Students’ Responses to the Use of Authentic Material in a General
English Class
Eka Rahmat Fauzy
Balai Bahasa, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Jl. Dr. Setiabudhi No. 229, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Authentic Materials, Integrated Skills.
Abstract: This research is aimed to identify how students respond to the use of authentic materials in a General English
class. This research is based on qualitative case study design employing observation and focused group
interview to obtain the data. The results of data analysis suggest that students perceived both benefits and
challenges from the use of authentic materials in integrated skill based teaching. Therefore, it can be
concluded that the proper use authentic materials will be responded positively in an integrated skill based
class. Nonetheless, it is strongly recommended that the employment and implementation authentic materials
in teaching and learning process have to be prepared well since careless selection of authentic materials may
demotivate students, instead of encouraging them to understand the lesson.
1 INTRODUCTION
The use of authentic materials in language classrooms
has become a prominent topic over a couple of
decades, and with the rapid development of
technology, especially internet and multimedia, the
access to such materials has never been easier
(Erbaggio et al., 2012; Huessien, 2012; Mudra,
2014). Studies and practices in college English
teaching in recent decades have underlined the
importance of integrated skills involved in language
learning, and the design of the course itself and
related classroom activities have begun to receive a
lot attention in language teaching (Lin, 2004). To
support that purpose, the use of authentic materials
can be considered as a useful strategy in developing a
unit of material to implement the integration of
language skills in the classroom (Nunan, 1991;
Harmer, 2007), including in General English class.
Although some practitioners argued the idea, many
language teachers (Shrum and Glisan, 2000;
Kilickaya, 2004; Khaniya, 2006) believe that
authenticity has proved its beneficial role in language
teaching and the popularity of the use of authentic
materials in diverse settings, learning objectives, or
tasks has increased since the last decade.
Considering the significance of facts mentioned
above, a research on such real-life materials
integrated in all language skills has value to enhance
the richness and flexibility of college English or other
language courses and to provide useful examples or
guidance for other practitioners or researchers in
selecting and employing authentic materials in
integrated skill based activities because careless use
of authentic materials, rather than encouraging
students to understand the content, may demotivate
students (Lin, 2004; Harmer, 2007).
Some of selected studies related to the use of
authentic materials in language skill teaching suggest
that authentic materials enable learners to interact
with the real language and content rather than the
form and learners positively respond and feel that
they are learning a target language as it is used outside
the classroom (Khaniya, 2006; Baghban and
Ambigapathy, 2011; Tra, 2011; Nasta, Machmoed
and Manda, 2013; Alijani, Maghsoudi and Madani,
2014). Moreover, authentic materials are claimed
substantial to motivate learners because they are
intrinsically more interesting or stimulating than
artificial or non-authentic materials, and they can
provide students with up-to-date knowledge, expose
them to the world of authentic target language, and
bring the real world into the classroom (Peacock,
1997; Gilmore, 2007; Tra, 2011; Al Azri and Al-
rashdi, 2014). Even though, those previous studies
have been able to present a significant contribution
from the use of authentic materials in language
learning, many of them were grounded on general or
conceptual context of the topic, or on a particular area
848
Fauzy, E.
Students’ Responses to the Use of Authentic Material in a General English Class.
DOI: 10.5220/0007176408480853
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 848-853
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

of language skills, such as on speaking skill (Tra,
2011) and listening skill (Nasta, Machmoed and
Manda, 2013). Therefore, this research was
conducted in a class of a general English program
which usually covers, centres, and gives equal
attention to the four main language skills, as reflected
in actual English communication (The University of
Western Australia, no date; Far, 2008; Lamri, 2016).
Basically, authentic material can be considered as
normal and natural language used by native or
competent speakers of a language (Harmer, 2007). In
academic context, authentic materials can be
anything, including song, English movie, English
radio program, and many other videos of native
speakers speaking English which can be found easily
in students’ daily lives, that is available to the
language teacher, but was not produced for language-
teaching purposes since there could be differences to
textbook materials in aspects of linguistic
competence, pragmalinguistic competence, discourse
competence, and implications for materials design
(Gilmore, 2007; Robinson, cited in Tra, 2011; Nasta,
Machmoed and Manda, 2013; Al Azri and Al-rashdi,
2014). Table 1 below shows a comparison between
authentic and non-authentic materials, showing that
the characteristics of authentic materials reflect a true
nature of language use in real-life communication
(Miller, cited in Firdaus, 2014).
