Authentic Materials for Low Proficiency Learners in EFL Context: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

The trend of World Wide Web access leads the use of authentic materials increasingly popular in ELT. The teachers can find and use any types of authentic materials to bridge the gap between the language used in the classroom and real world communication. Authentic materials contain complex language features that are not produced for teaching purposes. Therefore, it is different with language presented in the textbook. This study intended to find out the opportunities and challenges of authentic materials for low proficiency learners in SMP Islam Nabilah. The researcher used qualitative approach in which the data were gathered through classroom observation, self-reflection diary, and semi-structured interview with 21 students who classified as low proficiency learners. The findings show that the use of authentic materials such as songs, literatures, movies, pictures, and webs to teach English for low proficiency learners has both opportunities and challenges included the aspects of linguistic, motivation, culture, and resource

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

According to Gilmore (2007) when teaching activities strict on following the material that provided on the textbook only, students would get bored. Besides, students get a little exposure on how to use language in which they wish to communicate. Thus, the use of authentic materials can be one of the ways to expose students to the language used contextually instead of using the artificial materials like textbook.

The first thing we have to consider is the slight discussion to define authentic material. Morrow (1977) as quoted by Mishan (2005:11) defines authentic text as the real language written or spoken by native to real audience in order to transfer a message in a real communication. The authentic materials contain natural language that commonly occur and used native speaker contexts with Standard English as the norm (Kilickaya, 2004). Which mean it is not only written or spoken by native speaker. Other scholars state that authentic materials are produced not intentionally for teaching purposes but it used in real communication (Tomlinson, 2005; Nunan, 2004; Bahrani & Tam, 2012; Polio, 2014)

The effectiveness of using authentic materials according to previous researchers can be seen from both linguistic and non-linguistic aspect. Authentic materials provides wider range of authentic inputs that expose students to a complex language features (Gilmore, 2007; Richard, 2006).  Also, Richards (2001) and Gilmore (2007) claim the elements from language use, communication features, and entertainment aspects are closely interesting for language learners that will affect on learners' motivation. Authentic materials provide cultural information based practices and beliefs which reflects social phenomena that expose students to different culture (Mishan, 2005). The use of authentic materials will expose EFL students to language used in real life situation since this student have a less chance to practice language outside classroom (Ozverir & Herrington, 2011).  Further, the trend of World Wide Web access naturally plays a major role in authentic English language learning (Hafiz, 2013), give the opportunity for teachers to find and use authentic materials in their classroom which lead the use of authentic materials increasingly popular in English language teaching.

In other side, the complexity of language features in authentic materials which typically different from the language presented in the textbook might be too difficult to be comprehended. The difficulty, furthermore, is causing some affective factors as frustration, uninterested, and demotivation. Moreover, authentic materials might be seen as entertainment rather than accepted as valuable learning sources. The other problem is selecting the appropriate texts that suit to learners' ability and local culture.

Moreover, as current researcher noted while doing teaching activities in SMP Islam Nabilah, authentic materials are used to support the textbook. Those materials are in various types of forms such as videos, popular songs, movies, short stories, newspapers, and internet that according to Mishan (2005) are the cultural products that commonly used for teaching. The authentic materials helped to attract students' interest in learning English. However, low proficiency learners felt difficult and they spent more time to finish their work when teacher bring authentic materials. (Polio, 2014) contends that the use of authentic materials for beginner takes up too much time. Furthermore, teachers should take more effort to select the appropriate materials and conduct the relevant activities to suit with students' proficiency meanwhile the meaningful activities should be paid attention (Kirana, 2014).

The authentic materials might contain complexity in language features. However, Mishan (2005) claims that learners in low proficiency level are able to use authentic materials. Further, researchers state that the issue is not only about what kind of authentic material, but also how teachers conduct the activities that fit with learner's proficiency (Mishan 2005; Gilmore, 2007; Kirana, 2014).

All in all, the present study was conducted to focusing on the challenges and opportunities of using authentic materials for low proficiency learners in EFL context. The researcher expected that the results of this research will be as self-reflection by the researcher itself and inspire other teachers to bring a lot of authentic materials in the classroom, further how to deal with the challenges while using authentic materials.

METHOD

To know the challenges and opportunities of using authentic materials for low proficiency learners in SMP Islam Nabilah, Batam, this study used qualitative approach to capture it. According to Burns and Grove (2003), qualitative approach is a systematic approach used to describe life experiences and situations to give them meaning, and picture of situation as it naturally happened.

