6 Summary

By paying attention to the role of English in your local area, you may see that English can be found in advertisements, messages, songs and on the TV. You can make use of these local resources in English in your classroom. By bringing students’ attention to English as used in the local area, you can help them to learn authentic English the way it is used in the real world outside the classroom. You will also find that this increases their motivation to learn English, as they will see the advantages of being able to use and understand English for their own purposes.

See the additional resources section for links to further reading about topics discussed in this unit.

Another Secondary English teacher development unit on this topic is:

• Using resources beyond the textbook: Find more about using media from the local environment in the classroom for language learning purposes (including pictures, adverts, newspapers and news articles, and television programmes).