About

Authentic Spanish Materials is based on the pedagogy that students acquire language through real life tasks. Task-based language teaching places function over form. Common communicative tasks in the classroom may be:

  • Ordering from a menu
  • Filling out an immigration or customs form
  • Buying tickets for a concert after seeing a flyer about it
  • Predicting the next step or ending in a story
  • Debating the advantages and disadvantages of social media

Rooting these tasks in authentic materials, materials not written for the purpose of language learning, but  for a real world purpose, makes communicative lessons culturally based. Accomplishing these tasks through the use of authentic materials in the classroom, students understand the value, purpose and function, while engaging with texts that promote the examination of different cultural perspectives.

When searching the internet for materials to use in a lesson, images you find may be blurry, unusable, and scattered by subject. The materials on ASM are all high-resolution, downloadable and printable, and organized by theme, grammar, and country. All images and documents are completely free for use in the classroom.

Priya Talwar, the creator of this site and the Teachers Pay Teachers store Authentic Spanish Materials has a Single Subject Teaching Credential in Spanish as well as years of classroom teaching experience. She also has a Master’s in Education, focusing her thesis on the role of risk-taking and inhibition on spontaneous speech in second language acquisition.