Table 1: The comparison of authentic and non-authentic
materials.
Authentic Materials
Non-Authentic Materials
They are produced for
real life communication
purposes.
They are specially
designed for learning
purposes.
They may contain false
starts, and incomplete
sentences.
The language used in them
is artificial. They contain
well-formed sentences all
the time.
They are useful for
improving the
communicative aspects
of the language.
They are useful for
teaching grammar.
In line with those points, the use of authentic
materials in integrated-skills approach is relevant as
both prepare students for real-life situations, making
connections between life and learning (Lin, 2004).
Thus, it is obvious that any of the four skills can be
developed best in association with other language
skills. At first, in the real practices, listening is not
simply a one-way process of receiving audible
symbols, but it is usually an interactive process
involving meaning negotiation, turn taking,
discussion, as note-taking and writing in response to
what is listened. Similarly, reading is commonly
interactive and includes higher-level thinking skills,
self-reflection, and inference. Further, from a
communicative and pragmatic view of the language
teaching, oral production occurs in a variety of
contexts or genres, such as conveying or exchanging
specific information, engaging in small talks, or
maintaining social relationships. The last skill,
writing, can be a process involving the writer, written
or oral texts, and other writers or readers. Thus, it is
obvious that any of the four skills can be developed
best in association with other language skills. Tajzad
and Ostovar-Namaghi (2014) suggested that
segregating language skills in learning activity may
help learners to comprehend language as knowledge
well, but it will not enable them to use their
knowledge in actual communication. They further
asserted that the integrated-skills approach can trigger
simultaneous use of skills, enhance learners’
motivation and self-confidence, save class time, and
provide reflection time.
In ELT, the more students see and listen to
comprehensible input, the more English they acquire,
notice, or learn (Harmer, 2007). This input takes
many forms; teachers’ utterances, audio materials,
textbooks, podcasts, video, etc., and moves in a circle
in which one’s output will return to be an input after
exposed by some processes of evaluation,
modification, and feedback from teachers, other
students, and the student himself or herself. Further,
this cycle is incorporated in Harmer’s basic
methodological models for teaching receptive and
productive skills.
Figure 1: A basic methodological model for teaching
receptive skills.
Students’ Responses to the Use of Authentic Material in a General English Class
849

Figure 2: A basic methodological model for teaching
productive skills.
Figure 1, on the one hand, shows that teaching
receptive skills starts with a lead in where students are
engaged in the topic and their schema or pre-existent
knowledge is activated. When students are ready,
teacher sets some kind of comprehension task, and
then directs feedback, and gives follow-up activity.
The comprehension cycle is repeated and then teacher
involves students in text-related tasks. On the other
hand, it can be seen from Figure 2 that the success of
Harmer’s model for teaching productive skills
generally relies on the way teacher organizes the tasks
and how to respond the students’ work.
Generally, to develop a unit of material to practice
the integration of language skills in the classroom,
consideration is necessary on the principles of
authenticity provided in the material for the students,
continuity that reflects the chain activities people do
in the real-life situation, real-world focus to stimulate
applicable sense of the lesson in their daily life, and
students’ language focus exposed to the language as
a system and asserting them to be encouraged to have
self-monitoring-and-evaluation skill (Nunan, 1991).
To support integrated skill based teaching, the use of
authentic materials can be considered appropriate at
post-intermediate level attributed to the fact that at
this level, most students master a wide range of
vocabulary in the target language and all of the
structures (Guariento and Morley, cited in Kilickaya,
2004; Khaniya, 2006). Nonetheless, authentic
materials can be used by lower level students if the
tasks given are well-designed to help students
understand it better (Guariento and Morley, cited in
Kilickaya, 2004; Khaniya, 2006; Harmer, 2007).
