publishers have published at different levels. So you’d have an intermediate coursebook, you’d have a student’s book, a teacher’s book, CD-ROMs, maybe DVD. That sort of thing. So that’s coursebook materials, published materials. Then we have authentic materials.

These are materials that are used by ordinary people. Not published, not particularly designed like published material. OK, so you mean things like newspapers, magazines, leaflets, brochures, menu cards in restaurants, YouTube videos. Exactly. Songs. [INTERPOSING VOICES] Very popular. [INTERPOSING VOICES] - that kind of thing. Absolutely. So those are authentic materials. So published materials are made and published specifically for English language learners. Authentic materials are the materials that everybody in the English-speaking world uses every day. Then we talk about realia. Realia means real objects that the teacher brings into the classroom. So for example, if I was teaching a lesson where I was teaching vocabulary related to fruit - apples, pears, oranges, bananas. That’s what I’d bring into the classroom.

So I’d bring a whole bag full of those things, and those would be realia.