 

The participants of the research were 21 students of SMP Islam Nabilah who classified as low proficiency learners according to English Placement Test. To maximize the process of collecting data, the research used semi-structured interview, classroom observation, and self-reflection diary.

The primary instrument of this research is the researcher (Moleong, 2014). The researcher is involving in all process of the research data collection, analyzing, and interpreting the data. The secondary instrument is interview questions and data sheet analysis. The instruments are constructed by synthesized theory from various scholars (Richard, 2001; Gilmore, 2007; Kirana, 2014; Mishan, 2005), and other researchers that relevant to the topic to analyze the opportunities and challenges when using authentic materials for low-level learners.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

a. Kind of Authentic Materials 

The table below shows types of authentic materials tended to use movies, songs, literatures, and web. It means that researcher consider to the cultural products that commonly used as a source to teach English (Mishan, 2005).

• Table 4.1 Kind of Authentic Materials Used in SMP Islam Nabilah

b. Opportunities and Challenges of Using Authentic Materials

1. Opportunities

The following table presents the opportunities of using authentic materials for low proficiency learners.

Table 4.2 Opportunities of Using Authentic Materials

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The findings above is in line with Mishan (2005) who argue the use of visual materials lead students to acquire new vocabularies by listening out how to pronounce it and interpret the meaning from movement object. The teacher also fairly believes that informal words like gimme, lemme, and other slang words are rarely to be found in textbook. Moreover, the students also can listen to proper pronunciation by listen to a song or watch a movie which it is effective way of exposing students to native-quality English. The findings are supported by scholars such as Richard (2006), Adam, Stan & Moanga (2011), and Gilmore (2007) who states that authentic materials provide rich inputs and wider range of language features that is commonly not appear in the textbook. It will reflect both formal and informal speech which can be discovered by students even for low proficiency level.

Further, the results shows students enjoy in learning activity when the materials are something interesting, commonly appear in daily, or it is something new for them. Besides, according to observation, teacher conducted the activity that does not force lower level student to do difficult task. The data supported by Berardo (2006) and Oguz and Bahar (2008) cited in Bahgban (2011) who states the way teacher design activity regarding to their student's level will rise students' motivation on participate actively in learning.

Authentic materials as a cultural product according to Richard (2001) and Mishan (2005) can reflect many aspects of target culture based on its practices, beliefs, particular social condition and phenomena both verbal and non-verbal. Teacher mentioned song and movie let their students learn about western cultures. Those cultures according to the note is in a case of good culture such as love for friendship, motivation, self-esteem, hardworking and independent, so it motivates students to take a good value from it.

Based on interview, students made a point how internet can be very useful for them to find appropriate materials, any web applications, and to operate it. The researcher also noted that bunch resources of authentic materials help to reduce teachers' workload.  Teacher do not need to design the materials and do not need to talk too much in the classroom because they can just give their students an instruction to watch a movie, listen a song, brows the webs, or read the literature. Mishan (2005) states internet makes the teacher's work easier to find unlimited suitable authentic materials only just by typing the keywords into search engine such as google and they can use various sources of authentic materials in the classroom.

2. Challenges

The challenges of using authentic materials for low proficiency learners are briefly illustrated in Table 4.3

Table 4.3 Challenges of Using Authentic Materials

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Linguistic demands are one of challenges when using authentic materials since it is contain complex language features, unneeded vocabularies, the phrases that not commonly appear on textbook. The linguistic demands can cause students especially with low level of proficiency get difficulties to comprehend it (Richard, 2001; Kirana, 2014; Gilmore, 2007).

To deal with this linguistic demand, teachers let students to open a dictionary and gave a clue for the students to stimulate them on catching the meaning. Teacher also put the subtitle on the movie, repeated the instruction in Bahasa and guided their students one by one while in learning activities especially when using internet as a medium.

Further, regarding to Guariento and Morley (2001) the difficulties of language features in authentic text will lead students to feel frustrated, confused, and unmotivated even with quite simple task.  In the interview and observation note, the students got boredom when the song is being repeated for many times because teacher asked them to sing along. The fastest speech in a movie plus the teacher did not put a subtitle caused students lost their interest in watching a movie. The students seemed happy at first, but then they confused, uninterested, and started talked to each other. To deal with this, the teacher put the subtitle and disciplined them. The difficulty of text is also make students lost their interest in finishing the task. To deal with this, teacher helped them and then changed the activity to watch a movie on youtube. In the end, teacher discussed about the movie and asked students' feeling after they read and watched the movie.

