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6 The World Wide Web
The latest source of authentic materials that can be used for helping students develop their listening comprehension is the internet or the World Wide
Web. Websites now provide both audio and video clips which contain current and interesting listening materials. BBC World Service is an example of websites
which contains wide variety of programmes transmitted in both written text and real audio. To provide these audio clips into classroom, teacher should ensure that
computers and modems have the required speeds and that you have the right kind of software, which is free and easily downloaded.
c. Advantages and Disadvantages of Authentic Materials
There are advantages and disadvantages of using authentic materials for students in classroom. As a teacher, optimizing the use of authentic materials is
supposed to be done because it has significant advantages, as it is cited from Martinez‟s 2002 study.
The first advantage is students are exposed to real discourse. Through authentic materials, students are able to learn from the real discourse to improve
their listening comprehension. For instance, watching video interviews between a reporter and a famous person can help the students in listening for gist.
The second advantage is according to Sanderson 1999 as cited by Martinez 2002, the students are able to always be informed about what is
happening in the world, so they have intrinsic educational value. It is also important for teachers to take the responsibility as educators to concern with
general development and education itself. The third one deals with its advantage
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24 compared to textbook, that authentic materials offer the students to learn more
skill – such as analyzing skill- because sometimes in authentic materials, there are
incidental or improper English, which can be a tool for students to apply their knowledge in practice. The fourth advantage is the same piece of material can be
used under different circumstances if the task is different. It means that authentic materials offer the teacher and students the efficient function of materials to be
used in language classroom. Next advantage is according to Brinton 1991, authentic materials can
reinforce for students the direct relationship between the language classroom and outside the world. Melvin and Stout 1987 found an overall increased motivation
to learn in students, as well as a renewed interest in the subject matter, when students use authentic materials for the study of culture in language classroom.
Authentic materials also enabled the students to recognize a wide variety of text types from books, articles, newspapers, and so on, in which the language styles
are not easily found in conventional teaching materials. The last but not the least advantage of authentic materials is they can
encourage the activities in class for pleasure because they are likely to contain topics to interest to learners. Moreover, the students will find more excitement and
are supposed to be more involved in classroom activities if they are given the chance to talk about the topics or kinds of authentic materials to be used in class.
On the other hand, there are also the disadvantages of authentic materials which are important for the teachers and students to minimize and or to be aware
of. The disadvantage of authentic materials related to listening is mostly about the
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25 accent of the speaker. In authentic listening materials, the students may found it is
difficult to listen to different accents, even in one listening passage. Furthermore, the disadvantages dealt with the structure. In authentic
materials, sometimes too many structures are mixed so lower levels have a hard time decoding the texts. This disadvantage can be minimized by selecting
language contained in the authentic materials. The process of selecting the materials or special preparation may bring teachers to another disadvantage
namely time consuming. Culture biased also becomes one of the disadvantages of authentic
materials. Some authentic materials can be too culturally biased, in which sometimes make the students outside the language community difficult to
understand.
d. Materials Selection Criteria for Teaching
