Microsoft Word artikel proceedings 2nd nacelt zaitun

nd
 National Conference on English Language Teaching (NACELT)
IAIN Palangka Raya, 14 November 2016

  
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students in an experimental study at a Japanese university for a year and found that 
those student who receiving the authentic input, made statistically significant 
progress over the control group on six tests planned to measure different types of 
competence. 
Maxim (2002: 29) carried out another study on the first semester students to 
find out the influence of reading comprehensive authentic materials at the beginning 
college level language students in German. The results of the study showed that the 
students in the treatment group were able to read a full-length authentic material in 
the fourth week and this did not affect their language development. Thus, it can be 
concluded that the students’ limited linguistic competence did not block them to 
read authentic texts in the classroom with the support of the classmates and teachers.
The findings of the studies have indicated that authentic materials are 
beneficial in many ways. Those materials lead the students to how language is used 
in the real world and improve their overall language proficiency which involves 
reading, listening comprehension, communicative competence, lexical and stylistic 
knowledge. 
However, alongside the demonstration of the studies pro to authentic 
materials, Gardener and Miller (1999: 101) mentioned contradictive opinion. The first 
aspect deals with the complexity of the language. Authentic materials might be 
culturally biased or too problematic to understand outside the language community, 
therefore, making them distant to beginners or elementary students. The second 
aspect is the learning burden. Authentic materials may contain items, mainly 
vocabulary, which are unfamiliar to the learner and may never be encountered 
again. The third aspects connected to learning contexts where authentic target 
language materials are not readily available, obtaining them are time-consuming 
and provoking. Martinez (2002) also stated two other weaknesses of using authentic 
materials. One of them is that some authentic listening materials have various 
accents that it is very hard for the learner to understand. Besides, the materials 
outdated easily, such as an article in newspapers or magazines. Due to these reasons, 
some teachers may be discouraged in choosing and organizing these authentic 
materials for the students. To face these problems, the teachers should provide the 
materials and appropriate exercises according to the abilities of the students which 
will help overcome the difficulties and help them comprehend and remember to use 
new materials.