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As stated by Mukundan, Zarifi, and Rezvani Kalajahi (2016), while developing reading materials as pasrt of the learning process – specially for ESL students – we should be careful while selecting them and how we present them to the classroom:

BE AWARE OF THE STUDENTS’ ENGLISH LEVEL:

All the reading material should be appropriate for the language level, but it needs to be challenging enough the students to improve their reading skills but also comprehensible enough for them to be able to understand the main ideas and details of the text. Work on it, and even when to enjoy the content itself.

CONTENT RELEVANCE:

The content always needs to be relevant and fall near within the students’ experiences and expectations. It needs to be interesting and meaningful. The reason behind this approach is to make sure to boos the enjoyment and engagement helping them to feel more motivated and facilitate the retention of the information / content of knowledge.

AUTHENTICITY:

The use of real-world text such as articles, newspapers, magazines, and literature as a whole, reveals a whole new world of content knowledge to the learners, letting them know that the language itself (even as a second one) is part of their daily lives. It exposes them to authentic language use and cultural contexts.

VOCABULARY AND LANGUAGE SUPPORT:

The vocabulary should be appropriate for the learners' language level – as stated already - and should be supported with explanations to help them understand new words or phrases. During a brand new text, it is always better to provide them with language support, such as glossaries, annotations, or footnotes, to assist them getting the cultural references, or expressions.