According to McGrath (cited in Al Azri and Al-
rashdi, 2014) there are eight criteria to be
considered when choosing appropriate authentic
texts; relevance to course book and learners' needs,
topic interest, cultural fitness, logistical
considerations, cognitive demands, linguistic
demands, quality, and exploitability. Further, to
prevent demotivating effect on students from careless
use of authentic materials (Harmer, 2007), the
selection process should meet learners’ age, level,
interests, needs, goals, and expectations (Oguz and
Bahar, cited in Baghban and Ambigapathy, 2011). In
addition, some other criteria should be taken into
account, including the relevance to syllabus and
learners’ needs, intrinsic interest of topic/theme,
cultural appropriateness, linguistic demands,
cognitive demands, logistical considerations, and
exploitability ( McGrath, cited in Alijani, Maghsoudi
and Madani, 2014). By this way, authentic materials
can motivate students and give them more stimulation
in learning a language.
2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research is a qualitative case study that involves
an in-depth examination of a few people in the natural
setting with multiple interactive and humanistic
methods. Furthermore, this study is not only able to
disclose explicit behaviour, but also unveil tacit
behaviour of the respondent, but it was limited by
time and activity, and researcher collected detailed
information using a diversity of data collection
procedures during a maintained period of time (Berg,
2001; Alwasilah, 2002; Stake, cited in Creswell,
2003).
The target population was 14 students from two
intermediate General English classes. To obtain the
data, there were two types of instruments employed
in this research; classroom observation to develop an
understanding of how students responded over the
course and focused group interview eliciting the main
information for the study. The observation
particularly focused on students’ responses to the
materials, such as students’ eagerness or reluctance to
take part in class activities. In this study the
researcher contributed as the teacher and acted as
participant observer of the study. Engagement in the
setting permits the researcher to hear, see, and
experience reality in natural setting. Further, by
means of focused group interview, a large amount of
information can be released in a comparatively short
period of time and it also allows the researcher to
observe interactions among participants, which are
not observable in individual interviews (Anglea,
2009). Besides, the questioning process in the
interview enables the researcher to explore into the
minds of the population and coherently gauge their
perspectives on issues being raised throughout the
interviewing process.
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
850

The data collected from the classroom observation
were documented into observation and interview
sheets, classified, and interpreted (Alwasilah, 2002).
The whole data was then categorized and analysed
using coding method as code in qualitative inquiry is
most often a word or short phrase that symbolically
assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing,
and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-
based or visual data, including interview transcripts,
participant observation field notes (Saldana, 2008). In
the coding process, the responses are based on four
aspects; the integration of reading, listening,
speaking, and writing activities, the use of culinary
program video, the use of materials from English
course book, and the use of materials from Non-
English course book. A range of score; 1 is bad, 2 is
fair, 3 is good, 4 is very good, and 5 is excellent, is
used to categorize the quality of students’ responses
during the observation and interview.
3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
The result of data analysis from the observation and
focused group interviews demonstrated that students
overall perceived both benefits and challenges from
the use of authentic materials in integrated skill based
teaching. The data of students’ responses on the use
of authentic materials were collected and combined in
a table encoded with four aspects responded as
presented in Table 2.
Table 2: Distribution of students’ responses.
Category
/
response
Language skill and skills
-
integrating activities
Authentic video
English course book
Non
- English
course book
Excellent
21%
36%
29%
36%
Very
Good
36%
28%
29%
30%
Good
29%
29%
21%
29%
Fair
14%
7%
21%
5%
Bad
0%
0%
0%
0%
In general, Table 2 presents high percentages of
positive responses, referring to good, very good, and
excellent criteria indicated from scores 3-5 given by
the students. Further, the positive responses were
granted by more than 85% of the respondents to three
aspects; language skill and skills-integrating
activities, the use of pictures from the internet and the
culinary program video, and the use of non-English-
course-book materials. Though there were, still, a few
participants considering those four aspects tedious
(indicated from fair criteria), with the highest ratio on
the use of materials from the course book, there is no
indication on Table 2 above that participants
expressed dissatisfaction (represented by bad criteria)
on all aspects surveyed.
