The authentic materials are the language materials that are designed for those mother tongue speakers in the target language countries, but not for the purpose of the development of language teaching. When you go to school to study Mandarin, teachers would tell you that the authentic materials are composed of two types, namely, the printed texts and the audio-visual clips.

The common printed texts including all kinds of advertisements, bills, signs, maps, instruction books, menus, product tags and greeting cards as well as newspapers and magazines that can be directly used in high level teaching. The common used audio-visual clips when foreigners learn Mandarin including telephone recording, notifications of airport station, broadcasting, film and television clips. These materials are more practical and natural because it gains learning interests by finding cultural products, practice and perspectives in the authentic materials.

However, in the teaching process, teachers should lead in real materials according to the specific conditions. The first thing teachers should pay attention to when they teach Mandarin language is to use the authentic materials according to the actual demands. The first step of using it is to ensure the learning goals and actual needs. And teachers can understand the learners’ goals by all means.

Besides, the principle of using the authentic materials is “step by step”. At the beginning stage when learners study Chinese, they should first learn some familiar background knowledge and the real materials that match their language expression ability. It would be better if some interesting and attracting materials which students can feel in the daily life. And then to make conversations about that and finally learn some language expression forms of a higher difficulty level.

In the whole process, teachers in Mandarin learning courses should know that the leading role is students. Teachers should encourage students to join in the process when searching the authentic materials. In accordance with students’ learning experience and cultural horizon, teachers can demand students to collect all kinds of real materials to the classroom referring to the teaching contents. This is helpful to support their language learning.

The last but not least point to apply the authentic materials to the teaching activities is to set task accomplishment as the goal. After students gaining the authentic materials, teachers in Chinese language school should design and imitate the real life situations and assign proper learning tasks, stimulating students finish the assignments in the real context. The process of finishing the task is also a process of learning and using language to communicate.

The accomplishment of purposive and meaningful assignments is gained by students’ personal experience and active participation. Aiming at students of different language levels, various demands can be set by using the authentic materials. Here is an example for those who learn Chinese in China. For the same discount coupon, some students can find the effective date and some may focus on its value. The way of “learning by doing” indicates the interactivity and authenticity of the learning process.

We can obviously see many advantages of the application of the authentic materials. The teaching materials are often interesting and authentic. Therefore, it can stimulate students’ enthusiasm to learn Chinese language. Accordingly, the learning process becomes individualized and diversified because students can choose different learning contents and methods or even contexts according to their needs. It is also helpful for teachers to adjust their teaching contents to the students.

However, every coin has two sides. There are also some disadvantages when using the authentic materials. It attaches more importance to the cultural products recognition, thus wasting the limited classroom teaching resources. For the foreigners who study in China, it is difficult for them to understand the language and contents of the Chinese language speakers. Meanwhile, it fails to follow the principle of “step by step” learning from the simple to the difficult.

Therefore, teachers in Mandarin language courses in China should make analysis and comparison between the teaching materials like the course books and the created materials. Only when teachers know the primary and secondary can they take advantage of the existing teaching resources specifically, reasonably and adequately, thus improving the teaching efficiency.

All in all, the authentic materials are beneficial to maintain students’ learning enthusiasm in a certain degree. At the same time, it can gain students’ confidence to learn the language knowledge and improve language skill. Therefore, teachers can apply more to the teaching process to improve students’ learning efficiency.