PHILOSOPHY+and+PEDAGOGICAL+PRINCIPLES

Using authentic documents (text, audio, video, images) in the target language to expose students is a cornerstone in the MIL courses.

By **authentic** we mean documents that would fit the following characteristics: • Document created with no purpose of language learning in mind • Material not purposefully graded for a specific level of language proficiency • Material not purposefully scripted • Material which contains passages that go beyond what FL learner can produce • Material with large proportion of unknown and non predictable language • Material with people speaking naturally • Material with no non-native listener or reader in mind

“Exposing a listener only to graded material is like feeding a child exclusively on baby food and then wondering why the child cannot cope with an adult diet. [...] It is essential that a listener is given practice in handling recorded material which contains passages that go beyond what s/he is capable of producing as a speaker, and that s/he learns either to ignore these passages or to devise ways of inferring their meaning from the wider context.” (Field, 2008:271)