Further, the interview gives additional
information related to the use of authentic materials
and the integration of skills during the class and as
expected, the students took turn and supplement each
other responses during the interview; something that
may not appear in individual interview (Anglea,
2009). Most of the students agreed that they enjoyed
the activities since they were able to use English in
the practically actual communication context. The
video was taken from a culinary program on the
internet which is certainly intended for real-life
communication, not for language-teaching activities
(Robinson, cited in Tra, 2011; Nasta, Machmoed and
Manda, 2013; Miller, cited in Firdaus, 2014).
In fact, the integration of skill-based activities was
not very obvious for the students as they seemed to
set their whole focus on the activities. For example,
when observing the pictures given, some students did
not notice that they integrate speaking and listening
skills as they took turns giving opinions. Moreover,
the activity actually involves writing skill as some of
them took notes on what they were discussing. The
discussion was also enjoyable for most of the students
as they could share their ideas, make interactions with
each other, and compare the results of their discussion
with the reading text in the course book. Certainly,
the comparison integrated the result of students’
discussion involving speaking, listening, and writing
skills and their reading skill. It can be noticed that the
integration of both the main and the accessorial skills,
such as grammar and pronunciation, prompted by the
use of authentic materials reflects a form of
communication comparable to the actual one (Tajzad
and Ostovar-Namaghi, 2014).
In addition, the use of culinary program video
retrieved from the internet is also considered effective
as it could attract students’ attention and could
motivate them to be more active during the activity.
This condition supports the perception that authentic
materials can be a motivating force for learners and
can encourage them to learn better (Peacock,
1997; Gilmore, 2007; Tra, 2011; Al Azri and Al-
rashdi, 2014; Tajzad and Ostovar-Namaghi, 2014).
Such notion can be seen from students’ facial and
verbal expressions as they were watching the video
and their lively participation during discussion by
giving opinion, implication, and prediction related to
Students’ Responses to the Use of Authentic Material in a General English Class
851

the content of the video. Several students also
responded that the video stimulated them to try the
foods reviewed in the video, while others mentioned
that the video provided remarkable information that
they have not acquired before. Overall, all students
responded that from the video they could learn about
how English is used in the ‘real world’, which in this
case is dealing with food review, vocabularies related
to food ingredients, tastes, and cooking procedures.
However, some problems are still found either in
the activities integrating the language skills or in the
use of the video as an authentic material. This
condition can be implied from the lower percentages
existing in the table. It can be explored further from
the observation and interview that due to different
pace of language development and proficiency of
students, some of them tended to be more active than
others during the integrated skill activities. Besides,
even though most students understood general
information given in the culinary program video, they
still found difficulties dealing with the details. Some
students mentioned that it was due to vocabularies
considered unfamiliar for the students or the noise
produced in the video background, or simply because
the talking speed of the host or the narrator of the
program is above what students can comprehend.
Such conditions are truly among some common
concerns related to the use of authentic materials in
the classroom (Harmer, 2007; Al Azri and Al-rashdi,
2014), and therefore, instructor’s prompts and
guidance were still necessary to assist the students
and encourage their motivation.
4 CONCLUSIONS
There are many situations in which we use more than
one language skill, and for this reason alone, it is
valuable to use authentic materials to support the
integration of the language skills. Moreover, this
study demonstrates that students will give positive
responses as the authentic materials are selected
properly based on their needs. Above all, integrating
the skills means that teacher is working at the level of
realistic communication, not just at the level of
vocabulary and sentence patterns. Realistic
communication is the aim of the communicative
approach and it can be actualized by the use of
authentic materials.
Aside from the benefits verified in this research, it
is strongly recommended that practitioners
employing and implementing authentic materials in
integrated skill based activities make appropriate
preparation for the use of authentic materials in ELT
as careless selection of authentic materials may
discourage students, instead of encouraging them to
understand the lesson. It is suggested that the
materials selected is reviewed to ensure that they are
suitable for the students need and potential problems
that may arise can be altered through some strategies
during the instruction. Additionally, the result also
implied a need of development steps for the course
book; one of which by adopting authentic materials
considered more attractive for the learning process
and genuine to real-life practices.
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