Further, according to observation note, the students said they feel better when watching a movie and read literature, but it is hard (susah) to find vocabularies, translate, and categorized it.  The researcher interprets that students sometimes can enjoy the authentic materials as an entertainment, for example, to make them watch a movie, read a novel and short story, or listen to a song as what they actually do in leisure sure time, not as learning sources. This is in line with what Kirana (2014) asserts that rather than think the authentic materials as valuable learning source, students enjoy it as an entertainment. Therefore, teachers still need to guide them in every activity.

As researcher noticed that inappropriate content such as bad words and inappropriate scenes commonly appear on Western movie, the students realized it too. Additionally, students think it can influence their friend's behaviour and they can imitate it. The researcher noted while observing the students, students made a noise by tried to imitate 'bad' spell words from the movie. In line with this, Kirana (2014) states the culture and language in the authentic texts can be inappropriate to students hence, misunderstanding by the student from different cultural background can be occurred. To respond this, furthermore, teacher carefully selected authentic text that going to be used.

 Mishan (2005) and Richard (2001) has discussed that finding interesting and accessible materials for beginners is one of the most difficult aspect in using authentic materials. Teacher also need to spend amount of time to find suitable sources. The findings show that teacher is not always easy to find authentic materials that suitable for their students at low proficiency level.

 Another challenge is teacher needs to repeat the song more than three times while students in higher level can be less than that and because the low-level learner still find difficulties in doing the activity, teacher stated that it will take more time. In line with this finding, according to Kilickaya (2014) and Polio (2014) the authentic materials may be time consuming and make the learning process slow down.

Furthermore, because mostly authentic materials that brought by teachers are in form of digital, audio-visual or audio, so there is no physical evidence. It means that teacher think it will be harder to find the authentic materials if they need it to evaluate or archived it after the authentic materials are being used. Besides, the digital file could be potentially lost due to virus or technical trouble.

The researcher noted on the observation students opened unrelated websites when teacher asked them to access internet. It is because on the internet, there are numerous sources that can be accessed which are not related for learning, and it challenge teacher to control one by one what students' access (Mishan, 2005). The rest challenges that teacher mentioned in the interview are more to technical problem such as electricity off, trouble with speaker, and internet connection (that probably unstable). This problem has been mentioned by Erben, Bam, and Castaneda (2009) that the broken web links and the down server can be a potential problem when teacher use internet-mediated authentic materials.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Conclusion

The authentic materials that commonly used by researcher in SMP Islam Nabilah to teach English for low learners are the cultural products such as songs, movies, pictures, literatures (novel, short stories), and webs that usually used as supplementary materials for the textbook and to engage students interest in learning English.

The opportunities of using authentic materials are students can develop language skills such as listening, reading, vocabularies, and pronunciation. The authentic materials also can motivate students to actively engage in activities, learn good culture from foreigners, and easy to find the sources. Despite, teachers also face challenges which include the linguistic demands that will affect students' interest and motivation, inappropriate culture, and difficult to find suitable text for low learners and also time consuming.

Suggestions

For the English teachers who assigned to teach low proficiency learners, the researcher would like to suggest the teacher to use various kinds of authentic materials especially on the use of ICT or internet both as resource or medium because the school provided the infrastructure and students seems enthusiast when they use technology. Teachers can also let their students work collaboratively with their friends. This activity enables low learners to share their ideas, reduce anxiety, and motivate them to actively participate in activity. Moreover, teacher can use clear instructions so the time will not run out by repeated instruction. Regarding to cultural issue, besides looking for the text that suitable to students' local culture, teacher can develop students cross cultural understanding by comparing their own culture with others culture.

For the further research, deeply analysis on low proficiency students' perception after they use authentic materials is also necessary to develop the effectiveness of using authentic materials for lower-level learners especially in EFL context.

 

REFERENCES

 

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About The Author 

ENDAH SRI ELYAWATI, S.Pd is a teacher in SMP Islam Nabilah, Batam. Her interest includes Teaching English, material development, and ICT in Education.