Implementing authentic materials to turn traditional teaching into CLT: focus on high school

Abstract

Authentic materials are printed texts, visual texts, and audio materials which students faced in their classrooms, such as change-of address forms, job applications, menus, voice mail messages, radio programs, and videos. Though these materials are not for classroom learning, they may be excellent learning tools for students to acquire knowledge. Moreover, authentic materials receive a positive outcome from both the teachers and students as learners can relate easily with their regular actions. This paper discusses on implementing authentic materials to turn traditional teaching into communicative language teaching. In this regard, the researcher focused on how authentic materials can be utilized in the classroom under specific standards. For the empirical research, the researcher used questionnaire survey for both teachers and students. In addition, an observation survey was prepared where a checklist was used that was as same as the questionnaires survey for in-depth information also for comparing the results of questionnaire and checklist. The results, from the findings and analysis, reveal that authentic materials do change a traditional teaching into CLT through different type of communicative activities. At the same time, researcher reveals several weaknesses with negative responses too. Lastly, the researcher came up with various possible steps in order to overcome the negativity found through survey.