Benefits of exploiting authentic materials for developing sociolinguistic competence

Abstract

Being a competent user of a target language includes mastery of sociolinguistic appropriateness and cultural repertoire alongside linguistic and pragmatic competencies. The article is based on the results of an ongoing research project that seeks to explore the implications of communicative teaching at secondary schools in the local context. The article reports university students’ findings related to the development of sociolinguistic competence, gained utilising excerpting examples of natural English. An analysis of the achieved results stimulated an insight into the real language and culture, which was later reflected in the students’ performances. Contemporary literary prose offers enough authentic material to discover its benefits for developing sociolinguistic awareness and cultural repertoire. The article presents the findings that can encourage English teachers to use authentic materials in their English classes in case they have not discovered their relevance to language and culture acquisition.   Keywords: Communication, competence, cultural repertoire, English, sociolinguistic;